Legal and Alive  

She came at me friendly but with too much patchouli force. We had in common checking out groceries. 

“Saw you in the parking lot, saw your California plates. I just moved here, from Topanga. You like North Carolina? I’m BrassyLady - one word.” 

“Yes,” I elaborated. 

“We were smart to leave, you and me,” she said, moving even patchouli closer. 

“Oh, that drought, yeah, I was getting all dried out.” 

“Yeah. But more than that, the illegals ripping everybody off.” 

“In what sense?” 

She gave me a blank look. On top of the other one. 

I loaded my groceries on the black conveyor belt and rolled my eyes at the hispanic checker (name tag: Guadalupe) who BrassyLady didn’t see at all. Guadalupe was a shopping cart. 

“In - the sense - that the aliens are upsetting our economy, stealing our jobs.”

Guadalupe bagged my bagels and batteries and Perrier bottles. 

“Oh come on, BrassyLady. Are you listening to your parents again? You can tell me.”

“This is America. My parents are American. I am an American.”

 Now Guadalupe was rolling her eyes at me. 

“You’re an immigrant,” I said, “like your parents. Like me. The only people not illegal in America are the Mexicans. Or the Indians, and they’re all dead.” 

I checked Guadalupe’s reaction to this one. We smiled together, did that funny rolling thing again. 

We could’ve shot craps with our eyeballs that day. 

Floor it 

It’s never too late to drive out of your fucked-up childhood; FLOOR IT! 

You don’t have to stay married to it, though you’ll drag it through your life like the cans tied to your back bumper after the wedding, and every time you stop the car to think it over, those cans will bash the back of your brain. 

So, as a man in a bar on the west coast of Ireland said one morning,“don’t think alone.” 

Get to the therapy garage, go up on the rack ( yes, this metaphor’s getting a lot of mileage on it, but who cares? ) and lose the cans, one by one. 

Then, floor it. 

Uncle Sam is Needy 

Mind you ignore uncle

Sam, he's way dysfunctional

a drag, but always punctual 

dragging you off to war

so ...

don't ever be malleable

as he's ever as fallible 

as your body and soul are flammable. 

(...but enough of this cute rhyming

run like hell when you see him

or have a drink or go get dinner; 

what would uncle do with his time, then?) 

Gandhi with the Wind 

It doesn’t matter how I know this woman
I just know her, and you do.

I’d been out for a spin, come back in
she was in the bathroom so I killed time
looking at her refrigerator door.

Taped up there was Jane Goodall
and Obama
and Gandhi
and Martin Luther King
and Maya Angelou 
and Pete Singer 
and Buddha. 

I could hear her coming out of the bathroom
and down the hall, so one last big swallow of
the Starbucks, and I dropped the cup in 
the recycling bin. 

She stopped in the door; staring, alarmed. 
I sniffed for smoke; it was clear as mountain-fresh air. 
I checked my fly; it was flown. 

“Wrong color, wrong bin,” she said. And waited, glaring.

I was going to ask what color to put her in, instead, 

went for out another, permanent spin. 

4th of July

It was Iowa again, the midwest again.

Big storm upstate, river way up high, almost to the bridge 

people all along the bridge, Americans all of them 

fat, again.

Under the bridge eight ducks were trapped and stranded 

in a backwash, trying to fight out, trying to fly out. 

Cop on the bridge said they’d been trying to get free

for two hours, you could see their orange feet trying hard

under water.

Cop said if they’d just tire out and let themselves be pulled

down into the underwater current, they’d pop up downstream,

resurface free, and live. 

Then, the cop left.

The ducks kept fighting on the surface, twitching their tails dry, necks leaning 
against the surf, little black eyes trying to SEE their way out and over the trouble ... 

A fat woman, really fat, laughed a greasy gross screen-addicted laugh, looked down 
past her gut to the trying but tiring ducks and said

“Well, at least it’s entertainment!” 

Them fucking cell phone cameras 

Truth, Beauty, Love ...

{ cool stuff; iOS devices; }

 ... sweat, flesh, let me kiss you you kiss me ... 

{ 8MP sensor; f/2.2 aperture; A7 chip; 1080p HD; }

... musical vibration on the floor, sex & skin on skin, broken guitar string, eye contact with the singer, with the lover, with the father, with the mother, beautiful wild bird flying right into the windshield, dead now, but she WAS alive!, so anyway ... 

{ got to send this to mom and dad, to the kids, college graduation, weddings I gotta get this new COOL STUFF,  everybody, all of us together, anytime, our special moments, how cool is that? } 

... don’t miss your life. 

You brought your Apple to your teachers and they said you’re more powerful than you think but 

they don’t know the half of it. 

Don’t miss your life; you can’t take it with you, all those photos; won’t be any autofocus on your dead body but your own original soul will always get the point and know when to click. 

Kansas and Profound

I’m saying this with a straight face.

When I was entombed in Kansas as a kid

I was always looking around for something profound

anything

And when I looked across that long state 

from the second floor window of tv and tv dinners

I knew that there was an infinity over the state line of

something 

And while that profound thing occurred to me 

in Kansas 

and that was profound too,

considering 

I didn’t see any reason to stick around there

with that knowledge.

This lesson can be applied anywhere, anytime

so be ready to run.