Tag: death

born from the bits on the factory floor

A poem.

raising a kid these days is tough, making
sure they grow up and learn to pack
their own lunch, not to
mention read
the hours for Father’s Day brunch,
or their brother’s twelfth birthday dinner

before getting their Focus stuck in a trough.
“i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m right around the block”
as their parents & them leave the restaurant –
now they don’t read
or eat,
but they are half-a-foot taller than
he’s sitting in the bathroom at work

and if he takes too long then the stall starts
to feel like an isolation pod, and he
starts to expatiate on all the
ways he thinks his life
went wrong.

this dwelling
is interrupted by a
sudden svelting, spitting
up still gunk from the
surface of his

gut, and

it sits
in
his
mouth like
poppycock
as he opens
his legs to
the void
for
a
soft
place
to spit
it
out –

he dribbles on his own thigh as the
auto-flush engages.
“down the line it’s in their genes.”

//wd 6.20.2026

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being the beta man

A poem.

when i’m on the clock,

i’ll talk back to a manager
no problem,
if i think it’ll get me anywhere

or not in trouble
or teased by female staff


but i won’t tell the guy
sitting in my reserved seat at the
movie theatre to
move over
please.

some words are too much trouble
for too little reward,
save my father and i getting
what we paid for.

he won’t say anything either.

//wd 12.20.2025

Original photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com.

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you may believe that you’ll die a martyr

(but you’re still going to Hell)

A poem.

the Universe
on occasion
needs to realize the limits
of humankind’s existence.

the drunk who calls his girlfriend
a cunt
is still getting the same horoscope
as you or i:
“today you may die,

but if you don’t,
the cosmos is on your side.”

what is that turning point?
giving her one about
moving on.

//wd 12.11.2025

Original photo by brenoanp on Pexels.com.

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400 Words on: The Shrouds (2024)

or, “Reconciled to Live from the Sidelines”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1.5 out of 5

“…it’s been so long since I did that stuff, I literally cannot remember how we did most of it. […] I really have to insist that we don’t talk about ‘Scanners’, or special effects, or exploding heads…”

– Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg on
Ken Finkleman’s “The Newsroom”, 1996

“The Shrouds” is an 82-year-old artist’s auto-elegiac statement. It’s aesthetically pleasing, and way too talky; its themes cerebral, though defeatist; its characters horny but dispassionate; and it’s told from a sanctimonious perspective that engenders viewer apathy.

My high school friends & I once drove an hour to see “A History of Violence”. We walked in late to the screening after getting a parking ticket, and immediately after the big 69’ing scene (but before the diner shootout). We didn’t find out until much later what else we had missed.

[cont’d]

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itchy Achilles

A poem for my late father-in-law.

the father

had heard
and seen

everything the boy
had ever thought;
had done
and said –

that’s what the low-budget documentary
on Amazon Prime told him.

it was all outlined
in a big ULINE box with no lid
full of labelled duo-tangs stacked the wrong way
on the top shelf –
no less important than all the rest –
to whom the spirits kindly regressed.
the father didn’t necessarily ask for all this.
all he did was ask

and he was met with

and where maybe once he permitted himself to forget some things
based on nature,
his age,
now he knew everything.
that was the curse of the dead
and their wistless blessing

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