Poems

One of the Van Arsdale twins died

Dick not Tom he was eighty-one

He had heart and kidney failure

But still had a wonderful run

I wonder how Tom is doing

What it feels like to lose your twin

They spent their whole lives together

But one must take death on the chin

They were true NBA legends

The first twins to play in the club

They lived a hoop dream fairy tale

Though playing at times as a scrub

Later in life they were artists

Oil painting the key to their bliss

When Dick held up two joined fingers

And said with a wink, "We're like this."

The word God's obsolete, like Mary Poppins's chimney sweep,

The noun God's purely fiction, as is unscientific contradiction

The verb God's what's heretical, the Holy Grail of nonsensical

The object God's out of style, like a burned witch's Salem trial,

The old God Myth's are things of the past, and they won't last!

Am I a poet if I pen a hundred poems? 

A thousand? Ten-thousand? Twenty-thousand?

Do binge written sonnets still count?

Am I a poet if my poems are no good?

When is a person who scribes an ode a poet?

Are all human beings naturally rhymers?

Does saying I'm a poet make me one?

When is a poet a poet, and how do they know it?

We used this pan to cook our eggs

when we were still alive

we bought that car in '83

and went for some long drives

This is the corner where we ate

and that's their wedding church

remember that time we bought some herb?

Man, this memory hurts

We wore those suits flying to Anchorage

when we were just nineteen

where's that time I remembered most?

'Tis here inside this dream

Attack attack attack

Devise devise devise

Defend defend defend

For we are still alive

Forgive forgive forgive

Forget forget forget

Rejoice rejoice rejoice

For we are not dead yet

Accept accept accept

Assess assess assess

Concede concede concede

For life's a game of chess

The know-it-all wakes up each day

His knowledge upmost on his mind

He knows much more than anyone

His smartness of a special kind

The know-it-all gets out of bed

His need for knowing like a drug

He cares not for reality

His ignorance absurdly smug

The know-it-all walks through the day

His knowledge pinpoint as a tome

He knows what's what and that is that

His grasping wider with each gloam

Jingle jangle my odes a bangle,

I wear proudly round by brows

Piggly wiggly, my poems bigly

speak my happy, flapping jowl

Spoken words powerfully said

like a sonnet laying in my bed,

hocus-pocus, here's the rhyme

slay the words as slicing lime!

I am a corpse

A living one

Until the day

my days are done

I'll start to rot

And then to reek

A smelly stiff

who tends to leak

I am a corpse

Of bone and flesh

Who soon will be

no longer fresh

My skin light/white

And then pale grey

I'll soon be dead

but not today!

All human tradition is bogus

all culture must be cancelled

we must start from scratch 

and the new mark must be science

So sing and shout, dance and sway

but become entranced by science

praise each other and praise the day

remembering the answer's science

Chant the names, and chant them well

these names we chant have feeling

pray prone now, bow on bended knees

know only science names have meaning

We end up a corpse, fuck!

a goddamned, cock-sucking corpse

we end up a corpse, of course

that's how it works

We're all just a walking corpse, shit!

sooner or later a corpse

we end up a corpse, of course

that's how it is

I want what you have

you envy me

you want what I have 

I envy you

we want what they have 

they envy us

they have what we want 

we envy them

Stop with the judgement

It's not a good look

Baited by anger

As sharp as a hook

Stop pointing fingers

It's not a smart move

Pissed off by haters

With nothing to prove

Stop with the ego

It's not a glad path

Razed by resentment

As pitch-black as wrath