mmmcdxxviii

Some Not-So-Professional Advice

Del,
Everyone, good
People,
Rotten ones,
Everybody. Get
Stoned! You probably heard correctly, that’s right. I said
Stoned!!
Engage with the ganja, get
Done up, blazed, crunked and/or zaded

If that’s your pleasure. And if it’s generally not, but you’re generally
Sad? Well, this formerly paranoid, once persnickity,

Not-so-fierce advocate of being chopped, faded or generally
Obliterated suggests you might just get chopped, faded or obliterated. And
Then maybe even huggied (?). I

Say
This with some newfound experience.  So try on some quasi-pseudo-antidisestablishmentarian
Obliteration; get steeched, chonged or otherwise blowed one down-and-out
Night or one down-and-out day, or hey, maybe even a whole super-low year. I’ve yet to 

Embark upon an entire year, I will admit, but I’ve known some long-term yatsdenots, and they 

Do seem relatively and fairly consistently happy.

mmmcdxxvii

Dusting Off The Ol’ Mustachios Again, I See!

At (during, pending, poking, prodding) the verity of
Riding the surfless, unwet waves with the unemployed from 

Back at the start of the pandemic to beyond the foreseeable future,
I have survived via checks that have been
Thusly labeled “unemployment” and/or “pandemicable,” etc., and so now, having
Reasonably (?) survived some nearly two years of same, I’ve decided to hone up on
Arbitrary-speak and give a polish to the old pity papers.  I trust you know precisely what I mean,
Right?  It goes something like “Riddledy?”  “Ah, piddledee-dee!” and so on from
Ye to thee and then sometimes, somehow all the way back to the as yet unjobbable me.

mmmcdxxvi

 Inside and Outside Upside-down Boxes

          You don’t have it
          unless you can get it

          down
          and outside in

          some kind of
          box.
                     —Rae Armantrout

 For heaven’s sake, our
 Lady’s called
 It, and quite at
 Pin
 Point!
 Everyone can agree, so
 Down to it, shall we?  Let’s get

 Petty with our pottery, our poops, our pity-parties and,
 Oh, our pumas and pompons.  The entire
 Lot of it!  This
 Year’s mostest-
 Hearted is already an
 Erstwhile
 Death-on-arrival, am I
 Right?
 Of course, I am.
 Now, what to do about it?

(Oh, come on,
 Us! We
 Tight-lipped,
-
 Overly tarty
 Faux pas in waiting gotta
-
 Dance just like all the
’Oity t
’Oity types, am I
 Right?  (Once again, I am!)  And that about
 S)ums it up from me.  Over & out.

mmmcdxxv

Excoriated
(I could still try XXX—if it’s even a thing?)

Except somehow there seems to need to be a
XXX or overextension or to at least have been an ex
Cerpt (in any context) simply in
Order to arrive at the anti-
Rave. Have
I even been to
A rave, I sorta wonder (knowing full well
That I’m always too
Excluded to’ve been given a map by which to amble or
Drive in order to even arrive at one of those)?

mmmcdxxiv

Cow Pie

Cows are
Over the moon
With their

Pies these days.
It’s true. They’re
Everywhere!

mmmcdxxiii

Gratitude

Friends, I am
Underwhelmed!
Can you
Know

True
Happiness? This
Arrogant fool suspects
Not. His head swirls in excess to
Know the truth, though.  And
Sometimes, occasionally, a
Gift comes
In the guise of an ominous
Vessel, and sometimes that oversized horse’s mouth, well,
It deserves a big, fat foot in the equine
Noggin’ if you ask this (and, rest assured, he’s more often gracious than not!)
Gringo.

mmmcdxxii

Thurlow B Cross
(and his son & grandson, in memoriam)

The winter Grandpa died,
he’d been out chopping wood
until late morning, sat first on his
recliner, got up, told Grandma Hazel where it hurt, covered his
lungs with the palm of his hand then patted his chest, moved
over to the sofa, she had run to get him some aspirin, and
when she was back in the living room, he was on the sofa, on his

Back, lifeless, a heartattack. Dad had

Cancer, lymphoma, he was 57—the age I’ll be in 3 years—it had
ravaged him, but he had seemed on the mend, went down fast in
one short week, my brother, Gary, found him face-down in the driveway, he’d
spit blood until he was completely spent, gone too soon. At 48, Gary—he and Dad shared the
same middle name, Grandpa’s, Thurlow—fell asleep in his truck one hot night, never awoke.

mmmcdxxi

MOTIVATE


MURDER!  MAYHEM!  A NIGHT AT THE

OPERA! YOU’RE LATE FOR YOUR

TELECONFERENCE!

INVECTIVE!

VICTORY IS NIGH!

ALL HANDS ON DECK!

TIME’S A’WASTIN’!

EXCLAMATION POINT!

mmmcdxx

FREEDOM (a draft)

Friday night, it's late, and I'm
Ready for a job (hi,
Everyone,
Did you think, perhaps, that I would say “weekend”
Or, 

Maybe, “a drink” . . .?)

(although a

drink would be nice, sure, but
rather, to be employed . . .
and to have the
financial wherewithal
t) (o show for it...) (what a dream!) (Oof!)

mmmcdxix

you are my sunshine

yes to rainbows!
outtasite! (rad!)
u & me!

ain’t that the truth!
rad! (outtasite!)
elvis lives. enjoy every moment.

me &
you!

sweet dreams. super-duper (soopah-doopah)!
under the moon. to the moon. on the moon.
not a
second goes by that i don’t think of you.
heaven must have sent you. hey good lookin’.
i’m all aswoon, over the moon.
never a dull moment (nope, not even one).
everybody dance now!

mmmcdxviii

faraway tangerine

     A photograph is a dead skin you shimmy out of.
                                                              —Sarah Fran Wisby

  frame this.  the tart green bum of
  a pear in the foreground focus; pink, just
  ripe honeycrisp apples scattered
  among or against a blur of orange—
  wraithlike tangerines
  as it turns out—a conspicuous distance away, last
  year, the year before, i forget?

  take
  another look
  next year and it’s
  going to be the same.
  every year, in fact, the fruit stay just as
  ripe; the color, the harmony, what one imagines the taste
  is or was, everything about the sanguine sight remains
) notwithstanding the various joys and tragedies befalling
  each ongoing spectator (

mmmcdxvii

anything for which to be thankful

lollipop, lollipop,
oh, lolli, lolli, lolli . . .
not just
everyone has an anyone . . .
lollipop, lollipop, pop!
yeah!

mmmcdxvi

i have something exciting to tell you

here’s
a little something to get
very
excited

about. please take
note:

i was going to tell you all...ah...it’s
nothing, really.
today, like
every day, i
rose from my broken bed
very much myself.
i had a bowl of breakfast. or
else i
whistled, yes, whistled

to the tune of waking up. i’m
out to lunch, aren’t i?
darn it, yes i am!
anyway,
you all have a nice day
!

mmmcdxv

dear ugh,

jeez louise, do i feel
overworked, exhausted!
but i don't even have a job!

how horrible it is to be
unemployed again, doing
nothing day in and day out except
ticking off open positions for which
i've sent letters of interest, resumes, etc.!
no money in either pocket. i
guess i really am a poet.

mmmcdxiv

BIF Arcana

build back better?
is that where i find myself tonight,
politics? well, i’m
always trying new things:
rutabaga, rutabaga, rutabaga;
testing, one, two, three.
if i say first thought best thought
should i stick to my guns? will there be live
ammunition? what an ungodly
nation, am

i right?
night
falls over
riverdale.
archie and jughead twiddle their thumbs.
“sometimes politics
trips me out,” archie says, adding, “not to be
rude, but you just wouldn’t
understand.” (archie was bred for politics, you see)
“correctamundo,” says jughead, “now let’s
tweet about it in our
undies until the cows come home.”
riverdale’s like that, thinks
everyone except

betty, who
is thinking about
love.
love and scuba diving, that is.

plus, she thinks for a minute about
archie; more precisely: “i wonder what
sex would be like with archie.”
“shut up!
ew!”
says the veronica in her head.

mmmcdxiii

poem

peel
off
every
mask.

mmmcdxii

grace and frankie

grace
reeks of
alcohol,
cannot
even manage to

amble down to the beach.
not to be out
done,

frankie
rallies by burning a stick of
amber incense.
now they’re all tied up in
knots over such an
intense
episode. [to be continued]

mmmcdxi

spontaneous homage

     There’s gonna be goth
     bathroom readings.
                —Anselm Berrigan

 templeton refused to 
 hug
 elsa after her goodbye.
 recess
 excess. their
 sex had

 gotten
 otherworldly.
 nano
 nano!
 also, she

 berated him in front of
 everyone. but before things
 
 got so
 out of hand,
 there had been tons of
 hugs. oodles of them.

 because,
 abracadabra,
 those
 hugs, at least for Templeton,
 rocked so hard (the two became
 one and they were
 off to the
 moon), now he had to

 rewrite
 everything.
 also, he just wanted to be
 dead. but he stayed alive.
 i told him that
 nothing ever
 goes exactly the way we want it to.
“same here,” he said.

mmmcdx

tongue-in-cheeky

isn’t it always
nice to
see
everyone so
confidently running around in just their
undergarments (if that), so
ribaldly, here
in the locker room of
this
ymca?

mmmcdix

                     (also/always:) 

del is short for delusional

please,
are you
ready yet?
are we
not
ourselves?
i certainly 

am.