Fear Mongers Say We Are Eating Each Other Now

Profit of Doom

You'd have us believe we are sicker than we are,
though I will concede we are pretty sick,
all this reportage of eating one another
cannibalism, zombies,
but the fact remains
there are many varieties of madness,
and it has always been circling us,
there is nothing special about now
just the laws of supply and demand
market forces
appetite
someone creating desire
and fear
and making a
killing.

On Demon Wings

For late nights, alone.

Eighteen Pairs Of Food

Kindergarten curriculum night,
just he and I,
he shows me the sum total of his work,
his progress of a year
from the scrawl and scribble of his first day
to a clearly printed name with all the letters
pointed in the right direction and
drawn faces with features and bodies attached.

It means something to him that I am here,
and it means something to me too.

Doc Watson - RIP

Art Appreciation

When you play for me,
I am an animal
listening.

Your technique, your prowess,
go unappreciated as
I can only respond
to what soothes or agitates

Can only understand through
how your music moves
my blood.

Satie

Trickster

Standing in the road, seemingly oblivious,
unseen until the last moment,
sharp right turn, hit the breaks hard,
too fast, too late, and impact
but it doesn't end up under the wheels
the brown coyote standing still in the middle of my lane staring straight ahead
not even looking at me as I hit him
what had its attention?

I turn the car around expecting to find
it broken and dying on the roadside
but my headlights  catch him running
apparently without a limp,
back to the side of the road
from whence he came.

Of course, the little bastard
was uninsured.

A Good Place To Kill Half An Hour

A seat in a bar I've heard spoken of as a good place
pine panneled, well-lit, the usual temple shrine of bottles
smokers in an outdoor sitting area sounding drunk even though it's only 9
bartender's cautious, never seen me around here before, gets my beer
and it's not long before he probes discretely with a question or two
artfully revealing a mutual friend, a regular, who sometimes comes in just after closing
and they talk, drink and listen to jazz until early morning...

A patron in his sixties cracks a joke about nurses,
moves in closer, tells me he was a tunnel rat in Vietnam,
and he's got a girlfriend with a smart-ass son in his 30s
who thinks it's funny to jump out and startle him at every opportunity
this last time he did so with a kitchen knife in hand which prompted
my new friend to go out to his car and get his Ka-Bar
which he then brought back into the house and asked sonny boy
if he wouldn't like to be killed with it,
his girlfriend apparently didn't understand.

At the same time, two guys are arguing down the bar,
"She's got MS, asshole. That's a terrible disease."
"Yeah? She's got BS too. You should stay the fuck away from her"
"Your talking shit about someone with a disability"
"Look, just because she's disabled doesn't mean she's not an asshole"
"You been drinking Jack and Cokes for six hours. I can tell by your mood"...

Turns out sonny boy drowned in a rip tide
off a Boston area beach soon after, a risk taker,
some people just don't understand what they're fucking with,
and the bartender fills me in on his brush with the Russians in Germany
during the Cold War 70's and he tosses out the names of several other people we
know in common between pouring his customers drinks and weighing in on the
character of the chick with MS.
I've been here 20 minutes.

We three shake hands, I've got to go pick up my daughter.

Gypsy Moth

Aren't you early
this year,
caterpillars?

Lonely
scouts for legions
soon on the march
to eat all the green in
the world.

I run, and it's humid,
but I'm getting no faster
in a relative sense

No real hope of out distancing
much of anything,

I just need the ability
to keep moving fast enough,
long enough,
to avoid being crushed
by knowing
it.

Cuz Your Back Ain't Strong Enough

Bill Withers - Lovely Day

Here's hoping.

Ignorance Of The Law

Put me back in the dark,
this place where us kids
had the run of the neighborhood
at 5 or 6 years old
without adult supervision

we never knew the passer-bys
in cars, those adults,
were predators,
perverts and child killers,
because the television news
talked about other things,
like nuclear war

besides, we were mostly
superheroes and
unafraid,
if not safe

now, we line up here
and are fed
a 24 hour deluge of
shit and fear

and we don't know
what we need,
just that we need
more and more
and more

and we hate
and we fear
and we buy
and we stare

Wild Child's In A World Of Trouble

There are three songs here. The one I like, and want to share, begins at 7:08 on the timer.

A Ride Home

Forces In Motion

will just roll over it all, fuck you,
your small faces, your homes and keepsakes,
dreams and treasures, secrets,
your favortite things, your loves,
all you worship and adore

will lay waste and leave ruins
blood, tears, terror, and loss
that will echo
down the years
forever

will crush your heroes and your hopes,
make a mockery of all you hold sacred
and brutalize your idols leaving them
staggering naked in the street
drugged, raped and pathetic,
painted up silly,
rubber tires hanging
around their necks

you can join us,
or you can join them,
but the choice isn't really yours,
is it?

you can bear witness or
you can be dumb enough
to try to pick up the pieces
and tend to the wounds,
that is,
if you're still
standing.

Out of The Corner Of A Jaundiced Eye

Distracting myself in that god-awful gym
running on a treadmill and looking at the TV screen:
it's some food show on the Travel Channel
and I can't help noticing as they show
one family after another
happily eating and talking to the camera
that one of the moms is reaching to dip
some food item into another
while in mid-nod on opiates,
probably prescribed and abused.

Fat, bored, sick, addicted,
entertained unto oblivion
and rich enough to have time to
think about it.

What a pickle.
What a dream.

Riders on The Storm

I've always loved the driving quality of this song. I think it might still be close to perfect with just the rhythm section and the rain. No disrespect to you, Jim. Or to the unstable guy with the squirming-toad-brain. Or to the Jazzy keyboards, which I like so well right at the end.



Silver Springs

Named for the Blessed Virgin,
a land not so very far from here
but not of my every day
so it qualifies
as a far off place
a dream

Is there magic there?

I look at the map
wondering,
and that is why maps
are beautiful.

Ave Maria

Unhanded

Afraid of influence,
even music is a drug, facilitator,
reading sews seeds, wildly germinating
what you want is the true sound
of your own voice
even if it croaks
I am parched...
starving.

Someone said organic
three times in one sentence,
and that was enough to
put me off

It doesn't take much
to realize smallness
and to bring it into being

I am telling you
that I am something
that must be overcome.

Chicha Libre

Plush

If you let yourself
fall into their hands
after dark,
they may kill you...

imagining that surrender,
letting go of the shoulders,
dropping them, the tension
gone

and not missed

turn yourself in,
give yourself over,
to the chance offered
by nights falling

you aren't captain of anything
here

darkness will fall,
of course it will,
and so will
you.

School of The Flower

Bearings

I am
more than
an object
in your universe,
and less.

Diagnosed

You seem to be characterizing yourself as
mentally unstable and physically decrepit.

That's funny, almost.
Let's be frank here, alright?
The headlights are a little dimmer and
I could do with a nap in the afternoons.