Famously, we who attend know quite well
Life is a tale told by an idiot.
Last week, one of Gino’s lithe student belles
Smiled, greeted me, then put me on the spot.

“Gino told me you were a professor—
What did you teach?” “English lit—preached with vim—“
Then I introduced a stylish dresser—
“And this, my actor friend, is red-haired Jim.”

Her sharp intellect surveyed the factors—
And she replied: “all of us are actors.”
(8/10/14)

Invades our lungs and livers, pales our health.
That damned filth-begotten heat will soon choke
All frail life, reach the tipping point by stealth,
Kill us all in a manner quite baroque.

And here’s the unbelievable strange part—
It’s not auto exhaust, the threat of coal,
Smokestack emissions that will smother souls—
It’s ceaseless cow methane belches and farts.

We’ve got to rid the earth of gassy beasts—
Become vegan before we’re all deceased!
(6/14/14}

To be, always, dark, mere murky shadows
Of the bright prismatic thought, rainbow wit
That streaks about, trapped behind the window,
Locked. The translation? Bungled counterfeit.
(5/31/14)

I used to go to meetings, speak and write,
Obsessed with sense, with rationality—
Convinced we had the tools to mend, despite
The obscene rants of nationality.

Alas, how wrong could one man be, not see
How hatred—preached in mosques, and synagogues,
In Hindu temples, church—shaped history?
How faith and greed and demagoguery

Combine to overwhelm philosophy—
That love of wisdom doomed to atrophy.
(5/8/14)

Is it some genetic thing buried deep
That makes me wonder at a sunset
While he sees stormy portents ruining sleep?
Is my gorgeous bloom his allergic threat?

Rembrandt, Manet, Van Gogh, even Dali
Please the heart and eye—but Jackson Pollack
Sells for a million bucks?—insane folly!
Abstract impressionism’s just plain crap.

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Gershwin engage,
Enchant our ears—beguiled, we cheer and clap.
Now we’re asked to honor Phil Glass, John Cage
Mocking music’s art (not to mention Rap).

Then there’s us, human shapes: illogical
Protruding nose, hair, convoluted ears,
Toenails, genitals, anatomical
Design—veneers beneath which we appear.

Explain to me how women’s beauty works,
How canny centimeters certify:
An inch or two of breast—firm, nicely perked—
A quarter inch of lip, an eighth of eye
The length and shade of hair, the cream of skin
That curve beneath the knee, the width of thigh
Coalesce, create ugliness of sin
Or beauties that entrance our leering eyes?.

No wonder that philosophers debate
The nature of aesthetic enterprise.
Do we perceive, or randomly create
The beauty that our minds have crystallized?
(5/4/14)

My ancient plumbing’s doomed to fail,
The oven timer’s broken
(And that part’s not available),
These failures just a token.
The groceries must consciously
Exclude all fats and sugar.
The garden’s filling with debris,
The weeds displaying vigor.
The workplace teems with evil stress,
The picky cats grow bitter,
Refuse their food—strut cheekiness—
While I clean out their litter.

I take a hundred pills each week
I’m not sure why I do it
It’s not a prolonged life I seek
I’ve lived too long, so screw it.
The traffic’s plain unbearable,
And every summer’s hot—
Meanwhile, it’s damned impossible
To park in Costco’s lot.
I’m booked to make two visits soon
With G-I all the topic—
I feel that treatment’s not a boon
And dread what’s colonscopic.

I sometimes fantasize
I’ll find a warm, dark
Hole one bright day,
Slip in and
Just dis-
Appear.
(3/31/14)

When you’re eighty-four, and wake up each day
With a creaky hip and a swollen foot,
With a body stiff, pretty much kaput,
You wonder at the lyrics of decay.
Our famous Bard revealed naiveté
With metaphors for age’s attributes—
Bare boughs, dark night, cold ash—the lyric roots,
The tender images for Death’s sure prey.

Of course, he didn’t take ten pills each day,
And “bare boughs” do not convey the sharp pain
Of arthritic stabs or dread entropy—
Neither “night” nor “ashes” image the weight,
The misery, the baleful strain, the drain
Of prepping for a colonoscopy.
(3/21/14)

Find a woman,
Raise kids.
But work, always work,
Which steals your time,
Controls all thought.

Meanwhile
There’s war,
Always war,
Propelled by greed
Or ordered by
The one true god.

Then, way old,
Retired,
Beyond volunteering,
Unencumbered,
You have the space and time
To figure out what life is all about
Just before you,
Like every other living thing
On this pustular planet,
Doomed,
Die.
(2/27/14)

Sounds, listen to heartbeats, invent rhythm,
Even fashion instruments from bird bones.
Those ancient flutes—aural crystal prisms—
Mimic calls of animals, insect tones.

We really can’t explain how reeds and horns
(Those bowed, plucked strings) and opera emerged—
But once invented, music grew, took forms
Enraptured all of us in its rich surge.

It grew and grew, baroque and classical,
Romantic, modern, tonal miracles,
Along with blues, and jazz, and crooned bourgeois,
And rock and roll, and rap, reggae and ska.
(1/22/14)