Originally posted 6/23/2011.

Here’s to you,

wake and bakers,
joint over coffee suckers,
hiders of whiskey 
in “World’s Greatest Dad” mugs,
pills at daybreak takers,
Marley rocking pajama stoners,
carpool dodgers passing the buck
in favor of lifting the mood;

here’s to your health
and the health of the children
you didn’t drive to soccer practice
on a Saturday morning
because the clouds were so…cloudy;

here’s to you, 
shower tomorrow people,
maybe tomorrow people,
call it a day before 9:00 AM people;

here’s to you.

May you open the party
and close the bar
before the rest of us even know
you’re wrecked.

May you live long,
your eyes red as sunrise 
flashing back at the dawn;
may you dance clumsily behind the blinds
and tell yourself, again and again,
it’s just this one more time
as you slip into the folds of the comforter
and fall back into a stupor.  

May the sleep you enter be dead
and may the death be temporary.  

May you open your eyes to a new life
where you can take the morning straight.
May you find yourself drunk at last
on nothing but the good light of the good day
you have believed, always,
would someday come
without you having
to coax it into being.

Link to a recording of this poem:  One For The Wake And Bakers

Originally posted on 2/17/2011.

At night, one can drive
for hours, listening
to televisions
as they mask the weeping.

Here, the people abide by
one strict rule of conduct: 
“Do what you like, 
but do not show your work.”

The only media 
allowed for art
are C4 and artificial sweeteners;
the fabric of life is therefore
primarily explosions 
and cloying aftertaste.

Now and then a child grows up
and breaks free.

Most of them 
come back eventually.  
The ones who do not
remain a mystery 
to the inhabitants,

even if they become famous.