Everyone can tell you
an apple a day keeps the doctor away
but what they won’t tell you
is you have to throw them pretty hard.
**
Thanks to Lei (http://thefrustratedpoet.wordpress.com/) for the nudge.
Still alive
*
Here’s some music I did with a friend a year ago and forgot to plug anywhere, whoopsie!
https://thebirdsiheard.bandcamp.com/album/finally
If you are poor and want a free download code, send me an email.
“One with the land”
Today on a walk
in my new neighborhood
North Berkeley
At sixteen hundred hours and twenty minutes
I watched a group of young boys
age three to maybe eight
play a game of war with sticks.
It was a kind of game I had played as a boy
and I’m sure every generation of boys before me did the same.
There was no anger or hurt feelings in the children,
they were smiling and having fun.
But here the teams were chosen based on race.
(team white was outnumbered)
The youngest looked for bigger sticks
but couldn’t bring himself to be too far from his big brother
because he didn’t really know what was going on.
Parents were on their phones
eating cheese
sharing their traumatic experience of having heard a helicopter at night.
(Berkeley. Verb – to make oneself feel better by telling a stranger how they should live their life.)
I wanted to Berkeley the shit out of them.
My social crime today is having not done that.
The crime is cowardice.
I considered making a little video of the children in the park as proof
but that’s really, really creepy
so I did not.
Humans,
children are watching.
Also, pretty sure aliens are also watching
but that somehow has managed to just slip under everyone’s radar.
How convenient for the aliens……
I’ve been social-distancing too long.
Now if you’ll excuse me I must muster the courage to go on Nextdoor
and fail at finding a non-triggering way of saying “you’re a bad parent.”
Black Lives Matter.
Today we topped the list of most confirmed infections.
We did it, guys!
We’re number one!!
Feels great. Feels… like I have fluid in my lungs.
*
Be safe, all.
WE NEED MORE BEANS.
These are the thoughts that repeat over and over
despite my girlfriend reminding me
we have a ten-pound bag of beans.
But what if there are no more beans, sweetie?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
What if this is the end of beans?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I’ve touched my face nine hundred thousand times.
In the name of conservation, I’ve eaten leftovers that will likely send me to the hospital
which is all kinds of stupid, but the leftovers have beans in them
and I’m not wasting any goddamn beans.
This is why everyone is hoarding toilet paper…
Bad beans.
**
I’ve just realized that there’s a little emoji robot
analyzing my tone and presenting me with an AI mood ring glimpse into my day.
(Just installed Grammarly)
It says my tone is
Disapproving
Sad
and Confused.
Touche, robot.
**
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make a quarantini*
and start an indoor bean farm.
* a quarantini is a regular martini but served with black olives because all you thought to buy at the store were black olives and now there are no more olives.
Oh God, we need more olives.
I’m illustrating an educational cartoon
Just like the Isaac Newton apple/gravity fable
Except instead of Newton
It’s an ISIS child soldier,
A drone strike replaces the apple
& instead of the theory of gravity
The baby embraces secular representative government
& petrodollar based capitalism.
While it may seem like crooks run the world
a gentle stream of justice shall flow through Gotham
Once Batman gets a sweet, juicy tax cut;
because nothing deters crime
like blingier batarangs
& an increased susceptibility to medical bankruptcy.
Went on a job interview at a Zen monastery.
Didn’t have meditation experience
But according to my last three employers
I can sit around in a bathrobe with zero mental activity
like you wouldn’t believe.
I’m a volunteer
anonymous life-coach
although I’d like to see myself
as the Gordon Ramsay
of volunteer anonymous life-coaches
who works primarily with small children, the elderly
or any other park-goer off put by a clown
in full military camouflage
& there are nine of us in the camouflage
but I’m the Gordon Ramsay.
After the ressurection
the disciples stood in awe of Christ.
The miracles
they had seen before
but all paled in comparison
to His newfangled, freaky shadow puppets.
“Give a man a fish
& you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish
& you feed him for a lifetime.”
-Lao Tzu
“Give a man a fish
& you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish
& you feed him for a lifetime,
so clearly we need to stop teaching people how to fish.”
-leaked transcript of Lao Tzu’s paid speeches to Big Fish
A Narcissist Writes Letters, To Himself 