REVERENCE
Oh beautiful,
Beautiful, beautiful;
The packaging
Of "Lemonheads"
Of "Mike & Ike's",
"Atomic Fire Balls";
May you remain inviolate
So Great Grandchildren
I may never know
Can discover you
Like Zahi Hawwas
Stumbling across
Unpillaged Mummys.
HOW I WORK IT
I think of Diocletian,
Born of slaves,
Who rose to emperor.
What could Gallerius have
Said to him at
Nicodema
To make him hate
The Christians so? How
Do you turn a man
Like that?
Now you think I'm smart but
All I did was
Look up Diocletian
On line.
His name stuck
In my head and
While the details ring a
Distant bell, five minutes ago
I could not have
Told you shit
About him.
Time was I carried
Stuff like that around
In my head,
Just enough to
Look good on
Like course descriptions
In a college catalog.
Thank God they invented
The Internet just as
My brain was
Starting to
Dry up.
LIKE COMMUNISM IN THE FIFTIES
Once you have been
Made aware
Of Dr. Zahi Hawwas,
(Secretary General of
the Supreme Council of
Antiquities)
You will find he is
Ubiquitous.
I think he
Dislikes
The names
And faces of
Other Egyptologists;
He cannot countenance
Their appearance
On television,
In Newspapers.
Now that you have
Read this poem about
Dr. Zahi Hawwas
(Secretary General of
the Supreme Council of
Antiquities)
You will notice him
At least once a week
From now on.
NEVER METAPHOR...
Michael Jackson's
child molestation
Trial is
An out of work in-law
Come to visit
Or a fleshy skin tag at
The base of your neck.
You want so badly to ignore it,
But the inescapable
Demands attention,
becomes the
sickly stepsister of Love,
Like a breed of dog
That after generations
You must admit
Won't cut it;
A Chihuahua with hind legs
Two inches taller
Than it's front legs,
poor beast's noses forever bloody
From stumbling.
A Bum's Rush or Biopsy
Is in the near future,
But for now you
Offer beer and snacks,
Unknowingly finger the skin tag red and raw;
For now
You linger,
Rapt. Michael has
Come to court
In his P.J.'s
THERE WERE GIANTS
Milton Berle was
Famously rumored to have
An epic penis;
Gargantuan,
Bordering on
Deformity.
'Uncle Milty' as he
was known
now molders in
the grave along
with his Legendary Schvantz,
unless he was cremated,
something about which I
have no intelligence.
His journey toward irrelevance
Has begun and
The memory of his
Penis
Like the prow of a great
Egyptian barge
Precedes him
Into
Oblivion.
WHO'S IN THE HIGH CASTLE NOW?
Phillip K. Dick
(Eventually as crazy as
a shit house rat)
predicted time could split;
like chipping flint.
There must have been a moment when
My now flaked off,
Sometime shortly prior to
The host of
"Death Valley Days"
Occupying
The Oval Office.
I like to think the vast majority
Of Probabilians exist
Benignly
In a time stream
That left George W.
A failed and boozy oil man
Fattening on a Texas porch,
His poor old Laura thinking
"I could have sworn
That son of a
Bitch was
Going somewhere."
MIRAGATHERAPY
I like to pretend
(and why not!)
we are all on a trip
on some big ass Cruise ship like
The Loveboat
Except the Lauren Tewes character
Is played by the
Steady Erosion of our
Civil Rights.
Everyone is there,
All the people I know
(And all the people
I don't know!)
And it's a Rockin' Vaca;
Except the guy holding the tray
With the Lime Rickey is
One-thousand-five-hundred
Dead soldiers and
The buffet being always open
Is a million
Starving Sons of Bitches
In a Darfur camp
And the Third
World Kids diving for coins
In the bay are Tom Delay
All oily fat and naked
Rolling in
Legal Defense Funds Samolians.
Our port of call is
"Spring Break" (I
am So psyched!)
Except the Girls Gone
Wild showing you their
Tits for free are
Bits and pieces of collateral damage
On the road to Baghdad Airport.
And the Body Shots
Are Michael
Jackson's Celebrity
Witness list
And the taut young belly you're
Doing 'em off is
The War on Terror
And the cute little
Earing in her
Cute little navel is
W saying
'Nuclear' wrong.
And love
Won't hurt anymore
(That would be
the Sauce!)
except it does, it hurts
like organ failure or
death or the S.S.
Condaleeza Rice.
THE MARTYRDOM OF EVERYONE
YOU EVER CARED ABOUT
They got themselves crucified
like shower curtain rods.
All the crappy shit
You ever did to them hangs
In back (Waterproof
So the bath mat isn't
Soaked by tears when
they turn their faces
from you) and
All the crappy shit
They think you did them hangs
In front (Decorative
For appearance sake.)
It's like a God
Damn bathroom
Apian Way and
Here comes Peter
Cotton Tail, hopping
Down the Bunny Trail.
Everyone you ever cared about
Observes it's pasage,
Knowing full well
They don't have
A chance in hell
Of being resurrected.
'Hey Bunny,'
Each one husks as
The Joyful Rabbit passes,
"I can see your
House
From up here."
