prairie dogging

up for air
i check the news
because something must be
happening in the last
year of the mayan long calendar.
just mayhem as usual, most of it
played out on in the halls of justice
an oxymoronic idea these days.

a woman shoots a gun in her own home
as a warning shot to  a man on whom
 an injunction has been served
to cease and desist who has been choking her
on this day so instead of killing him
in front of his kids she scares him off. two
years later she gets 21 years in prison

another woman runs over an indian motel manager
with his own van, in a the parking lot of an industrial
warehouse facility down the street from the strip club
to where he'd taken her after insisting they go out
for a drink just down the street from the motel
where she worked as a maid and he lived with his family
and kills him. two months later she gets five years.
thousands, say his daughter, gather in the man's village in india
the nine he supports there are penniless,so many
respected  him back home but here he's just another corpse
that could have been a deserving douche
or a robbery gone wrong.

they make us buy this insurance to cover medical expenses
if we get in a car accident.  it's become a cash cow for ambulance
chasing chiropractors and lawyers. the docs bill the insurance
exhorbitantly, the lawyers .go after the pain and sufferring aspect
so they changed who can get care. only emergencies. only if your life
is threatened. all this means is that amulance companies are now
going to get to cash in but chiropractors are out. lawyers, however
will still be needed to poke holes in the gen pop to see how much
more money can be squeezed through our skin .


friday i cleaned all day.
 today i poke my head outside
my room.  my house looks like it did
after i didn't clean for a month.  i started
 to throw away
the trash on the counters,
 but stopped myself. asked her
to do it instead. i don't know
 if it's the mess in the house
or the mess in my head
 that keeps from writing
but i really need some air.








































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at the beach she's frightened-
 waves, salt, so much water
it moves like the living. she hates
the plastic tube around her waist
has one of those "why are you
torturing the poor child" moments
the kind you want to stop
when you're on the outside of them.
when she stomps out of the water
with you behind her
she  drops it to the ground
then steps out of it.
the wind catches it, takes it
toward the dunes. she runs
after it, and you after her. as if
you were her grandfather instead
of some random
guy i met online
with whom i  am
 currently exploring
all the ways we can
become each other's next
ex. among other things.
from the water, i watch you disappear
down the beach,
 chasing  the wind's hoop
and a little girl who will
 remember, at least, this first chase..
 i turn and dive into shallow
gulf waters at the mouth of the bay
looking for treasures made of sand.