Poetry

Erothanatos

Thanatopsis

is what Peter

Cottontail got

when the farmer

almost nabbed him

in said cabbage patch

which was sooo exciting

our bunny did it thrice again

while back in red barn human

wife who was totally in cahoots

with bunny rejoindered by fucking

a hired hand plus cucking her hubby.

Small Business Exterminates Family Self-Esteem

For Passover renewal last week

all our extended clan had agreed

to make climate change the underlying theme.

On another quasi-Jewish jag, can our A-team

figure out how – following the entrepreneurial lead

of my churchmouse poor PhD-in-entomology son could glean

or buy/ build/ blaspheme

devastating ant bait devices downstream

from their colonies

that could be used chronically so every few days I don’t have to re-hydrate/fresh/deem

cotton balls soaked in sugar water plus boric acid which Spring sunbeams

dry out -- instead of Dixie cups, sorta like my hummingbird feeder?

PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC

i. As (Un)United States Squabble

Throughput again and again,

sooo many hungry people are

told, Chinese citizens must be

willing plus able to work 9-9

6-7 days every week to keep

these jobs or replacements

from other side of mountains

shall come from countryslopes

to take your place in factories

that ?too ambitious young adults

used to enduring near-poverty

scraping livings there on dirt-poor

farms where they always slave hard

soas to impress their police bosses

who eventually may grant permission

then supply necessary papers to leave

little kids with grandparents, travel

into hustly-bustly metropolis slums.

ii. Year of the Golden Pig

Auspiciously conceived,

Pressured by four parents,

The new mother and dad

Await their first baby --

Likely also their last

Under tough Chinese law.

Over the past decade

Since I've visited, the

Communist Party's moved

Soon-to-be grandparents

From old ramshackle homes

Whose land's too valuable.

Handed them modern digs

In the high-rise outskirts

Of Shanghai -- not given

Out of bureaucratic

Compassion but rather

Development need/greed.

Or thus it seemed to me

Traveling high speed on

Very clean Magnetic

Levitation trains from

City to exburbs where

Few clothes now hang outside...

Ten years ago, I asked

A man sitting next to

Me on a slower train

From Hong Kong to Guangzhou,

Why so many shirts and

Pants flew outside windows?

Holding back a What-an

Idiot grin, in his

Best quite-pidgen English,

He simply said, "People

From the country rent eight

Hours a day to sleep.

Most apartments house

Three factory workers

With sixteen hour shifts

Seven days a week, so

Each room has three sets of

White underwear flying."

Today with the country

Richer, more middle-class

And with couples having

Only one child, way less

Outfits attire the

Firescapes of buildings.

All of which I notice

Amidst expressway car

Messes -- arterial

Stenoses, taillights like

Red blood cells, as white cells

Approach like headlight beams.

Peasoup suffocates four

Generation families

Living together in

Pollution hell: Beijing

Olympics' Potempkin

Village slickness excepted:

Politburo bosses

Implore weather gurus

To noodle how to seed

Summer clouds to keep them

From raining on the big

Parade – or off with their heads.

Working Class

i. Job

The asshole john’s johnson dribbles

tiny globs in me wide-open mouth

that also houses a whole lot

of rotting teeths for which

this jerk-off’s got nada

health/dental benefits.

ii. Fully Freudian-Loaded L(o)uis Jerk-Off Ain’t Good Enuf To Work?

Springtime sprung, forest’s birds flew into your old house.

Oyoyoyoy, some shat from very tops of wood rafters.

Others should’ve tried way lots harder how to hide.

Now two or three cutie-pie wrens slept on our bed.

That night a few tom-boy feathers landed right inside

my head where painfully cloying dreams assumed

masks until I could manage to locate then wear

then own one possibly truly authentic face.

But just as this tumultuous ur-reality worked herself out...

what started’s me seemingly Huge Louis moved on to be

Toysize Luis whose zany odd john’s last name morphed

from limp St. John to insanely stiffer Johnson schemes.

The Child in Us

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Getting lay of new land, toddler Liav

spoke of Big Water, meaning

swimming pool, and then

Large White referring to

first trip to be in snow...

This afternoon putting him down

for his nap, after he commands

still yet another of ten songs,

before I am able to exit

bedroom boy pleads

“Coachie, Leave Door Open”

which flashes me rightly

back toward when Ger

asked Mom or Daddy

to do just same thing.

Eight hundred years or so ahead

of brother L.Cohen, Abrahamic

tribe fellow member Rumi

penned, “The wound is

where light enters”...

Aha is short for my Uncle Aharon,

an Israeli ex-patriot shaman

who guides any seeker up

Mount Sinai relocated

to wherever you are.

Triumphant Old Playbook

So tell me what worked last time will fail

during the next Presidential election?

A field of seventeen or twenty candidates

Trump nicknames then knocks offs

one by one as he sucks up all media oxygen?

Russian interference which hasn’t

been addressed by us – along with perhaps

Iran and North Korea hanky-panky?

Just biden’ time tying everything in knots

be they usual fake news witch-hunts

or new incumbency advantages including

“my” Supreme Court chocked full of

better-be-loyalists-or-else, plus that good

old royally roiled Electoral College?