Toast and Tree Story: Holiday Edition

My Toast

When I say 'Merry Kristmas'
let's raise a glass 
and give a cheer,
for the loved ones 
who are with us
and those that aren't
that we hold dear;
thank you Deb and Steve, 
Don and Patti,
for the gift of life. 
Now merry Kristmas 
to all, and to all, 
a good night!

Tree Tradition!

Twas four days before Kristmas,
When all through our place,
Not a creature was stirring,
Except Perry in his cage;
Our socks had been flung
Recklessly on the floor
While Cat slept in bed
And next to her I snored.

When out in the living room
There arose such a smell,
We were startled awake
By the waft of pine and tinsel!
We ran out the room,
We slid down the hall,
And before us was a tree
Nearly seven feet tall!

Black Santa had come!
Our Kristmas was saved!
And though he was gone,
Towards the window we still waved.
For each year together,
(this time makes two; score!)
We would wake-up to find
A Kristmas tree on our floor!

I feel bad for Santa,
Because somehow each year
Without cookies or milk
He still brings us cheer;
And no goodies out for Santa
Really feels like a cheat,
Since each time this happens
Cat gives me a morning "treat."

Newton School, Connecticut; Anytown, USA

There are no words
To describe the screams of children.
When horror after horror
Tumbles down the newspaper pages
Ink running like blood
And the nightmare of guns and violence
Continues unabated.

How many mothers, children,
Fathers, sons, daughters, friends, lovers
Must we continue to lose
To the unending madness of madness?
Whose rights are we
Preserving when the most vulnerable
Remain unprotected?

Do we arm every student
Every teacher, administrator, parent?
Should bullets replace candy
When an answer is correctly given in class?
Is the answer to
The fear of the atomic bomb; Pakistan, Iran, Syria,
To give one to every country?

How many tears
Will be enough to cleanse ourselves
Of the almost daily
Horrors that we enable and support
With our silence?
How many schools and malls and parks
Must we scrub
With bleach and ammonia and scalding water
To erase the
rust colored stains from our memories?

And how long till
We forget? How many days or weeks
Will pass before
The ritual of death, like a biblical plague
Returns to take
Our first, second, third, fourth born
Children away again?
How much longer
Can we continue to pay the cost
Of inaction?
How much longer will we be greeted
With the acrid
Smoke, the loud pops, and the sounds
And images of bodies
Laying like so many ragdolls among the debris?

There are no words
To describe the screams of children.
But in America
We have heard their sound so many times now
Words are no longer needed.

Rhyme Of The Thieving Bum

Walking down the street strolled I with
Three good friends, for food and rum!
When from the nearby dumpster
Came ‘round the ghastly hobo bum.

The hobo caught my arm and held me
With his only eye, a bloodshot lens;
The restaurant’s doors were open wide
and onward continued my friends.

The eye whose gaze did pierced my soul
And filled my spirit with dread.
His voice then rasped, like scraping coals,
And this is what he said;

Dinner-guest, your friends have left,
While your wallet and phone remains.
For drugs or rum, for food or fun
I wish not to anymore abstain!

Once I was a handsome man
With a closet filled with clothes.
I ate fine steaks with high class dames
Till my house the bank foreclosed.

On the street, nothing now to eat,
It was either steal or starve.
So the first man who came down
The unlit lane I intended to carve.

In sank the blade, out the wallet came
But then his face to me turned-
And I saw the white square on his collar bare,
And it was with horror that I learned!

The priest was dead, on the street he bled
And the stain my hands did hold
Could not be washed, I felt a cross
Now weighing down my soul.

Into the blackened depths I sank
Of darkness and of woe.
The chill of fright and mortal fear
Turned my blood to snow.

I could not eat, I could not drink
I could not get warm.
Even on the sunny days
I felt a winter storm.

Woe then when a spirit came
When I should by now have died.
A frightful sprite whose hateful delight
I was expected to provide.

On my back, this demon rode
And oh, the drugs, it made me indulge
And woe, for more, the truckers
I have blown, and more so, the beatings
That broke my bones, and as the diseases
Began to show, the final price and
Lasting toll;

My eye was asked in trade to be
Left alone from the terrible fiend!
The deal struck, the penance priced,
The demon flew and with him my sight.

One eye remained, but I could see
Why the evil spirits had befallen me.
A lesson learned, a moral taught
And now I will be able to change my lot.

But, bum, I interjected quick,
Your robbing me, so what was fixed?
His blood-shoot eye quickly spun around
And held my tongue from further sound.

After this time, I will be done
But before I change I want a little fun.
Once I have gotten high again
I’m sure I can quit, with no problem.

And before I could make any reply
I saw the knife, for it was in my eye!
I felt my wallet and phone removed
Shuffling off he left me there unmoved.

I head the clamor of my friends,
Coming quickly from the restaurant.
And as I bled out where I lay,
I saw a seraph turned away.

Beckoning me, I floated near
As below an ambulance did appear.
The screeching brakes, the flashing lights,
I turned away and walked towards the white.

And as I left this mortal coil,
A sound from beneath me followed.
The thieving homeless hobo bum was
Nearby, robbing another person.

The Best Part Of Waking Up Is... *sigh*; Repeat

Wake up before dawn.
Contacts.
Fridge;
blueberries, raspberries, blackberries.
Plain salad.

Dress.
Coffee/cigarette(s)
Books wrapped in backpack.
Zip and serve.

Keys, phone, wallet…
Guilt about using
Ziploc bags for lunch.
Reuse yesterday’s;
renewed sense of moral
superiority.

1 banana
1 carrot
3-5 broccoli florets
3 baby bell’s
1 baby cucumber
Grapes, 1 bunch
3 tangerines or
Tangelos or
any citrus, season depending

1 apple
1 pear
Handful green beans
Misc. fruit/vegetable,
for kicks,

Zip.
Mouthful juice.
Dream of not having to
Limit self to one gulp per meal.

Hate calories.
Self.
Check mirror. Re-
discover love.
Leave.
Realize still forgot ______.
(______ varies daily)

Insert key.
Turn; loose fan belt
Screams, angry
at being so rudely
woken.
Dawn.

Reverse; gas,
brake.
Onward
on-ramp
*sigh*

Cola

"My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola"
I overheard the drunk man say
while being carried by his friend,
or partner, or lover,
away from the bar.

Their happy campy laughter
bouncing off the city with
the throbbing beat and bass of
dance music as each song is
mixed and blurred and looped

forming an endless carbonated
stream of sounds and sexualities
bodies and identities bubbling up
and carousing down the dingy and
dilapidated downtown district.

The effervescent sticky-sweet
smell of ribald revelry condenses
against the cold night air as
friends and lovers stream, beading
and coalescing against the pane
of being alone.

Love, or lust, or friendship, or
loneliness like an accident
striking blindly and meaninglessly
startling and sudden and shocking
and banal as a shattered glass.

Somewhere else on this night
in this city another man may be
being clutched or carried confused
and calling out desperately
desiring a drink of Pepsi
or Coke.

Frogs

Next to a small patch of grass
the bass vibrato emerging hides
a small tree frog somewhere within.

I see, on Facebook, people I once knew
now the moon-shaped faces of strangers
married, with children, praising god.

I hear my parent's voices when I call
slower, different, filling with the pauses
and shuffling cadence of time.

I return to the grass, the cool
crisp sun of the desert's early winter.
There is no sound but the distant hiss

a far off sprinkler, whose cool waters
must have flowed down, and for a brief
moment breathed life into this little world.

Automatic Flushing Toilets


I bid my time.
Wave after wave comes crackling
invisibly towards me.
Patiently I wait
until the ruins glow with life,
first one...
two...
three... almost there...
waving frantically, I catch them;
four!
Four bars! My weapon glows
with life and power
as it downloads the newest articles to read.
Ready, my quest begins.

Walking the eternal hallways
lined by the sirens and succubi
of privatized corporate hell;
brandishing my smile like a sword,
slicing through the managers and minutia
that pulls at me from all sides.

The journey is long, but
the first part of my quest is over.
I enter the realm of the dragon.
The sounds of running water surrounding me
in the alabaster chambers; I enter
while the beast slumbers.

Finding its den, I approach, gently,
to place the veil over its unblinking
single red eye.
If it awakes, all is lost.
I settle down, my victory assured, the beast blinded,
and begin to read.

Minutes, hours, days could be passing
in this magical land where time has no meaning.
Obsessed; enthralled; I must summon
every ounce of my strength
my courage,
to pull myself away.

But as I stand, the veil rustles, and the dragon wakes.

I roar emerges just as I leap to my feet to avoid the
plague like droplets that explode from its mouth.
As one lands upon me, burning the skin it touches,
I am thrown back, and in my blunder,
the weapon slips from my grasp.

Legs bound together by a spell I stumble
in pain and confusion reaching as I see the
weapon falling in slow motion towards
the dreadful mouth of the beast.

The monster lets out a final roar of victory
as the weapon slips into the evil blackness
of plague, and death, and disease
that are its twisted mouth and bowels.

I stumble, falling over myself,
bound by the spell I spill out of the beasts den;
all hope lost, the creature is victorious.
Exiting, I am overrun by the monsters
that have been waiting outside.
Until, finally, I am one of them.

My last, final, shuffling thought is haunted by
that eternal single unblinking eye
that sees every breath, every motion in its land;

...with no cell phone, how will I be able to bathroom read again...?

and the hero's journey ends,
with one less hero than it began.

Weather Report: Rain today, sun tomorrow

In the slowly stoked mornings of mist and madness,
when the winter wind's hands make their final
gasping grab at the growling sunlight of spring.
When the tress, thrashed and torn
are bent over, while fitfully
the world quakes in its sleep.

To imagine a time without weather reports
when the future was just what we could see,
how much more, frightening or beautiful,
must this land have seemed to be?

Standing in the doorway, teasing the violence
as gusts rip and tear at my sleeves.
I see the rain falling sideways,
and I feel the cold biting deep.

Alone, I imagine no building behind me
no sanctuary or warm relief.
But what must it have been like to stand
at a cave entrance and wonder when,
or if,
the rain would ever cease.