Last Minute List

New Terms for Things That Taste Good:

Tonguetacular
Swallowlicious
Hair-free
Alimentary Friendly
Foxy-flavored
Titriffic
Mraz-tastic
I Can't Believe It's Not Inedible!
Salivadelic
Tooth-watering
Forky
Kajagoogoo
Music to Your Mouth!

New Year Lists

New Fragrances:

Threeway by Billy Dee Williams
Off-White Shoulders
Billy Idol's Rebel Smell
My Twat by Anne Coulter
Old Man Bar
Recess by R. Kelly
Barry White's Jungle Nights
Restraining Order
My Jazz by Kenny G
Merle Haggard's Beer Fart
Smell-ulite
That's My Mom!
Dago
Weapon of Mass Seduction


Smooth Jazz Songs Soon to Be Recorded Somewhere:

The Sentinel
Bubbling Up
Postcard from Sausalito
Tectonic Shift
Tatiana
Mellow Mood
Movin'
Russ Freeman's 193rd Daydream
Groovin' in Antibes
Peruvian Plains
Gypsy Woman
Crazy Quilt
Feelin' Fine
Portrait of Steve

Even More December Pomes

1.

Having

now

begun

this unendurable season,

You, on galvanizing calculus waves

Make for the filial shores

and this

what I see

to be sure

is unsustainable.

The mark of fine souls, character

--should we fail to make it out alive--

is the past finding no equal in present behavior.

In snow, packed and squeaking,

the Buddha attempts His maneuvers

on solid brass.

The Sino restlessness

The darkened corridors of the West

Are a source

Now

Of mindless, random comfort.

Come with me

--should you care to--

and see the Meatpacking district

With its local color, fin de siecle odor, and blackpaint grates

See the trucks pull in at dawn;

Watch the shrimp boats, heading east, beguile.

I haven’t had the sharpness of mind

these days

To perceive, forgive, but maybe

When the jewels of the Hudson are mined

You can finally see

What I’m talking about.

2.

Hoarding seconds

The tools of re-evolution are upon us

In our grasp

Hunting for perfect pleasure

Sure-footed and cunning

They trip up over lasting memories

Those of candied apples, salt water, fish

The canards of a perfect existence

You cannot heal from wounds

Exacted by medicine

Meant to cure

There is no salve

Control the minutes and count

Soft, one-two,

The drab seconds cluck by

Never ending in cycle

You are lost, forgotten

But certainly, you will return

To that self-same bunk bed

With your clothes splitting now at the seams

The ne plus ultra

The sine qua non

Of your fine, fine experience

Delivers you home, in time now, for the holidays.

3.

The up-tick upturned loserfish

Done up in nostalgic elegance

Is alone

Tonight

Should you need a date.

The handsomest of the parkinglot boys

Is coming over to see

If you are worth talking to

Can you stand it?

Don’t look at him!

My coupling with sorrowmen is done

I have forever changed

And will with aplomb

Make my name in fashion

Or poetry

Far from here, the current carries

Those ripped from the gloss of headlines

You cannot know my solitary

cuntshame

I only, and with my teeth beguile

Can grasp this bitter, warm, even California night.

4.

Hurried the cost, paid penance with children

You haven’t the foggiest notion of what it takes

When you’ve sacrificed, seen warfare, poverty, crime, then

Come crying to me

I will shed layers, hoping to get through

This corduroy endurance, this life

My seeds will scatter, under nightlight pall

To make the nomenclature fit.

Surely you’re no menace

With your half lid eyes and troubled speech

You, child of my child, shan’t question my resolve:

I will make it out of this mess, and alive.

The soda jerk was lying

When he said his love was true

Petulant and ever changing

Can’t you see I’m drowning?

You haven’t a clue

Any of you, what I mean to say

And I might say good night

But if not for you, I am lost.

Now then

If we may start again

I have the ruby cheeked woman somewhere in my grasp

If only I may speak to her

And should she surface, you will find her most agreeable

You will feel free to begin new lives

I will return back to you happily

The difference and substance of your days.

More December Pomes

1.

Never have I, nor

Never would God

Understand the ritual.

Have we lost our way, compassless, careless?

The cluttering of trees

Crowding the interstate

Pass by without a sound

Through the open window

Hush, hush

The air is different here when you consider

The burning bush, tires, smokefactories

I have fuel for economy trying to make sense

Sausages

The richness of design, forbidden hustle

Hidden in ravines

Is everyman’s savage lust

Crowing and biting

Anonymous and crowding

Vicious to the last breath

2.

I look for heaven in teacups, vermin

Anyplace I can alight, set down.

This place will do, tho ever non Elysian

My fortitude will hold me, us

Plentitude, the mirth of strangers

Collapsing soft upon the marsh

Soft planet, rushing sideways, tilt

Has ever captured my temper

Made complete over abundant city clouds

3.

I was, am trapped, held

Against my will

Grey matter in the back of a bus

Amid shouting and mortal development

I am water

Running down my leg

The brownbag lunch I remember sweetly, dutifully

As if it could redeem me and

My tousslebrown hair, a mess before noon

Were I to awaken then, hopeful and new, I’d wonder

How much longer?

How could any of this be

What I’m worthy of?

My autonomy, at last delivered by God’s sweet hands,

Rests, too, with me

And I avoid buses now

At all costs.

I Hate the Salvation Army

Here's why:

I have a desk and a PERFECTLY GOOD filing cabinet to give away, so I call the Salvation Army. They say they'll come and "take a look," and that their drivers have discretion over what they take or don't. And they give me the very precise pick up time of 7 to 5. That's AM and PM, respectively.

I expect I won't see them until the afternoon, since that's when they came the last time, but sure enough, I get a call at 7:15 this morning from a very snippy young man saying that his driver is out in front of my building trying to get ahold of me. I throw on some clothes, put the dog in the bedroom, and head downstairs.

Two guys are there waiting. The one with fewer teeth says, "How come you're not on the phone thing, bro?" referring to the apartment call box. I tell him I am. "Then how come I couldn't find you?" Because you have a second grade education, I almost say, but, hey, they're here to pick up my shit, so okay.

In the lobby, on the way to the elevator, I grab my paper. "Snitching someone's paper, huh?" says toothless guy, who, I now realize, REEKS of cigarette smoke and BO. No, it's mine, I say. "Just taking the front page?" No, you fucking idiot, there are papers bundled together and this one's mine and the other one belongs to... you know what, forget it, it doesn't matter.

He then asks what we have. I say we have a desk and a filing cabinet. "We don't mess around with metal filing cabinets." It's wood, I say.

We get inside and, because I wasn't expecting them until later, the desk is buried under a bunch of boxes. My bad, but still. While I'm lugging boxes and the one guy with more teeth stands there looking at me slack-jawed, the other guy goes and looks at the filing cabinet. "I can't see nothin'" he says and he starts fumbling for a light. It's dark because I was very recently asleep and the curtains were pulled. Dick.

He looks at the filing cabinet. "There's shit on it," he says, referring to a TV sitting on it. He comes back out and says, "we can't take it, bro. It's wobbly. And there's no back." Now I'm pissed. Fuck you, you can't take it. It's NOT wobbly, it's not supposed to have a back, it's actually a very nice filing cabinet that we have had in our home for five years. I say, just tighten the screws on the side if you think it's wobbly. "We don't do no maintenance stuff." They take the desk and leave.

Bottom line: I can't stand people I don't respect judging my stuff. Plus, the Salvation Army makes their people pray before they give them food. Assholes.

My Lists

Undrinkable Beverages:

Potato Bang

Just the Can!

Meatshake

Moldschlager

Horsechata

Turnip Up

Canker Cola

Liverade

Dumpster Juice

Crapple

Tab

Words We Should Try to Use to Communicate with Aliens If They Come to Earth:

Zoster

Crumping

Adrien Zmed

Snorkle

Tribeca

Scabrous

Gaggle

Urkle

Epoxy

Snivel

Klezmer

Spackle

The Welsh Language

Names for New Hairstyles for Men:

The Hanger Steak

The Tweeze

The Stompadour

Steve

Cradle in the Treetops

The Yoked Oxen

Loop de Loop

Dippity Don’t

The Bait n' Switch

Hula Skirt

Regicide

The Dripper

The Prince Cowardly and Reprehensible

Macaroni Salad

Up in Flames!

The Vaudevillian

Spite Wig

Devil May Not Care

The Sharpei

Muscleman Jones

Hootie

Candies I Think Would Be Delicious:

Chocolate Sump

Chock Full o’ Taters

Medicine Bar

Sizzlin’ Fruit Cup

Big Bart’s Butternuts

Holler If You Like Marzipan!

Nestle’s $100 Bar

Mangoes n’ Pizza

S’notmint

Leather Crispies

Shittles

December Pomes

1.

Sweet riddle
Girl in slacks
Venting naked toes
to the sunshine
Were you closer-like
I'da joined your cause, come to your side
Kissed your plumpripe lips

Tenderhearted angel
When sweet words were enough
You'd wade light, shallow,
Impertinent
Into my footprints
On cold a dawn
--who's to say you wasn't perfect?

But it doesn't matter;
The highway it separates
and
Speaks plenty now

For us both.


2.

Fallopian dungeon
O such a state
The inherently wretched
Find mercy in fate
I have found this dingy
spot, --pointing--here,
Swallowed my tongue
Consumed my fear
And when there is nothing about which to care
I will fast through the winter, subsisting on air,
Consuming my stomach, so bitter in taste
The looping whorls of acid
And humor
And waste

And so we compound
Delicate, recused
Stations of the cross
Of battery bruise
Delivered daily
Give father and son
The words of redemption
That never did come

The years have all slipped
As fingers through weeds
Sands of the jealous
in word and in deed
Set pillows 'pon bricks
The humblest, sure
The mattress is satire;
The patient is cured.


3.

The morning song
Drops the drop
Shadows flop
And hide away til summer

The garden whistles
Alone, serious
It draws back the hammer
On the stillness

Arguments rain down suddenly on
This particular morning
The weeds feed
And feast on our scraps

But you
You're smart
You never
Done a day's work in your life, see

(You like it that way)

So when the sparrows speak, softsing
Like a thermometer dropping
Scattering mercury,
Mother of pearl

Only then do I, at last, see
In the mess of trees
Your dreamy
Creamy eyes

How I fall.


4.

Riverbank red fingers
Rub cold buttons
Squeezing life, so.

Doll
Your memory's much shorter than most;
And for that, see, I'm glad
Cos in your squinty eyes is still
Contaminent
Undigested poison

Now, as I say,
The river ruins us both
Sets us asail, this scalding bathwater,
But now that union
--poison of poisons--
Makes its way to the spawing grounds
And
Somehow drowns the fish.


5.

Shadows pop
Delirious and void
Against a stale hot Sunday
morning sidewalk
The angry sun
is at it again.
Who will wait
When the months bleed rainwater
For the mail?
I have to perservere this summer,
Make ends meet.


6.

Angels tread
Where I fear to go
Where the whole affair
Has no meaning, so.

If you could shuffle it off
In the name of bravery
It wouldn't be bravery at all
No, you'd be gone
Matterless
And matter less
Than sunshine in a bottle

Still
When we reach back
Affairs split past
There's no accusation
None a'tall this present morning
No grift
No honeysuckle sweetness to greet
You
You hang.
And that is all.


7.

Guillotine humor
Simmers softly
As we raise the singing blade

We were happy then
The usual, you asked for,
And I more than delivered

Spare me your curses,
The grinding blinding black/white TV
Your excuses are your own

When the smudge fades
And the sleep is rubbed
Out your eyes

I will repeat, samesoft
Let's escape
While we still have legs

This barstool
Is not so far
From the ground.


8.

Ain't no truth
There ain't
Only rock-ribbed accounting for
What you missed
Sometimes on the way, sure,
There's ripples
Radiating out
Causing fever, commotion
Locking out change.

Holistic healers
To say nothing of journalistic dealers
Who can absorb the moonlight
Through bare skin

O peptic ulcer!
An elemental bungling
That tortures precision
Out of the least of us, right up to the nipple

It is up to You
To drop and squeeze
Make noise like a balloon
The majesty of history is upon us

The coronation calls now
And the winner, surely,
Is me.