Size Matters

Only some marketing whore, used to dealing in lies
Could attach a deceptive label such as "Fun Size"
To a candy bar that now doesn't comprise
Much more that a nibble or bite.
Tell me, Ms. Contemptible Corporate Shill,
When you go out at night to drink your fill,
To dull your inhibitions til your voice gets shrill,
Would you rather guzzle a shot of beer or a pint?

You unctuous twit, your use of language is slick,
But when you go out looking for love, or a quick
Bedroom romp, would you a ten inch member pick
Or a little stubby five inch "Fun Size" friend?
Sure, selling lies will always be your vocation
But if you swear that you'd prefer a two day vacation
To a couple of weeks in some exotic location,
I'd find that falsehood hard to comprehend.

You show us a compact and call it a luxury car,
You market a night light and call it  an "Evening Star"
When it comes to quality you keeping lowering the bar
There's no lie too far-fetched for you not to shout it.
It's all about sound bytes, mini bites, Little blights
of deceit calculated to cheat us. Our treats and delights
Are being wrested from us by advertising parasites.
What's sad is that we're not even getting angry about it.

"Fun Size!'  Just call it "Getting Less for More Size,"
A dumbing down of merchandise in the guise
Of doing it for our own good or whatever other lies
Dishonest sacks of shit like you shovel our way.
Deluding the very public that you've come to despise
You've become the architect of Honest Value's demise.
It's time for us to wise up and refuse to patronize
Those who strive to deceive with the words that they say.

Tonto Rides off into the Sunset

Strapped into his wheelchair, Tonto's head nods
As though it takes too much effort to raise it.
Stubbornly he rebuffs the nurse's attempts to feed him,
His jaws clenched, his boney fingers drumming the tinnitus
Of the William Tell Overture. Over and over and over.
The music gallops through his mind, iron hooves of rhythm
That never seem to cease, that won't ever give him peace.
He suffers from dementia pugilistica.
He's as punch drunk as any ring-ravaged boxer
From too many pistol butts to the head.

He was always the obliging side-kick,
Ever faithful, willing to take the beat-down,
The whack on the head, or to be tied to a chair
Next to a fuse leading to a keg of dynamite,
Willing to endure pain and to court death
In order to give the Lone Ranger
An opportunity to arrive
Just in the nick of time
To save the day
And make the future bright
For television clichés.

Now, in his few lucid moments,
When he's cognizant enough to observe
The tape on the window screens,
The yellowing of the peeling wallpaper
And to smell the disinfectant that
Almost masks the odor of urine,
He watches his nurse disgustedly scowl at him,
Dump the plate of food she'd been trying to feed him
Into a garbage can and flounce outside
To smoke a cigarette with the good-looking janitor.
.
Tonto wonders bitterly
Why his old friend, Kemosahbee,
Doesn't come around to visit him anymore.

The LIfeline

My parents both worked, so my summer day care drop box
Was "Ray and Gen's Cabins," my grandparents' place,.
A Northern Minnesota resort that like them, was aging poorly.
It had little left to offer in the line of amenities;
Dilapidated yellow cottages that gave refuge by the week
To the old, the abandoned, the dispirited and the dissolute.
Across the dirt road beckoned the forbidden romance
Of the weather-beaten Snug Harbor Inn.  Often I'd see men
Disappear into its cavern-like doorway
That exhaled odors of cigarettes and stale beer
As they opened the door, then pulled it shut behind them.
Its patrons seemed to me to be brave explorers
Delving far into the bowels of a fascinating cave.
There Grandpa Ray could take shelter from the storm
When Genevieve would hoist foul temper pennants
And find Ransome Cannon already anchored there.

Long before hard living had ravaged his face,
Handsome Ransome had married my aunt.
But like his dreams, his marriage had foundered,
And his two sons remember nothing now
but his boozing, foul tongue and violent temper.

"Stay away from Ransome when he's drinking,"
My parents had warned me,

But the old freshwater sailor seemed to welcome my company.
In a voice raspy as sandpaper, Pall Mall and whiskey roughened,
He would offer me fudge-striped cookies and Nesbitt pop
As an inducement to sit and listen to his tales
Of  running bootleg whiskey in from Canada,
Of November gales, of hauling miners to Silver Islet,
Of meeting Capone, of marching with the "Bonus Army,"
Of sweat it took to feed a freighter's boiler fires.

Throw out the lifeline, someone is sinking today.

"Don't move the chair," my uncle sternly warned me,
Then as if to apologize for his sharp tone, he explained,
"My old girl knows where everything is."
His blind Collie moved cautiously, her head bowed
In submission to the dark.  Her shaggy mane ringed her face
Like a fur-covered life-preserver, as toward her master
She resolutely plodded, his whiskey scent a beacon.

"You're a good girl, Tammy, he whispered
As he caressed her head with tender, loving strokes.

Throw out the lifeline, someone is drifting away.

He holds a fudge-striped cookie close to her nose
For her to sniff, recognize and accept.
Then kneels to the floor and hugs her,
Tightly clinging to her neck as though
She's his last link to humanity, his lifeline,
 The only being who'd ever forgiven him
 The booze-induced kicks and curses that he so regrets now
As she raises her head and nuzzles him lovingly.

Short Poems for an Audience Weaned on Sound Bytes

Rich Man’s Religion

“By God, I’ll buy God,"

The rich man resolved.

"The front pew will do.”

Bye God.

 Ambrose Bierce

Chicken soup
For the cynic’s soul.

 The Dark Side of Me

It concerns me that part of my mind
Admires such men as

Oliver Cromwell
Stonewall Jackson
George S. Patton

Christian Zealot Killing machines

Whom I no doubt would have detested

Had I known them personally.

 The Heroin Addict

Seeks an end to his pain
In a life lived in vein.

 Cruel Stone Gods

Cruel stone Gods lie
Buried beneath Saharan sands,
Their stern stone mouths
Clotted With the dust
Of their priests and worshippers
Who sacrificed during their brief lives
For the promise of an eternal reward.

 Cruel stone Gods still lie.

Power Failure

Trust me on this one.
It is far easier
To curse the fuckin darkness
Than it is to find a candle
When the power goes out.

The Wedding Ring

A band of gold
Should never be invoked
To limit the bounds of Love,
Else it becomes a slave ring.

After "Super Tuesday"

It's fun to watch
Candidates smooze
After they lose,
Hiding their chagrin
Behind a forced grin
As they attempt to spin
Their defeat into a win.

Futile Quest

The most pathetic quest to witness,
And one usually doomed to failure
Is that of one who sets out in search of love
Without knowing how to give it.

Socialism

Christianity in action
Without the mythos
Of an "Invisible Friend"
Or the club of hellfire
Wielded to coerce belief in it.

Postwar Hogan's Heroes

In the aftermath of Nuremburg
The Allies cast the net out
To pull in Nazis of lesser infamy.
General Burkhalter ratted out Colonel Klink,
Then took a powder to Argentina
To play pinochle with Doctor Mengele.

The morning of Wilhelm Klink's trial,
A long black limousine pulled up
To monopolize the parking space
In front of the Judicial Building.
Corporal Newkirk, the charming con-man, card sharp
 And master of disguise, roused himself from his dream
Of changing his name to "Richard Dawson"
And becoming a randy game show host
To mutter, "Jesus Christ!  Won't you look at that?"

"That's old Sergeant Schultz," Frenchy LeBeau exclaimed.
"I'd heard that he made a killing in the Black Market
 During the war, but I never believed it until now."

"That bloody clever rotter!" Newkirk chortled,
Laughing the appreciative glee of a scammer
Who recognizes the beauty of someone else's con.

"When that old fox kept telling us and telling us
'I know nothing.  NOTHING!'

That shrewd old son of a bitch
Really DID know something."

Saying Goodbye to One Who Can't Comprehend It.

Hospice had given him roughly two weeks to live.
I understood that he was gravely ill, but still
I walked past my father when I first saw him.
My mind couldn't equate the image of the frail being
Strapped in a wheelchair, head bowed in drug-numbed dullness
With the strong, virile man that he had been in the past.
Prepared as I was, I still just couldn't comprehend it.

There are unfeeling, mean-spirited, selfish souls
Who can abandon a trusting pet along some road
Without a twinge of conscience or remorse.  Then
Of course, there are the abusers and conniving users
Who can discard someone who has given them their love
As callously as you or I throw away a tissue,
But that's not an issue.  You cannot defend it.

This was a time though when I wished I functioned that way.
My thoughts twisted and coiled as I groped for what to say.
It's so hard to say goodbye to someone that you love,
Knowing that they can't comprehend that you're doing so.
I grasped my father's hand and I believe that he knew me.
He struggled to address me, but couldn't frame the words.
It hurt me to see him in pain, knowing I couldn't mend it.

I kept waiting for something to click, some unspoken
Bond to link us together.  At times I could almost see
The man that is trapped inside the body that has failed him
Clawing to get out.  It had to be so frustrating for him.
There was no sense of finality, no closure for me either.
Just a dull empty ache that will remain unfulfilled;
A garden of regrets that's waiting for me to tend it.

It's so hard to say goodbye to someone that you love,
Knowing that they can't comprehend that you're doing so,
Knowing that the constants of his strength, his presence
And his love are fading away, like a radio signal
That loses strength as you travel further away from it.
The ravages of age have decided my father's fate;
I'll denounce the decision, but there's no way I can amend it.

The Rifleman

The opening’s punctuated by a penis level ejaculation of gunfire;
Sam Peckinpaugh overdubbed a staccato barrage of thirteen shots
From a rifle that could only fire eleven bullets.  Hollywood license.
“A gun is not a plaything, Mark.” says Lucas McCain
As he twirls his eighteen ninety two forty caliber Winchester
Three hundred sixty degrees to cock it.  Deft wrist action
Aided by a round ring welded to the gun to facilitate a feat
As ominous and threatening as a Samurai brandishing a sword. 

“My pa’s the best shot in the whole world,” boasts Mark McCain.
As the camera pans away from the “bad guy” with the gaping hole
In his chest, who in his death throes is vainly attempting to stuff
His intestines back into where they belong,   The camera swings
To Lucas McCain, his arm around the shoulders of his son Mark,
As they walk away, their backs to the carnage.  Lucas looks down
At his worshipful son and says, “I’m sorry you had to see that, Mark."
Another cowboy tries vainly to crawl away, his spine shattered.

 “Are you up for a piece of cherry pie, Mark?” he asks, now
Just a sod-busting rancher attempting to raise a son.  A farmer
Who just happens to be one of the fastest guns in the West.
Living a male fantasy life devoid of the encumbrance of a wife,
With a boy to mold in his own gun-toting, clenched jawed,
Two-fisted, God-fearing image; an instrument of divine justice,
The one man moral code of the frontier town of North Fork
Glowering at the camera as he reloads while striding forward.

He turns to blast the thug who’d fired a shot at Sheriff Micah,
The  broken-down rummy  he’d pulled out of the gutter, buoyed up
And made a lawman of again in a previous episode.  In the world
Of "The Rifleman" men either have to "man up" or die.  The camera
Pans away again so as not to show the widening pool of blood
Seeping into the street.  “Now, off to school, Mark.
Don’t let that fancy schoolmarm from out East fill your ears
With any more of her bleeding-heart anti-gun nonsense.”

Lucas McCain, Moses, the Duke, and the Gipper.  Roles that elevated
Men to North Fork, Mount Sinai, the Alamo  and The White House.
Last I heard of the four, before Alzheimer’s or lung cancer got them all,
They were sitting beneath the HOLLYWOOD sign, passing a bottle
While practicing their legendary marksmanship by shooting at stars.
John Wayne shot at Polaris and missed.  So did Heston and Reagan.
Shortly after Chuck Connors fired, a meteor blazed into the atmosphere.
"That’s how it's done, boys,” he said, flashing  his best television grin.

 Rich Hanson

Mr. Death

You've been a hard man to get to know, Mr. Death.
As a boy you came to me in the guise of a teacher
Attempting to console me in my sob-wracked grief;
Or you'd appear in the holy robes of a preacher
Laboring ineffectively to explain the inexplicable,
The dark,unfathomable descent into oblivion,
In terminology incomprehensible to a child.

As a teen you were my laconic black-leather buddy
Scorning consequences with a James Dean sneer,
Then a dismissive "don't sweat any of that shit, guy;
You're immortal."  From suicide machines to fast cars,
From drunken debauches to drug-induced euphoria
You partied with us; raising a glass to our departed friends
While smugly savoring their testosterone-driven deaths.

After I settled down, married and began to act less selfish,
I began to fear you'd summon me, leaving my family bereft.
You donned an insurance agent's budget rack attire,
Smarmy smile and over the top concern to pressure premiums
To guarantee my family's safety.  Then you became a pedophile
Lurking in the park, a drunk driver careening down the street;
Random evil out there plotting to take my child from me.

Now you've become Time; the cruel devourer of my dreams.
I see lines you've carved upon my face as I gaze into the mirror,
I feel you in my aching joints that used to be so supple;
I hear you in the shrieking whine of a siren in the distance
As an ambulance speeds frantically toward some destination
That I pray is not the home of someone that I love.  If so,
I touch your white parchment skin in a funeral casket.

Mr. Death, I've wondered at you, driven with you,
Dealt with you, feared you, and foolishly tried to outrun you.
I am not ready to let you take me by the hand yet.
I know that there will come a day when you will come for me,
Perhaps in the guise of some dear departed loved one
Whose familiar visage will reassure me as you gently lead me
Into your inescapable realm of eternal repose.

When sickness, loneliness or despair drive me into your arms,
I'll relish the moment when I part the curtain of superstition,
Lift the veil from your head and at last finally view your face;
Something I could never have hoped to see during my life,
But something that I've always both feared and longed to do.
This tumult of experience and emotion that we call "Life"
Is wearing me down, Mr. Death.  Be patient.  I'll be along anon.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”   

If in death we’d have an eternity to dream,
We’d unravel our tangled webs of existence
To follow each strand of life, each minute action
And its ramifications to alternative lives.
Oh, to have an eternity to purge one’s regrets
And to wander down ‘what could have been’ lanes
That we’d peered down briefly, but moved on past.

 It’s a cruel jest of the Gods to let us just sip

From the cup of life and then wrest it from us.
Our lush, green splendor of youth soon turns crimson,
Then fades, withers, turns brittle and flutters to earth.
Our shell of vitality and being, our blood,
Veins, tissue, sinew and bone all surrender to death
That’s bleak as a winter landscape.  All is finished.

Yet sometimes restless spirits glimmer into view.

 What are apparitions but words and deeds

Charged with an emotional intensity
That transcend the physical bonds of time.
If words and deeds survive us, why can’t the mind
As well wander leisurely through corridors of time?
If in death we’d have an eternity to dream,
Given time we could weave tapestries of triumph
From life’s skeins of despair, and confound the Gods.

I Can't Go Home Again

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in."
      Robert Frost "The Death of the Hired Man"

To have a home, a refuge to return to, was something
That I'd always taken for granted.
As children we played as though our yards went on forever,
The flying exuberance of Tarzan ropes and swings,
Fearless exploration of the nearby woods and swamp,
And the games, from baseball's thrill of rounding the bases
Heading for "home," to the evasive competition of...

"Kick the Can," "Hide and Seek,"  or "Capture the Flag,"
We waited breathlessly for the cry of

"All ye all ye outs in free!"


To return home safely, or in triumph with the flag
Of our opponents in our grasp was the object of our games.
The sanctuary of home was across the street
Or a few blocks away, but we always knew it was there
As dusk descended to put an end to our play.

As an adult, "Home" was still my parents' place.
It was nine and a half hours away now,
But still beckoning me to return, to touch base,
To seek sanctuary, to "kick the can."

"All ye all ye outs in free!"

I'd pull into the long familiar driveway,
Walk up the sloping cement sidewalk, and open the door
To the house my father had built some fifty years ago.
The door opened to permanence, to the reassurance
Of familiar smells, furniture and welcoming smiles.
My bedroom, converted to a sewing room now,
Still retained its aura of a haven of security;
A sanctuary, my return to the womb.

And when I'd step outdoors
The tree in the back yard that loomed over me
Like a protective entity, my dad's shed, his greenhouse,
His garden, indeed, as I grew older
The entire landscape seemed to contract
In order to envelop me with open arms.

"All ye all ye outs in free!"

My parents have moved into a retirement facility,
Having sold their home to a young couple;
Strangers who've usurped my throne of memories
In order to establish their own kingdom there.

Now when I drive past the house at the top of the hill
It no longer exudes that "welcoming" feel.
It seems alien to me.  It has become a stranger,
As are the people now who inhabit the old neighborhood.
I strain to listen for it, but I no longer can hear
The longed for echo of....

"All ye all ye outs in free!"

I can't seek sanctuary there anymore.
The  author of "Look Homeward Angel" was so right.
There comes a time when "You can't go home again."