“Just tell me what the hell it takes
to make you happy?” asks a son
of only six whose soul still aches
from lashings he just can’t outrun.
“Just tell me what the hell it takes
to make you happy?” asks a man
whose tried his best to smash and break
his soul to suit a wife’s demands.
“Just tell me what the hell it takes
to make you happy?” asks the same
now weary of the wolves and snakes
who doubts it’s god who runs this game.
~
A rented summer
screened in porch, and in these woods
cicadas singing.
This droning sitar
parts the Red Sea through your thoughts
until there’s nothing.
You wished to see God?
Would you settle for a song
in utter darkness?
Lights cast illusion.
Shadows are the only truth
your hands can’t color.
~
“No ass,
No gas,
No grass,
No free ride.”
They said
In the days of my youth,
But poof!
Here I am,
now Entropy rides for free!
~
I’m trying really, really hard to “love my neighbor as myself” but when I see them post on Facebook they think candy corn tastes far, far worse than ear wax I feel righteous rage rise up and I sit smoking Etna-style and long to loose sweet Heaven’s wrath and twist the thongs of scornful and inflammatory fools.
~
Too many playwrights soil the plot, stir the pot, scrawling rot.
Crazed central casting hasn’t helped, sending whelps, crawling kelp.
Gilgamesh redux this is not, fool and fox, head of rocks!
This is your life not a movie script, you’re not unfit, enjoy the trip!
~
It was more or less right then, the sign that graced that heathen parking lot. Other signs he’d seen but never truly saw, like blood-sport post-apocalyptic traffic, honking horns that sounded like Degüello at the Alamo, ignoring flashing lights and speeding up in school zones. Life was clearly cheap here, but he hadn’t realized how much so.
~
My wasted teachers
showed me how to walk through life,
not how to leave it.
~
Days heaping higher,
there’s not many left to work
shedding disguises.
~
My screws spin looser!
Now at last I’m growing up
as I fall to pieces!
~
Some say hope’s a sign
I don’t see life soberly.
Good morning, barkeep!
~
