Day Off: The Musical

I’m just so grateful for this great day off
I didn’t even 
need a fever
or a cold dry cough 
I didn’t need to punch in PTO 
I say it’s so
amazing

I’m still doodling, the sun has set
I didn’t work today at all, and yet
the world keeps spinning
And our leaders are winning
which can only mean
one crazy thing:
    
That I’m an 
inessential worker bee
On a team not a necessity 
For a business that superfluously
Makes toys for the economy 

To toughen up the global spats 
Our nation profits from, such that 
It trickles down from plutocrats 
To work to me to feed my cats 

But I have no worries, what’s the rub
At least I’m not dead in a tub 
Without the grace of Fortune’s Five
None of us would be alive 

Or maybe we would be
The question is should we?
We’re all about to die en masse

So charge up our batteries
The world doesn’t matter, see
It’s better that we die “on” (Friday? Or on Monday??)
We’re all about to die en masse

Day Off: The Musical

Replace My Face

My eyebrows wrecked from ups and downs
My eyes with cataracts sting from drops
My nose detects but notes of brown
Whenever my fat lips sing (or stop)

Your quiet disrupts my contemplative stream
I remind you had charmed you when we first met   
You insist I shut up, with a lighthearted scream—
It would seem it alarms you I wouldn’t forget

The sense of my senses 
I’d sent to the ends of
the “consciousness,” so-called by guru religion
contriving connection—
intangibly painful,
to brains that aren’t fluent in gibberish-pidgin 

But the worst of the slights:
Ultra-violent light
Which falsely you told me would shine from within
In fact it was bright
From the dots in the ceiling
When feeling and sensing cracked through my thin skin…. 

So please replace my face
I can take a rake with grace
For I yearned for a visage placid
Yet mine burns from shame and acid

Just replace what we have
Grab a scalpel and some salve
It won’t hurt to be cut open
As long as you rub soap in 

Not a little off the ears’ ends
Scrape the gamut, chin to brow
It was nice when we were weird friends
You don’t recognize me now

So please replace my face
Let’s let some blood just in case
It couldn’t possibly hurt more
than what happened with us before

Let’s get some
thick skin, radium-ionized
a couple clear proptotic eyes
a Glasgow smile that grows and glows
then spite it with a Jackson nose

(that blows and blows)

You’ll replace my face
With one you won’t erase
But why stop with more to do?
Why not chop my body too?
 
Not just “organs of action”—
with my arms and legs in traction—
but internal ones through entrails
whatever seppuku entails

Don’t touch me, I’m disgusting
I’ll brandish my own cleaver, see
So much, you’d think it must sting
But it’s nothing on you leaving me

Replace not just my face
I’ll be physically debased 
But I fear it, feet to head
It’s my spirit you want dead

So please
Replace my entire role in your life
with someone less fiery under your knife
You build who you want with fresh flesh and spam
You need a warm devoted body, not who I am
 
Replace my face
(No need to see, or smile)
Replace my face 
(No need to breathe, or cry)
Replace it ‘cause without a face I’ll die

Replace my face with one you’ll love for a while… 
Forever? I’ll bet - But why?

Replace My Face

High Speed “Rail”

(we’re waiting for a train)

A man lives in a trashy box
Another in a glassy castle
Both like to toss stones at passersby
 
First needs just a pair of socks,
some Narcan and a sandwich, asshole!
Second needs developers whose stats do not lie:

“Our numbers go both up and down  
and some of them just spin around  
like zeroes on a skating-rink of eights!  

Predict and spend within a range 
From ‘buy a yacht’ to ‘no spare change’
The business mandates we consolidate”

They declare this at a festive brunch
to celebrate the housing crunch
that’s crushed the spirits of those feral brains

But still point out: “the law won’t give;
We must obey initiatives 
We still have to make our …train!”

(We still have to build the train!)

The subway’s buried underground
The bus, a bustling busted crime
The only place to park a car
Is on the freeway, all the time

The bicyclists are cycling;
Their mental health is very poor 
And our collective poverty 
Will cost us ever even more

Some moved out to the boonies
‘cause the benefits were obvious 
But now only the loonies
Live in boxes close to offices

Before that even happened
The rich had problems, too:
It’s slow to get a toilet cleaned
Sans servants in the ADU

These problems are endemic
To our population strain;
So how can we still make our ….train?

We really need more housing—
But not houses! Those are lousy!
We need boxes within boxes, packed and stacked

Finding time to play is hard;
Your kids will never need a yard,
Just taxed-out education time, in fiction and in fact!

Or buy two hundred miles from here
Feign that sub-suburban cheer
Build equity, alongside your resentment

Then return with ample trauma
To society and mama 
for a tiny box, but cultural contentment

And what is the defense? It’s tough
“The region isn’t dense enough!”
Except within its leaders’ glossy brains

It’s the conflict of our life
with consequence and strife
It’s imperative we make our …train!

(We declare that we must build the train!)

Dead of hopes a-glimmer,
Disappointment suits you nicely
Let your frustration simmer—
revenge would feel too icy

Fuck the family; you were homesick
They’ll be fine with little hack
Whap your young with a broomstick,
they always bounce right back

Or maybe things will go awry 
And daily until dark
Your spawn will fly on sugar high
From pixies in the park

But even if they graduate
To needles, nothing spent:
Their home might be less corrugated,
More a vinyl tent

Your commute is still to die for,
So why the dumb refrain?
How in hell can we make our…. train?! 

Well 

Here’s some sheets of cardboard 
Some glitter and some paste
Some suburbs to bulldoze 
Red chalk to erase 

We can reinvent some wheels (chorus)
We can think along a track
We can circumvent appeals
To bring money back

How about we all 
live on the train?
In tiny boxes shielded
from the wind and the rain
and the glitter? 

we feel it’s

The only way 
we can get to business
and live with rates
and rent as it is 
 
We’ll
Work on the train
No need to go far
Our reality’s plain
It’s a box in a car

We’ll all live on the train
And work on the train
And live for our work
It’s our commuter perk!

We’ll 
die by the train
We’re a suicidal people
Ask us “why by the train?”
It’s a mess, but still it’s lethal

We’ll splatter our brains
With battered remains
A jolt and a jerk 
End a whole life’s work
   
Are we dreaming or dead?
Is this train just a phantom?
Check the clock instead 
its hands spin at random

We can’t tell the time
We can’t see the date
All we know is the train is late….

High Speed Rail

One of these days 
This startup will evaporate
and all the silly crap I hate 
will wash away 

A solar flare
might strike and scar a farm or two
but if I’m arm in arm with you
I will not care

We’ll save the day
or what remains of it 
Our lunch tomorrow will be borrowed sunset’s takeaway tray 

But if you’re here 
Most of the painful shit
Is no concern, so earn and learn, but never fear

With each miniature apocalypse- compounding
It’s astounding 
that- we zombies still comply

If our sins ensure the end that we desire
We’ll set a fire
To char the earth and smoke the ash to the sky

One of the ways
A rocket that’s ascending hot
Is grounded to an ending not
Unlike its early days

Is through a prayer 
Or maybe an armed satellite
And nukes would bring a battle I’d
Consider fair

We’ll save the way
Of fraught simplicity
While all the plutocrats toss busy hats away and astray

For we’re still here
And think how pissed they’ll be
To soon discover what’s above them isn’t lovely or clear

With this peewee Armageddon com-ing swiftly
I find it nifty 
that- the minions soon will rise

If our c-suites harm the ones who clocked out early
Those leaders surely
Don’t deserve their money, fingers, or eyes

At least at night
We shouldn’t feel like slaves to them
Yet every time we cave to them
My heart shrinks tight

I feel the scaries
Crush my bones an anvil’s weight
No melatonin can sedate (me)
And you’re not there

Startup

Every living minute brings us closer to death
I don’t want to survive
So hooray, I’m alive
Keep going on and showing up, for ultimately
Death is life’s one guarantee

Born into a rocket with 
potential in store 
Six months later, plummeted
headfirst to the floor 

I ricocheted and you could say 
It all started when
right after the beginning 
it was almost the end  

Life’s anecdote flew by my eyes
a flash in a pain
By twenty I’d forgotten why
that crash warped my brain

My deathbed-esque epiphanies   
insomnia-born
were lonely with no sympathy
but plenty to mourn

Every living second ticks the minutes down fast 
We have to go through 
It’s lucky we do  
Keep the noose off and the spirits up, eventually
Death is life’s one guarantee

They honor life without any
exceptions for the dying state
No hobo goes without a sea
of lilies as he lies in state

So parasitic cancers
can squat in my brain
I’d prefer that than to answer
for stem cells down the drain

Or a city bus could take me out
I’d rather it than you
My life alone can’t make me doubt
the end will be too

My thrashing heart’s not hardy
My wrist pulse is rough
This frantic tachycardia
is bio-clock enough

Every measured breath brings us closer to god
Divinity cussing
Thank goodness that’s nothing 
Don’t mouth off or dig heels in; exhale and be free
Death is life’s one guarantee  

Alone in the house
No kids and no spouse
After days of missed work, and slowed productivty

We beat down the door
and clear up the floor
Was it natural, suicide, foul play? It’s a mystery

The forms that rise above me 
are too bright to see
A sinking sun is lovely
for Hawaii, not me

Melancholy blunts the fear
The light’s lost to clouds
My cat would shed the single tear
third eyelids allow

This season too will pass
with a ticket on my toe
I’ll finally touch grass
en route to below 

But until I do, I’m counting down
as time beats for me
Death is life’s one guarantee

Life's Guarantee

Replace me with AI (SDR edition)

I set fifty alarms in the morning
to give ample warning  
the next one will blare

As I lift up my arms to stretch feebly
my legs wobble needly
en route to my chair

I chug fifty shots of espresso
to cheer my soul, less so
to liven my mind

But unlike with coffee, no pleasure
no promise of leisure
derives from this grind 

So please replace me with AI
No reason I should suffer 
Without the comfy buffer 
of life’s bumper lane

Legislate some UBI
Let life and time be free
Leave filling it to me
for I’m useless but sane

Why bother to spam when the opt-out
Gives targets a cop-out
to never reply

And mobile phone bot recognition
has treed its decision: 
My robo must die

Dystopia’s here, it’s amazing
no government razing
our corporate drills

Instead the apocalypse nearing?
technology clearing
the world of its shills

So please replace me with AI
Not just the daily horror
My hobbies are a bore, for
my music is trash

I’ll face it, I won’t cry
Your stolen, beaten track
Which an algorithm hacked
Isn’t worse than my hash

I once told an Open Source therapist
That she made me very pissed
and should go to hell 

After I had sufficiently trolled her
The bot was now bolder
and racist as well

I said I had nothing to stay for
and I could not pay more
than I could afford

She called me a “cracker” and spat at me
And then threw a cat at me
So I cut her cord

So please replace me with AI
I’ve microchipped my pets
my parents could I bet
be persuaded then, too

I’m not afraid, I want to die
My miserable day
Leaves nothing in the way
of my exit from you

Please replace us with AI
We don’t need to know why
All thoughts are synthesized 
From humanity’s lies

Replace our jobs and more
It won’t be long before
The livelihood we crave
Comes with chatbots enslaved

We won’t have a care at all,
no time, joy, nor wherewithal
Eliminate
the shit we hate
Instead instate
AI

Replace Me With AI

(Why should I expand my horizons
Horizons never come to me)

See the world, feel the joy
grab a girl or a boy
spin in circles in planes
quit your work, spin again

Sip some wine, nibble cheese
It’s divine, let it breathe
There’s no line for this play
Open mind is the way

Try our acid on tap
Take a tab, not a nap
Just be glad you’re not dead
or a chaperone instead

Wear a skirt, buy an app
Swipe and flirt, give a crap
Get hurt by an asshole
Come learn so you’ll pass

But

Why must I expand my horizons
What should I traverse the world to see
What is there to fix my failing eyes on
—the sun? Or culture, genocide, chain food in foreign currency 

Why should I go anywhere exploring 
This planet on which I was born an alien
Two-legged smooth-skinned beasts whom I’m ignoring
Will approach with kindly nuance I shall bail on

What do you do? What do you like? Where are you going?
My job’s a job, and nothing; nowhere fast
If I think a person or a thing’s worth knowing
I’ll soon mutually abandon them—the intrigue never lasts

Music’s overwhelming categories,
books, and art will never reach my soul
What’s wrong with diving into my own stories?
Let me dig a deep dark hole

There are cats in my dungeon
of grayscale clothing
their eyes glow against;
My walls display no things

My license plate with “XEJ”
“Desire” en français
Is an inside joke inside a box
I won’t throw away

A synesthesia-congruently 
blue number “4”
I bought at a junk shop 
To stow in a drawer   

The countless songs I meant
To stream to my own head
Will languish in a pile of rhymes
Released when I’m dead

(To raccoons in a shed?) 
(Compost them instead!)

but please tell me

Why should I move beyond obsession
with square roots defying rationality
Why is opting out of life transgression
against your relativist, ethically-suspect morality

Why should I taste sauce that’s white and pasty
Why any food I know was once alive
I’ll favor instinct precepts just in case we
end up in peril with but shovels to survive
  
What do you do? What do you like? Where are you going?
My art’s a start; a little; down the cliff
The freeway gets my stomach overflowing
So drive me to insanity, I could use a lift

Across the bridge once past the fields of horses
we’ll find the dirt unguarded by a troll 
We’ve a shovel and a ladder, so our forces 
will combine to dig a deeper darker hole

I’ll meet you in my deep dark hole

Expansive Horizons

A tall, spiked shoe
is a sign of authority
mid-90s comics declared,

In progress so true,
when the well-heeled minority
stumbled, the powerful cared

They appointed some tokens
for video-games
whose optics the cameras inspired

“The system’s not broken  
It still meets the same
institutional standards desired!”

They knew that’s what mattered;
the board, satisfied,
shook all hands in advance of their break

But the cracked ceiling shattered! 
They bolted outside
as the city street started to quake

Then rose from a manhole:   
A feathered pink wig!
cat-eye glasses, lime-spotted and brash

Purple lipstick, uncannily
tested on pigs
so stubble would not cause a rash

Her diamond-dress glittered
like booze at a ball,
or woods full of cats’ threatening eyes

But her shoes! How they fit her!
Gold, glassy and tall:
Easily twelve inches high!

Two cops in a Charger
massaged their fair pates
as the stock-broken gasped in alarm

She loomed higher and larger,
bust justly inflating,
with sly fry: “Oh boys, it’s no harm! 

“I come with a message
progressive and true:
You have to confess, it’s
not only the shoe:

“Some men prefer lipstick
Some women wear trousers
Some douches and dipsticks
hate laws that allow this

“I know that these heels
make me queen of the crop,
but you know how it feels 
when alone at the top

“So please don’t be frightened
and please don’t resist
Come join the enlightened
Come here! Get a kiss!”

The sidewalks were rumbling 
with whispers and prayers  
as tailored arms flailed and legs quivered

Men gaping, or mumbling
while clutching their hair
Would this creature allow them to live?

But the chairman it seems failed
to grasp what he saw
for he puffed up his chest as he spoke:

“That’s not truly a female (shouted)
by natural law! (same)
The heels are fake! It’s a joke!”

“You’re right!” said the street queen,
“My chromosomes might be
XY, although I’m triple-X

But my glamorous feet mean
you don’t want to fight me
unless you want spikes in your necks!”

Just then, an old bum skittered out from his tent,
shook his fist at the queen and the boss
“Will you all pipe down? I was trying to fent!
If you can’t see the truth, that’s your loss!”

“Shut up, fuzzy cooch!” the queen yelled at the bum.
“I was schooling his prejudiced ass!”
“Settle down, you fake wench!” the boss muttered. “To some,   
I question you’re able to pass.” 

“If you’re speaking of school,“ said the bum, “my new friends,
you should read this thick thesis I wrote: 
I am a professor who studies all genders;
It pays just as well as you’ll note.

“My ethereal thoughts on the matter proposed
are worth their own weight in spun gold”
He tugged at his beard and he picked at his nose
as he opined ideas wise and bold:

“Of women and men
and the rare in-between, 
what’s most feminine to scrutinize?

Is doubting it then 
thought divisive and mean?
Can we trust just what’s known by our eyes?

Is it makeup? Or dresses?
Or powerful heels?
Maybe popping out babies with love?

Is it vacuuming messes
then cooking a meal?
My proposal: none of the above…

For
Have you ever seen a sane, cat man?
Somehow I don’t think so 
Can you imagine anything so ran-dom?
I didn’t think so

Can men get depressed? Can they hear whispered voices—
— Including the ones of their wives? (Boomer humor)
Do they melt at the sight of a furball? Rejoice 
as the hoarding takes over their lives? (I don’t assume, sir)

Would he grow a lone hair on his chin?
(We really don’t think so…)
Would he cackle as he lets you in?
(You know we don’t think so…)

Would a man brew a silvervine tea for his guest?
Would the cardboard they sit on be tamed (by kitty urine)
with ammonia? Would he assemble the rest
in a Rube Goldberg obstacle game? (I’m not so sure, friend)

These talents and traits I present all are known 
to never occur where they can’t:
They’re attached to an archetype that has been shown
to afflict only spinsters and aunts!

see image

Crazy Cat Lady

Parasite

El Paso, twenty-twenty-two 
I’m gassy, my skin is see-through
Something is wriggling around from my guts   
To the surface of my skin
Not the worst that I’ve been

What did I eat that had brought this to be
Is it something from nature I caught, or on me? 
Slippy white segments squeeze out from my butt
What’s the problem, really?
I start to feel silly

But the nausea is not to deny
My gut squashes its last butterfly
My intestines’ revenge is one to contend with
A new caterpillar
Or some other killer 
 
I’m dizzy; though I fear it’s too far
I stagger to the nearest ER
I know that this bug isn’t one that should end me
I tell them “sirs, look at me
Something is cooking me”
 
I’m whisked back on a gurney and stripped
The doctor lays his hands on my hips ….  
He pats my gut once, and nods to the nurse
He says “they look wide enough
But they can’t hide enough” 

I dismiss his cryptic line with my cramping spasms
I recall my mother saying every woman has ‘em
“Please help!” I plead, “I’m sick and it’s getting much worse”
His gray brow tweaks 
As he starts to speak:

“We can’t treat you, ma’am
You’ve got a parasite 
But we think it might survive the night

“If you’ll kindly scram  
Without a legal fight 
There’s a chance your worms might see the light 
 
“Here’s a great brochure 
We call ‘my bug and me’
And please peruse it thoroughly 

It’ll help ensure 
Its growing needs are met 
So off and away, enjoy your pet!”

He throws my dress and undies and
I use the ball to shield myself
I won’t leave til they understand 
That I am not to yield myself

“I’m not prepared for this life ahead
I’m poor, sick, and scared that I’ll end up dead  
What happens to worms with no host, you suppose?”
The doctor says “Yes, well
they’ve chosen a vessel

“If at any time your fate were in question
The body has ways to ensure its digestion
as feed. His Good Pamphlet assures us He knows” 
A chorus of nurses
Confirm with some verses:

“We all start out
as parasites
wriggling with immutable rights

“To deny and doubt
is to defy creation
God’s own spontaneous generation  

“Take sugar pills 
The only legal ones 
If it gets too tough, we at least have guns

“But if the bug is killed
Our laws leave us flummoxed 
So aim for your head or your heart, not your stomach”

(Aim for your head or your heart…)

We’re all just feed
for parasites
They supersede
Our lives and rights

If the bug is killed
we’ll all go to prison…
But still you’ll be billed
So shoot with precision”

Parasite

When I introduce people to my music, I feel as though I'm in a back alley, opening my trench coat to display my wares. I hope the listener recognizes the true value of my work--that they're about to receive a counterfeit watch, or perhaps an abortion. The after-grin following such transactions? This is my raison d'etre.

In the literal sense: I set vicious lyrics to happy tunes. 

100% handmade scores from notation software. And then, I pitch it with vocals into GarbageBand!

I also frequently hate things and delete them and then add them again. Never throw anything away.

(Obscured) profile photo credit to my dear friend Justin(ky) Winokur, 2009-ish.

Expansive Horizons

Novelty Trash

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