The Gamemaster

A good gamemaster plays God with gusto;
He's a deity that delights in deviousness,
An architect of puzzles and pitfalls
Crafted in arcane clues and obtuse riddles.
Why can't a god speak to us with clarity?
What sadistic strain of inscrutable malice
Or puckish perversity of the divine mind
Cloaks our path of life in a fog of confusion?

Rick was a consummate gamemaster.
To play a character in a world that he'd created
Was to live in vicarious fear of the god
Who took such fiendish delight in confounding us
By hindering a quest or orchestrating a demise.
Fate became as irrevocable as die rolls
Coming up "snake eyes," the fangs of a disaster
Sinking its venom into one's character.

Life is so damned unfathomably random.
Maybe that's why we've come to personify fate.
"Luck be a Lady tonight," or to beseech it
With craven appeal.  "Baby needs a new pair of shoes."
Words mouthed in vain.  The only certainties of life
Are the disappointments that come of dreams deferred, 
The emptiness of desires unfulfilled, and the awful finality
Of death  There's no saving throw for cancer.

There's no saving throw for a tumor that has returned
A second and third time.  We've shaped God in our image;
Jealous, vindictive and cruel.  There's no solace in
The adamantine coldness of such an unforgiving creed.
Rick, you were a consummate gamemaster
Whose intricately imagined worlds were only matched
By the brilliant future that you were advancing toward;
A degree in computer geology, love and a family.

You rolled a character that seemed destined for greatness.
But there's no saving throw against cancer,
No logic to random fate; no reason to it.
Perhaps some divine worldcrafter is chuckling
With fiendish delight at the ironic turn of events
That shattered the snow globe of dreams that you held,
But your friends can no longer take delight in a game
Where the outcomes seem so unfair, so unjust.

When the Axis of Your Planet Shifts

When the axis of your planet shifts,
When a catastrophe levels your life;
Will the cerebral soft porn of poetry
And the intellectual self-gratification
That it provides cease to be relevant?

When you have to roll up your sleeves,
When you have to fight to survive,
When chapbooks are burned to keep warm,
When power is measured by guns and ammo,
When the written word is disparaged
As weak, or worse yet, as "evil,"
Will love be jettisoned as well?
Will life become nasty, brutish and short
As you battle to simply endure it?

Or will poetry remain your link to humanity?
The oral tradition that binds a tribe together,
The totem of your aspirations,
The glimmering light of revelation
That will lead you again toward
The better angel of your being.
When the axis of your planet shifts,
Will poetry become a superfluous luxury
Or the path to your salvation?

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."