Don't think so.
God does not play dice with the Universe.

Miraculous that,
Shuffling down the street,
You didn’t simply
Spontaneously combust
And go up in flames.

You wish you would have.

It goes without saying
That what you leave out
Is as important as what you put in

Which reminds me of Tim O’Brien,
In the first draft of a war story
He left out the ****-field,
A mistake he rectified later
And the whole tone changed significantly,
Made things more gritty and real

Or so he claimed

Maybe he planned on putting
In the ****-field all along,
An author’s prerogative

True or not,
It makes a good story

I asked him
the secrets to
a happy marriage
so he pulled a note card
from his wallet
and handed it to me

It read:

The Rules

1. Don't beat the wife
2. Don't traffic the kids
3. Don't kick the dog

Good advice.

Dear Jorie Graham:

I have called your poems
unreadable crap. Repeatedly.

I have referred to your work
as "page-*****" and proclaimed
you the biggest fraud
in the history of literature.
Such arrogance!

My apologies.
I was wrong.
I no longer believe that.

You will never read this.
Still, I wish you well.
I wish you health and a long life.

Now, excuse me while I put
on a dunce cap, sit in the corner
and shut my stupid mouth.

An exhibition and
Michelle Kwan skating
to the Tori Amos song
"Winter"

Not yet knowing
that the Olympic Gold Medal

she so desperately craves
and deserves will
forever elude her

Since I pulled up stakes
and ditched this hellhole
chances are the only time
I'll soil the pages
of my s**y hometown paper
again will be in the obits
when I croak.

No more drunk and disorderly
notices. No more photos
of me at anti-government rallies.
No more of my letters to the editor.
No more misleading articles
about the squabbles with my
puke-faced neighbors or my
allegedly delinquent tax payments.

So go ahead you crap-heads and find
someone else to kick around.

This dog is long gone.

I'm fine with them until they start
******* and pooping all over the place.

Check out those filthy hippos,
in the zoo or in the wild,
flagrantly crapping themselves
on land or, worse, in water swimming
through their own ****.

But, oh, those sweet, darling animals.

Okay, I dislike the idea of eating them
or stealing their milk but my patience
is sorely tested by the lazy cow
who couldn't be bothered to step out
of the middle of the river before
unleashing a thick stream of ****
that went on and on and on while
placidly eyeing our approaching canoes.

And I was going to go swimming later.

Monkeys hurling feces.
Horses, pigs and chickens fouling
their own nests, stepping
in their own crap again and again
even when they could easily avoid it.

I suspect that, given the chances, they'd
foul up the planet as badly as we have.

The **** Cheneys of the world
Start the wars but the young guys
Laid off from the paper mill fight
And die in them.

"You better watch out
you better not cry
better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Clause is coming to town

He's making a list,
and checking it twice;
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!"

Look,
the bridge to that
lame old life in flames.

You did it, finally.

So, go on celebrate.
Before the moment passes.
Before you reconsider.
Because there's no going back.

I was a little bored
With human narrators
So I told the AI to write
Me a novel from the point
Of view of the grass

I gave it a few minutes
Then started reading
Turned out to be
The best book ever

But that wasn’t ‘til
Twenty years from now
So you’ll just have to wait

A tweak here,
a tweak there.

As if the right word
in the right place
could salvage this mess.

But no,
a simple fix won't do.

What's wrong here
is nothing less than
pretty much everything.

So, forget the thesaurus.
Forget the band-aid.

What I need is a miracle.

I thought Mrs. Asp wise and inscrutable,
sitting in her rocking chair, bespectacled, knitting
and saying little, deep in her own thoughts.

Turns out she had Alzheimer's.

I pooped,
wiped my ****,
pulled up my pants
and walked away

Read my manuscript.
I wrote: “The sky darkened.
The rain beat down in a fury.”
I stole those lines from someone
But I can’t remember who
And that someone surely
Stole them from someone else,
Who stole them from someone
Else and so on and so on
In a nearly infinite regression
That goes back to God.

What I’m trying to say
Is that I’m a thief.

So when I knock on your door
Don’t let me in.

This squalling babe
who pukes and poops
and keeps you awake
at night will, one day,
years from now,
and on her own,
hold your frail, dying
hand as you prepare
to depart this world.

So I went in with my Halloween mask
and colostomy bag
and I pointed the nozzle at the teller,
told her it was loaded
and, for sure, that got her attention,
she handed the money over pronto,
then I made my getaway clean as a whistle

Ever **** your pants? Not this dude

Waving their banners, spewing hate,
armed to the teeth they come,
barbarians at the gate.

They're enraged, irate,
like a baby ripped from the womb.
Waving their banners, spewing hate

Beyond any decency or restraint,
stinking of whiskey and ***.
Barbarians at the gate

Parroting lies, they berate
their betters, they beat their drums.
Waving their banners, spewing hate.

Man the ramparts! It's not too late!
Oh, where did they come from?
Barbarians at the gate.

Years on, when we recall this date,
we'll shake our heads, again struck dumb.
Waving their banners, spewing hate,
there were barbarians at the gate.

Are boring. And that's what gets you
into trouble. Out of sheer boredom
you drink too much, hit on women
with boyfriends, start arguments
about politics that turn into fights
and, toward the end of the night,
grow maudlin. You cry in your beer,
blubber over how your life
has been one big failure and,
eventually, drunk as a skunk, you puke
all over your shoes, slink off
to your apartment, pass out on the floor
and wake up the next morning
with a shiner and a hangover
wondering what in the hell happened.

Newly crowned and she's
already looking forward
to growing old and ugly
so she can reflect back
and remember how it was
to be young and beautiful

Before I pooped my pants
in front of a live audience,
long after the age when
such a thing could be done
with impunity and without
embarrassment, I considered,
even obsessed over the possibility
or, rather, the probability of just
such a an event occurring until
it became, not merely possible
but inevitable, a self-fulfilling
prophecy so that, when it did
happen I was prepared--

I had on an adult diaper.

When you're not getting
mugged, *****, tortured,
shot, beaten, choked, stabbed
or otherwise terrorized,
Life can be kind of boring.

Bring on the boring.

Remember Eden,
The Tree Of Life,
the forbidden fruit.
Remember Commandments.

"Thou shalt not invade
and subjugate a sovereign country.
Thou shalt not fire upon civilians.
Thou shalt not threaten nuclear war."

Take note little KGB stooge:
The territory you covet
does not belong to you.

"Thou shalt not drop bombs
on schools and hospitals.
Thou shalt not torture dissidents.
Thou shalt not ****** journalists.
Thou shalt not exploit and steal
from you own countrymen."

Little Butcher, Little Troll:

This time, you've gone too far.
This time, you've done it.

Ukraine is not yours to pilfer.
The good citizens will defeat you.
You will not and cannot win.

And on Judgment Day,
The God you disdain will
have something to say.

Wouldn't want to be you Mr. Putin.

I didn’t go, you didn’t stay
We never went to Mandalay
I clasped my hands but couldn’t pray
And asked is this the Milky Way?

Plenty of them out there, forced rhymes,
non sequiturs, contradictory lines,
mixed metaphors, just plain nonsense.

But the music catches you up
and, sooner or later, you're snapping
your fingers and singing along,
mouthing those ****** lyrics
as if they were the finest poetry.

If they sit you down and
Inform you in a certain tone
Of voice that you have options,
You might as well reach
For that strategically placed
Box of tissues--

You're going to need it.

Bandits. Extortionists.
Corporate pirates.
The worst of the worst.

New year? They jack up the rates.
Springtime? They jack up the rates.
Summer? Autumn? Ditto.

Expenses the excuse.
Inflation the excuse.
Hell, they don't need an excuse,
they're Big Cable *******,
so **** it.

Customer Service?
Incompetent or worse,
rude aggressive, dismissive
and incompetent.
A joke.

Tired of dealing with you?
They hang-up or leave
you hanging. Dead air.
You're welcome Buddy.

Shameless. Insulting.

Done with the b------s.
Good-bye and good riddance!

Sick of it yet?

They're smarter than the scientists
who've studied climate change for years.

They're smarter than the doctors
who've studied vaccines and viruses for years.

They're smarter than the intelligence officers
who've worked in the field for years.

They're smarter than any rocket designer,
any chemist, any physicist, any structural engineer.

And they're way, way smarter than you or me.

And what makes them so smart?
How do they know so much?
How did they discover THE TRUTH?

Why, they read all about it on the internet!

Because next week’s coin flip
Is so important to the franchise,
I’m hiring a consultant to help me.

Looking through a stack
Of resumes, I’m liking this one:

“I have nearly forty years of experience
Advising clients on this topic.
I have witnessed thousands upon thousands
Of coin flips in hundreds of venues.
I have written dozens of papers
On probability and the various factors
Involved in making this difficult decision.
I will employ charts, graphs, metrics
And can explain in detail your options all
For a reasonable fee. Don’t try this
On your own. You need an expert.”

Yep. Think I’ve found my man!

Disclaimer: It's a hard
and dangerous job and there
are plenty of good cops
and God bless them
but as for the others:

Cops Lie.
They lie and lie.
They even lie when there is video.
They lie even when their lies
are plain to see.
Clearly, the blood and broken nose
are from the victim smashing
his own face into the pavement.
The welts from repeatedly ramming
his head into that peace officer's baton.

If Attila the *** were a cop,
the police union would vigorously
defend his innocence.
He's a fellow officer, after all.
And if anyone on the force,
including the Police Chief,
disagrees the Union backers will
do their darndest to get him fired.

Now, imagine how much worse
it was before cell phones, before video.

Brutal.

Is like a Higgs-Boson particle,
it bursts its way into existence
then disappears just as quickly.
Gone, gone, gone.

"I'll never tell" or "I'm telling"

Like two sides
of the same coin--
heads, tails,
neither choice bodes well.

Which is more disturbing?

I consider one way,
then the other
and conclude:

They're both really creepy

After the ******,
they dissect the corpse,
exposing the organs
and viscera and pronouncing
them hopelessly diseased

Satisfied, they wipe
the blood from their hands,
drive the body to the family home
and dump it on the front porch

Crowbar's "Existence Is Punishment"
playing at full blast, tears soiling my face,
thinking how "I gave my heart and soul to you"

Only to have my love betrayed,
only to be broken like a Ken doll and tossed aside

I could set myself on fire,
I could hang myself from the tree outside your window,
I could slit my throat on your doorstep

I could do any of these things but I won't,
because my selfish darling, I know this much:
you simply wouldn't care

After the deep, deep thinking
I think about lunch!

If I'd known, I wouldn't have died

Don't believe you can ****
half a million Americans, get filthy rich
in the process and walk away scot-free?

Check out the Sackler family.

Just took my third dump of the day
and I'm tired of wiping
but I'm too lazy to take a shower
so I'll have to take my chances out
in the Big Wide World

Which means taking my heart medication,
which means obeying traffic laws,
which means being extra careful
crossing the street, which means
not antagonizing the cops or the homeless

But if I get struck by lightning
or hit by a meteorite or a stray bullet
or attacked by a grizzly bear
chances are I'll **** my pants
anyway which makes worrying
about it at all kind of pointless

Desiring a long life,
I renounced Pleasure,
Distraction, Fun--

Like a Buddhist monk--

And offered my delinquent
but pliant body
to the waterboard,
the smoldering cigarette,
the clenched fist,
the medieval rack

In the dungeon basement,
screams unheeded,
the seconds passed like hours,
the hours like days,
the days like years,
the years like millennia,

Each excruciating moment
impossible to elide or ignore,

I felt as close to Eternity
as a mortal man can get

It's an event and you're fully invested:
the gala at the museum,
the marquee match-up at the arena,
opening night at the theater.

You circle the date on the calendar.
You buy tickets close to the action.
You listen to commentary.
You cheer and follow along.
Yes, you're fully invested.

Just don't look away.
If you do, you'll realize,
it's already over.

Jeremy Meeks

On my deathbed,
my bony finger
will reach for
the keyboard
like Adam's finger
reaches out to God
in Michelangelo's famous
Sistine Chapel painting
and hit, "Delete All."

That slick dude
In elegant suit and tie
With his graphs,
Models and algorithms,
With his pointer,
His pitch, his buzzwords,
With his MBA,
Ivy league education
And erudition

The monkey in diapers
Throwing darts

I’ll take the monkey

An argument with a flat-earther
is an argument you cannot win.
No matter how many times you assert
that the earth is round, he will says its flat.

And, because the flat-earther is strong
in stamina and fierce in self-belief,
he will always get in the last word
which means he wins, you lose.

Your best option?
Admit defeat, walk away.

Sign up.
Shorten your life.
Make an orthopod happy.

Yeah, there's a mime,
a sad clown and, at the end,
the lingering shot
of a balloon, string trailing,
floating skyward until
it's a mere speck on the horizon.

But really it's about ***.
It's always about ***
and the pseudo-intellectual B.S.
you've come to expect.

Still, I've seen worse.

I wanted to see the world
With fresh eyes so I had
A scientist clone me a new pair

A surgeon remove the old pair
And connected the new pair

It was a delicate operation
And it took weeks to recover

But when I could finally see clearly
Again, everything looked the same

After the editor
dissected my manuscript
with a sharp red pencil,
he handed it back
and I said, "you killed it,"
to which he replied,
"it was already dead."