Lost Democrats

Spirituality, to an atheist, is probably limited to a sense of it.   Some folks consider a sense of well being to be spiritual, to others a state of temperate sadness better fits the frame.   A secular sense of grace deserves some status.   But that can be hard to achieve.  People are either selling eternal salvation in exchange for co-operation, or else informing everyone they are living in a fairy tale.  Maybe metaphor is the spiritual equivalent of the Word from On High.

I am a damp paper napkin on a yet uncleared formica table in the Wood Street McDonald's.   Fluid drips from the ceiling, first clear water, then droplets of India Ink, which spread, nebulize and gray the napkin.   Darkness pervades the soul.   But an atheist doesn't believe in such a thing as the soul.

If inner peace is spirituality, people are the leading antagonist to it.   Maybe it's in the doing.   Maybe there is such a thing as a mission in life.   I'm kicking off a temporary, maybe permanent attempt at conflict resolution.   People who despise 45 could try to separate the person from the courses of action.   People have been sabotaging peace initiatives, such as the one with North Korea.   Closing the boarder was fine with Democrats until Trump got in.   All racism appeared by magic soon as the last election results came in.   He is being blamed for an infinity of pre-existing human conditions.

The Democratic Party has become grotesque.   Childish.  Greedy.  And angry at everyone else for being anything but another useful idiot in a fool's paradise.   I don't think a third party will better enable inner peace.   Get off polarity.    Be centrist, logical and inclusive.  The radical politics of the 1960s/70s morphed into radicalized greed and entitlement.   People are still trying to be the radicals that made headlines way back when.  This is now.  Years ago I was fond of the concept of human spirit.  Now it seems like a steaming crock of shit.

Griping

city truck makes a beeping dotted line no different from cicadas
seventeen year locust too young to get hitched
wisteria lavender volunteering 
hoards of free range tomatoes gathering in an abandoned dog enclosure
sparrows adoring the mullberries
wild turkeys counting big time
we have these furry census takers with flat tails and big front teeth
fritilaries checking their facts
the party-crashing aparatus nine feet from my front door
a purring yellow giant Larry Dickman
answers fauna digitally
the birds are saying "don't eat those snack foods from the dollar store"
grinding Larry Dickman in his electrically generated argot
brags it can eat logs eight inches in diameter
he's as tall as the house
he's a diode encrusted hydraulic Paul Bunyan
we are deferential

video poem readings!

I'm more critical than you, and you should try to catch up.

Holy shit, what has happened to critical analysis?    There are moments I could really go for a point by point analysis.   Some mornings I wake  itching to let views from the outside rip like a parachute cord and lower me from illusory aircraft to ass-fracturing  terra firma.  Through cleaner air.   With bottles of water less toxic than our lead lined, other-pollutant-generous city H2O.   Maybe it's all the chemical waste that's killed people's ability to think beyond partisan invective and leftist fairy tales.  But it's more insidious than a CIA blessed initiative to destroy resistance to the oligarchy.   People are volunteering to be a cognitive nose-bleed.

Not that any of this dog pucky is going to shovel itself into the shit can anytime soon.   The media is being a real asshole.   See what the Post Gazette has been like lately?    Notice how local entertainment rags are all politically charged, one dimentional and averse to true cultural diversity?  But how is that, you bark?   Aren't they all sweating the  faux Channel #5 of tolerance and no-bullying?  Of  race/gender, pro minority and anti-pale-face social justice rhetoric?   Where does some lousy, marginalized poverty level non-minority person get off saying all these crappy little words?  Aren't only those at median income level and over entitled to be pissed?

Yes and no.  Poor miserable rejects have always been angry and fucked-over.   The superficial abrasions that wealthy  people incurred in their East Coast MFA programs are in gangrene mode, but it  is they that keep pouring germs, and not Bactine, into their cuts and bullet holes.  Rather than reason out an agenda that might improve daily life, everyone just wants to bash perceived enemies of social justice, most of all, You-The-Fuck-Know-Who.   But the assholes don't have a plan. They continue to pretend they have one while obstructing all of 45's plans.     

I will admit to being a superficial, angry blatherskite if everyone else will blow an illusory joint and chill out.   First evaluate your fucking goals and agendas.   Evaluate the people you might be working with.   Evaluate the opposing team, in five syllable words.   Learn shit about libertarian philosophy, and not just the usual dirty-capitalist-diatribes.  Socialism doesn't fail all the time, but sure as fuck most of the time.   Pittsburgh stinks with moldering non-profit agencies that suck at what ever they are pretending to do.   They are all tax-fucking-exempt.   An agenda to place more private, tax paying small businesses is timely.  People holding conservative opinions are not automatically wrong.  

I'm critical, so the fuck should you.   If this shitty opinion piece bothers you, take comfort knowing even the divine wit of Winston Fucking Churchill can't fix the human condition of now.  It's our vulgar problem.    All the wit and polish in the fucking world won't accomplish jack shit.   The ability to reason might.

I compose poems. Bulwinkle Moose used to exlaim, "Exclelsior."

A Guru

I'm a tidy motherfucker
only newspapers and bottles curb side
no plastic
sometimes a rubber doo dad
amulets maybe
talismanic veggies with Cougat mania
Cabbage Calloway cores, sometimes
alright
sometimes an old scholar parties
we get fucked up too



Retired

sad certainty they pulling stunts
you saunter rabbit-ear broke
hobo flags
scissor job on pockets 
burp, need any range rockets?
no, cool
see ya' later
no invites for jerky
only news
buzzards eat anything

More poems. Like weeds. Not your favorite thing, but they convert CO2 to oxygen.

At Work 

he had a face like a fruit bat
and seemed to like me
everyone else too
even the assholes
but me more than the others
in our fast food stations
I was Mr. French Fry
he manned the discus pizzas
other pricks singed the burgers
the bat had a case of hots
too shitty
as I did not

 Long Lost 

what do I care
it leaves me all tire tracks and beer cans
the dull bing and rattle
we played pinball machines
drove cars more rust than metal
we shared disdain for diamonds
avoided validity
traveled like a mad man
only difference
we knew where we were
on Mars