December 5, 2021
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Here’s the 3rd third (11.21-30) of my side of poem-tag with poet / playwright / professor Mary E. Weems . . . each day we use the other’s last poem to start our new one.
2021.11.22 – Don’t know if I didn’t attend kindergarten
2121.11.23 – Poor most my life
2021.11.23 – Capitalism’s clone Covid-19
2021.11.23 – Wife on diet
2021.11.24 – Sin is scintillating
2021.11.25 – Sitting in silence
2021.11.26 – What a wonderful, grateful country this is
2021.11.27 – When not using the belt
2021.11.28 – Talkin’ n laughin’ n watchin’
2021.11.29 – Moved into first single-family house
2021.11.30 – The person
2021.11.30 – Amerikkka
~ ~ ~
Don’t know if I didn’t attend kindergarten
because I’m that old or we were that poor
Age and money weights everything
(though mind can free it)
~ ~ ~
Poor most my life
yet smarter than most
looking down on the downlookers
Hospital waiting room
more mediocre music
devil as D.J.
Help|
Is it tomorrow yet?
Except then it would be today again
Hot bath sauna
soak poisons from the body
melt em from the mind
Preaching tabernacle
to the choir
good gulp gone
Too many times
it’s gotta do it
so whatcha gonna do?
I ass you
you mind bound?
you behind behind?
Rich white freedom
fracturing the rest of us
time for pitchforks and torches
Bunny bashing mice
told to stop
by the woodland fairies
~ ~ ~
Capitalism’s clone Covid-19
has killed 5,160,000 people worldwide
so far
and we’ve barely started counting
~ ~ ~
Wife on diet
I offer her cookies
sez “You’re the Devil”
I’ll take sin over salvation
much easier to spell
and more fun
~ ~ ~
Sin is scintillating
sin is sine qua non
Sin is singularity
sin quantum’s dawn
There’s sin in single
sin in sing
Sin snake wiggle
long since singed
Sinning in, and out about
and of course in the devout
Also the looters of the looney bins
with their lawyers and loathsome louts
It’s not so much original sin
as seedy second-hand doubt
Sincere as Satan’s sire
sinsational sin in search of fire
~ ~ ~
Sitting in silence
clocks asymmetrically ticking
rain whispering roof
dishwasher murmuring
wife upstairs washing up from cooking
dog here waiting wife
cat in wife’s chair cleaning
sirens on bridge blocks away
harmonizing with coyotes below
frequent slow low freight train rumble
waiting for turkey to cook
the in-laws to come
sitting in silence
~ ~ ~
What a wonderful, grateful country this is
unless
you were living here before whites arrived
or
you were brought bound black in ship bottoms
or
your yellow skin greased the railroads
or
or
or
~ ~ ~
“When not using the belt
it contains in the box under the deck board”
There’s me
there’s the world inside my head
there’s *something* out there
Eyes in cold
awaiting wife
watching walkers
There’s now
there’s next
there’s the creeping up behind
I’m not a nice guy
i just play one
in reality
There are heres
there are theres
there are elsewheres
In a haze
I look dazed
at your ways
“Sometimes during assembly
it is best to be two people”
~ ~ ~
Talkin’ n laughin’ n watchin’
folk flee misery
welcome to the newest
longest fastest slowest endless
binged mini-series
called LIFE
where ya gotta grab yr laughs
as you can
pearls snatched from pus
(for the way is dark)
(the way is painful)
(the way is crass)
to hide from them
and keep for us
yesterday’s bone today
for tomorrow’s prone to praying
one more chance
to mile groan foot feet
of meat marching
butcher bound
to ground
~ ~ ~
Moved into first single-family house
since I left parents 58 years ago
The years between saw
bootcamp barracks, Memphis airbase,
military prep school,
Bancroft Hall in Annapolis,
cannibalized row houses in Baltimore,
rat and cockroach enclaves in Baltimore,
soleless apartment complexes in Baltimore,
a Michigan woods shack
with my not-yet self-killed brother,
a low trash highrise outside Cleveland,
a 4th floor warehouse overlooking Lake Erie,
a 5-condo long ago pharmacy,
a few park benches and sleeping in bushes,
31 months of backpacks tents
and ancient rooms in foreign lands,
a friend’s love shack,
and 12 years top floor old Victorian house
before moving here
our 141 year-old house
on the lip of an 80-foot bank
overlooking the Cleveland zoo
My first house ever
thanks to wife who got tired
of paying rent
and found her own
me along for ride
Enjoying backyard deer
skunks
(not really two sprayed dog)
groundhogs, squirrels
feral cats, coyotes
cardinals, blue jays
in our 1-block red-brick dead-end
last house on left
multi-racialed neighbored existence
Appreciate lack of other people
of worrying were my footsteps too loud
my frequent “Fuck!”s unwelcome
my Bohenianism bothersome
my weed too heavy
Here makes 16-yeared wife happy
with her too-large dog,
her garden, her art, her office,
her happier husband,
her pride
Home’s where the rent isn’t
and the dog is
~ ~ ~
The person
I want to be with
wants to be with me
Sez she likes me
cuz I’m old, crusty, and rusted
sweet talker she
Cat on lap
dog on floor
wife in heart
~ ~ ~
Amerikkka
run by the white rich
for the rich white
We can fix this criminal inequality
with reason
or blood
