The Literary Review
There’s Lear
The long Darwinian drama
plays out scene by the seen
with no particular audience ever:
100 billion background actor
redundancy (and counting).
Any encore eternal return
performance stand-in understudies at best,
improved morality an “aside”
to fit in a King Kong cameo.
The one-night-only improv
tragicomedy debuts
with little parental guidance
and zero wisdom: Take my life… please.
A kid at first must distinguish
from a goat before any routine
forgives for the practice cheat
who mines ability and tuned skills,
a winning musical score for dance.
A solar spotlight bit-part cast
rehearses to substitute sapiens effort
for evolved DNA character.
Popular Allusion
Where the grave matter entombed
in the cranium tall grass
and overgrown to-do scrubs ,
desperate ranch bodies
with red hot intensions
brand into god and goddess celebrities
for despairing polis people.
Apollo and Dionysus perform
on the range and on city skyline neon.
Happy with life illusions,
the fated fans mosey to round up
emoji smiles for whipper snappers.
Telescoping cosmetology features
and astrology from birth school
on quad campus laptops
and laughable living rooms.
Aphrodite in a nightie draws
to unbuckle gratification to “aaah”
from voyeurs moments before off to bed
where the sheets fly all night.
Neoliberal Act Checker
The to-do list excuse
The to-do list excuse
rationalizes for the checker
who woke for the “done” fun
after crossing out minutia
drudge until dusk.
The day fills with drama
that misses boredom
(that listlessness)
by an ink mark inch,
the stave slave ricocheting
off the next item.
Should fortune support
with debt adventures,
a car ride or screen scroll stalls,
while the wild thumb-twiddle beast
on cue lurks for Tweedledum.
Should monster moments
whelm over the precious amygdala,
tall grass can hide with skunk smoke
(or worse, Xanax) to calm the hide.
The executioner for each day
roof-racks the big game
all the way home repeatedly
until a hole in the calendar
doesn’t show up.
A routine discovery that challenges
the awed into a flower bed rumbles out
chills to those who care to breathe.
Epitaph
By the time the apprentice
reframer gained mastery
the elaborate last design
could not fit through the barn
door while the gurney glided
beyond by all accounts.
As a child the coloring book
lines and borders were thrust
upon the amateur by adults
and neurons and dopamine.
Birthdays arrived with detail
memory, a vice, and right angles,
training for changing parameters.
Peers advised to peer now
and again for confirmation
until a trusted reference cranium
for totem and taboo inhabited.
Experiences and print proposed
to freeze into a frieze each season,
and the seesaw becoming became.
Unwell
The welling up from inside bodies
slows and confuses a busy every day:
Gut grump rumblings,
spleen geysers, vertigo tongues.
The lost spirit heads toward
the dressing room, where permanent
happy-wear with warm fear linings rewards:
Emotions rack on sale for sporting casual
on any occasion that distracts enough.
In quiet moments, a search party
hounds through the interior
calling out a name, sniffing around a heart,
pawing at facial muscles.
A snout without a howl moons
along with other moons.
Should a depressing mood blubber
and blather lava from down-turned
mouth corners or an outside event surround,
dizzying the flesh-and-blood merchandise,
dashing same-day crowds, footing
new sneakers, deliver.
Report from a Brass Section
When an Enlightenment chorus
harmonizes on the new idea,
insulation and shock absorbers
don’t aid against electric zaps
and hair standing on end.
Sometimes a fleshy smell permeates,
and a whole country goes up in smoke.
The live-wire loose ends dance
around Earth where average citizens
link arms for dosey does
or notes jolt on clefs in frontal lobes
for entrepreneur and/or philosopher:
“Let there be . . ..”
What a treble tapper or shaken soft-shoe
performs with the information
entertains, or a talent alarms
until a rescue squad siren sounds.
Most often the voices inspire
sparking groundbreaking
variations on a theme to further
comfort on a lonely planet.
But occasionally while a cappella
membership skyrockets, prancing
heavy hoofers threaten to quake
longitude and latitude from orbit.
