Fog, fog, fog,
I may have well stayed in Sacramento,
The clouds hanging low over the tules,
A twisted spaghetti of competing necessities,
Gray cows, gray fog, gray cars,
Gotcha!

If you could see what I can see,
If you could go where I have been,
Andromeda would be as close
As your next door neighbor,
The day before yesterday, a stop away.

Were I to tell you what I have heard,
Were you to listen and then believe,
The world would be aflame,
The heavens tremble,
And time would pivot on my word.

Talk to the poet, right now live!
By message, by voice,
The writing's on the phone;
Get down, get personal,
Tell her what you think;
Whatever happened
To buying a girl a drink?
Doesn't anyone ever meet
Face 2 Face anymore? 
Sharing electrons
Is not nearly as much fun
As passing bodily fluids
With a bit of fresh tongue.

Boy singers, by their nature,
Are mostly boring vanilla,
All soft and quite sensitive
So to not frighten young girls
With any adult sensuality.

Give me a male rock star out on the make,
His testosterone preceding him through the air,
Or a sweaty lead guitar still high on the music
Hunting for a warm landing space
In which to spend his night.

Looking back across the decades
Back to when rock was still raw,
I find I would rather be sorry
Than to have wasted all those years
Being impenetrable and safe.

The game store,
A hobby shop for expensive gunmetal fantasy,
Is filled with young men each Saturday
Pursuing their earnest gamemanship.
At those times, as wall to wall males
Compete for top geek and a chance to compete,
Wave upon wave of surging testosterone
Spew out the small store's open entrance,
Saturating the air with a thick metallic scent
That sends sensible women and teenage girls
Running past the unguarded door.

An apple is an apple is an apple is an apple,
Even when it's quite rotten;

A poem is a poem is a poem is a poem,
Except, of course, when it's not;

Words are words the whole world over
But a joke all depends on the timing.

Rim shot      Laughter
Poet sips her Jameson

The poet, the pope, and a college professor
Walk into a bar, any bar

-- Stop me if you've heard this one

Name a poet, a preacher, and a dilettante

-- Stop me if you've heard this one

Rimshot   exit   and Jameson

I am here at work,
Sitting before my aging 'puter
As I wait for the OS to update;
My brick is locked in place,
I cannot retrieve it
Until Microsoft deems to be done
And gives me back my work machine.

How shall I go,
Shall we count the ways?
By sickness, by old age,
By accident or bullet?

Traditionally, in honor of my art,
I should throw myself from the cliff,
Plunging headlong into the waiting sea;
I am not certain I would be that dedicated,
Unsure that I am that the perfect verse
Is not lurking beyond the next river or neuron.

My grandfather at one hundred and two,
His genes and body at last betraying him,
Realized his luck had finally run out,
And, as it was unlikely that the A's or the Giants
Would be participating in the World Series,
Consciously decided to surrender peacefully
To what little remained for him to do.

I would outlive my grandfather twice over,
And then, at the appropriate moment
Of my own artful choosing,
Write the last final verses of my life
Without need of cliffs, gods, or guns.

Do you know how long that I've been gone,
How long I have been awake;
Where did you go, when did you return,
Did you tell me that you'd be late?

This should all be so much easier,
There is nothing I know that you need;
You've have all my days, few hours are astray,
What's left is mine, so let me be..

When, if ever, I should decide,
The gods themselves will question my intentions,
For if death were not such an unequivocal evil,
The gods would have it embraced it eons ago.
As it is, they reserve death for plants and animals,
And all other living things, for suns and planets
And eventually, in time, for the entire universe,
But not the gods, apparently, not one.
Could there be something they aren't telling us?