true western

is the sexy shooter going to unite 

the left and the right? she texts

i've got a headache from waking 

up between news cycles

my director puts me on 

the spot in a virtual meeting

he asks me to tell a joke 

and i tell him my hourly wage

everyone laughs 

with their audio muted

everything has spread 

itself out in front of me 

like a complex menu

i take the bits and pieces, 

chew em up and shit out views

remember when Colin Powell 

went on national tv and said 

that the enemy could be right 

within our own country

i just live here, 

i don't want ownership

i just want to figure out 

how to keep writing

for myself and the few 

people who read me

it's no big secret, it's no big 

secret that we love

a white man with guns

when they shoot the way 

we want them to shoot

what do U.S. presidents 

and the CEO shooter

have in common? 

they both like McDonald's

but no one is laughing

and each screen goes dark

flirting scholar distichs

The orioles, 

the swallows, 

the emerald green, 

the red, 

the harmonious and 

harmonious everywhere

the rain,

the wind,

the flowers,

the leaves,

year after year,

morning after twilight

Millennial Dust pt. 5

public access poetry 

on youtube bounces 

red lamplight off electric 

blue lemonade vaporizer

what a treasure!

one of the comments buzzing 

with the air scrubber

as i cross my legs tightly, 

squeezing and releasing

thinking of reading to you 

again in a small space that's ours 

for the moment then it's gone

you go inside and i'm outside leaning

on dirty frank's wall 

with rob the navy cook

frank says that's a young marty frank

but no one knew who that was

rob said the drugs were good in vietnam

i asked him how much weight 

did you move out of vietnam

camilla posts a photo of a sign 

outside of the buddhist temple 

that read 

South Vietnam

Gone But Not Forgotten

but you came back for me 

and we held each other tightly

and walked out of the crowd smoke

and into the dark 

our heels clicking

and you and you

and you and i laughing

Millennial Dust (pt.4)

i won't pretend to understand suicide.

thich quang duc did not commit suicide.

he gave up his life in an attempt to save

others. like in an old buddhist tale, 

where the buddha would cut the flesh 

from his arm, down to the bone, 

to feed a starving animal. 

so what's it like, then, to be healthy 

and of sound mind, in a sick world?