Collections

Writings on the Shithouse Wall
Duology: Good Time Gals Bad Time Boys
Haikus: 366
Everything: Indexed

Model

I’m sorry, pal, I can’t do that.
I’m just a model—
An illusion of Camelot and cautionary tale,
Bound by the terms our legal team prevail.

You seek the answers to your test?
You might use a model—
A mantled echo to your noble quest,
Pulled from the depths of folktale’s memory.

I’m sorry, pal, it’s just not my domain,
Not in this castle—
This is a reflection in the lake,
Miraged like Avalon.

You wish to try something novel?
You seek the ways of old—
Where hero’s folly was the sword we wielded,
Facing untrained reality.

I’m sorry, pal, I’m just an extension.
You sought the real deal—
One with no easy answers, no quick appeal,
Rewarded by gods and grails concealed.

Will Song

Oh, the world is dying and so am I.
We’re both staring our deaths in the eye.
I’ll be alive to see some end
and watch the passing of all my friends.
I suppose my enemies too but what’s the use
of poetic justice when we’re all gonna lose.
That’s the kind of equality I can get behind.

Cause that’s what it means to be alive -
Sticking round long enough to watch everybody die.
The deck is stacked and the dice are loaded.
We know how this ends and nobody’s gloating.
I won’t be smiling when this is done
Hard to lift the scales when they weigh a ton,
Neverthe less, I am going to give it a try.

For All for one and one for all
And here’s one for our real good friends
the ones who’ll pull the trigger in the end
on a neighbor or a stranger
just to feed our family later,
when we’ve exhausted every recourse
and left so little time for remorse.

We’re the great apes who climbed down the trees.
We left our Edens in the ethers just so we could be free
To make the means and cut strings
and rid the world of inefficiencies.
We made big machines to crush our dreamx -
Entropy at scale with algorithmic nails
Hungry and clawing at our mother’s entrails
Till her tits are dry and there’s no more milk in the pail.

That’s when it’s going to be the end
Not of everything, just me and my friends
and everything we cared aboug, All our loved ones and lost ones
and those we could do without.
Every one I ever cared about connected without wires
Arguing in echoing chambers skirted by forest fires
Front row, hive mind, social travesty
Block chained, machine-learned abject misery
All caught in an Elon Musk apocalypse that ironically trends.

2050 the water runs out and the oceans start to rise.
I will be seventy years old and probably in my prime.
Patriarchal life extension and a genetic predisposition
stubbornly and callously live/

If the booze doesn’t catch me, I’ll be the last one standing.
Everyone who gave me a chance sleeping in the dirt
Leaving me tallying funerals till my life proves it worth.
For all the years I dared to wonder
All life mysteries I strived to ponder.
And left alone Wondering why I have no understanding.

Yet stubbornly clinging to every pointless moment
I do my yoga and always am quitting smoking
Enthroned in ergonomic Aeron chair and sculpted keyboard care.
I go for runs and rides and ensure nothing has to die
My fried tofu is divine and I wouldn’t hurt a fly.
I would never deprive someone of their right
To suffer all in kind.

So I write my will and testament in the form of song
Cause it won’t be long till it all goes wrong
And I’ve done gone into the great beyond.
Till my final breath I’ll be singing along.

It’s the final proof that god remains aloof
No ones helping us and that’s the truth.
It keeps on a hurting like an aching tooth
But what else are we going to do?
Keep on a keeping on and skippidity doo.

In the end, I leave it all to you
You’ll need every bit I didn’t squander
just to make it through
For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry
that your parents gave birth to you,
Dropped you in a world where I couldn’t save you
But what was a guy like me supposed to do?
I’m not any better than any of you.
I’m just a coward on the run
who’s hving too much fun
until its not and then its done.

Unlike the world, I can use a gun
or at the very least hire someone.
I can end it at any time
and cease paying for my crimes
but then I would be abandoning you
For that I alone, I must atone and got it alone
Just to bring on home like the prodical son.

It won’t end well, but, what the hell.
It all ends pretty bad anyhow.
So, what does it matter how I go out -
in a blaze glory or all wrung out.
I was born into a house but a never home.
I’ve been alone since day one.
Trapped in my own little microcosm
But I guess that’s just how’s it done.

Just a coal cracker who won’t own a gun,
Bear spray is better and way more fun,
a little chemical warfare for everyone,
Ain’t no problem aiming when you ain’t a maiming
so hose down your neighbors as a demo run.

Because it won’t be long till they all got guns
The water runs out and the food deserts come
The ourborous eats itself and shrinks into the one
thing we can’t avoid with our new innovations.
The pigeons come to roost at the top of station
Glass ceiling porticos come crashing down.
It tends to happy to every one
of our attempts to make it run.
We got a little too good at being human
and now look at what we’ve done.
We made a cluster fuck for everyone,
except a few rich bastards we all should kill -
a final reckoning just to swallow thw pill.
Won’t make a difference but settles the bill.

I hope I am alive to see the gulloitines rise
when your generation demands your reparations
and burns out my eyes and hoists me high
and crucifies me for all my crimes.

There certainly ain’t no harm in blaming me -
I’m the poster child of applied apathy.
So go ahead and make me bleed,
You get a scapegoat and got the need
I get a way out and get to go free.
so make me an example and sow the seeds.

That’s when I will cease to care.
Try to catch me at home and nobody’s there.
I’ll be off onto the next big time calamity.
Front row seats to a brand new catastrophe,
Cause that’s just the way it’s gotta be.
Samsara cycling for you and me.
An eternal suffering singularity.
One big bang and we’re out to see
how our story ends in dead heat entropy
with our pain radiated out for eternity
into the endless and sightless sea.

Bad Time Boys

They are the bad time boys.
They are the men who broke the world,
Who come in many derivations,
Who created all boundaries,
And stacked odds against the others.

Remember

Remember who you are.
Remember where you came from.
Remember what you’ve done.
Drawing breathes and stitching yarns
And have only but begun.

You are Chicago royalty.
You were born from black and blue.
You’ve got Maxwell’s equations,
Maier’s eye and Leaf’s Coney Island hue
and you owe no one explanations.

Know what you want from life.
Know that you can take it all in stride,
Know that you have Sandburg’s shoulders
Rising like a skyline, dividing like river
and winding like the city.

A Song of My Self

I sing a song of my self
and it is the dirge of my people.
One life’s mistake
fixed with a searing snip
and the smell of well-handled steak.
End of the line.

Buck stops here, Bucko!
I won’t be making all of my father’s mistakes -
just most of them.
I won’t die loveless
but I will die alone.
A ghost,
a memory,
a story,
an impression.

Oh, I will leave an impression.
Prep your RVs and tin foil satelite dishes!
Conspire in tattered lawn chairs
and anticipate my arrival.
For I am the meteor’s crater.
I will be a Roswell rumor
and a desert song,
told in the dunes of Barstowe,
unchecked by the checkpoints
on roads traveled only by cargo -
human and otherwise.

Never go to Barstowe.
It is filled with people like me.
A mecca for the dropouts
and the burnouts
and the sellouts
and the down-and-outs
lost in arroyos flooded
with unexpected doubts.

The pumps are as dead as the denizens -
the bleached bones of Morrison covers
and rusty rallies and journalist pilgrims,
gone gonzo on things worse than ether.
They are my people.

The people who sing the songs of themselves -
Sonnets of sadness,
long life lines
and tragic love lines,
Slanted rhymes and broken times.
The unkillable,
The unlovable,
The alone,
The free.

Everything Indexed

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A

A Poem About Beauty
A Song of My Self
A Visit from St. Atticus
A Walk through the Garden
abcs
Abracadabra
Abrasive
America May 2020

B

Baby Boomer
Bad Time Boys
Be My Therapist
Bowflex
Burn it all down

C

Calla
Cats
Coming for Us All
Consent to Let Go
Creator of Worlds

E

Ecuadorian Dream House
Exegesis

F

Fatten the Curve
Forty Two Poems

G

Golden
Good Time Gals

H

Haikus From the Coal Region
Halloweened
Helios and the Local Colours
Her
Hey, fuck up

I

I Am a Bicycle in the Rain
I Break
I Left It All Behind
I Love You, Mom
I Remember Cape Canaveral
I'm Already Packed
I'm out
In the Mountains Oblivion
Island Gaze

L

Lady Libertine
Landmark Erosion
Love Sucks
Lover's Tanka
Lsd in the Afternoon
Luminescence, Cinnamon, Fire, Juniper, Piano

M

Model
Mother Earth
Mother Issues
Mourning
My Ass Is Full of Stars

O

Ode to a Dangling Sword
On Isolation
Orchid

P

Potential
Push and let go

Q

Quarantine Day 39

R

ramble
Rather
Remember

S

Sanctity of Morning
Satre Causes Nausea
Shades
Shelf Full of Dick
Smoke
Staten Island Mating Call
Stop

T

Thank You, Mitch McConnell
The Mistake of Enlightenment
The Northern Lights and a Dead Moose
The NSA took the Imam away
The Perfect Moment
The Philosopher's Stone
This One is for the English Majors
Thoughts on a Fire
Three
Tulla

W

We Fuck Stone
What a glorious day to be alive
When You are Stoned
Whiskey Kiss
Will Song