Alien Invasion
Uncle Sam is afraid of aliens,
wants to keep them out of his backyard
so he builds a great fence
as big and tall as his domestic fears
to stop their insidious invasion.
The last thing that Uncle Sam wants
is to see a steady stream of aliens
walking down the Extraterrestrial Highway
to Dreamland, US.A.
in search of a better future.
To prevent this
he pours unspecified amounts of money
into Black Ops programs
to keep the black ones out,
and the brown ones out,
and the yellow and red ones out.
Uncle Sam will not tolerate
a bunch of UFO’s
or, unidentified fleeing others
penetrating his airspace,
sea space, land space, or even outer space
in their quest to overrun him
and subjugate Americans
to their foreign agenda.
No
not under his watch,
not while he can still hoist
the red, white, and blue
over Fortress Free World
and salute her stars and stripes.
Damn the aliens!
And God bless Uncle Sam.
A Great Turning
If we keep going like this
remaining on the same trajectory,
sooner, rather than later
we’ll hit rock bottom,
only there will be no rock
no stone, no earth
no nothing beneath us,
just a disembodied memory
of the gravity of being,
of what it was like
to inhabit something.
Glaciers calve,
forests burn,
thermometers keep on sweating;
the planet pleads for
a great turning,
a metamorphosis of heart and mind.
In a future without dreams,
fraught with uncertainty,
there are no guarantees
the sun will rise
for succeeding generations,
or that the wind will remember
our song.
Narcissus Discovers Social Media
Satisfied with his image
in a Grecian stream,
Narcissus left his reflection behind,
taking with him only
his vanity.
In a Starbucks café on College Street
he sits down at a computer
and Googles his name,
never once getting tired of himself.
Later, he discovers social media
gets hooked and
opens a Facebook account,
expecting everyone to
instantly like him.
That night, he composed his first tweet
I’m beautiful, therefore I am;
buys a smartphone and takes a selfie
before posting it on Instagram.
If his ego doesn’t give way
to exhaustion,
he’ll turn on a nightlight
strike a pose
and by morning,
Pin himself.
Discussing Gravity in a Bar one Night
I once met an old man in a bar
smoking a cheap, Cuban cigar
with lips like a puffer fish
who said to me:
Son, don’t concern yourself
with the problems of the world,
for they will weigh you down
into a bottomless black hole
from which not even your imagination
can escape.
We spoke for a while
and two Jack Daniels later,
he flashed a greasy grin
and coughed up this advice:
If you want to truly understand
the crux of the matter,
don’t waste your time
with Newtonian laws
or Einstein’s physics;
just ask any middle aged woman
and she will tell you
in a sinking tone
that nothing makes her confidence sag
quite like
g
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