Democracy Jones has gone off to
warbling again.
I try not to let it affect my world.
Uncle Joe is my choice
to defend the free verbs because
I only eat organic cheese heads now.
We always make sure to drink
an eight ounce glass of
wasabi with our supplements
on an empty flummox.
I have decided never to use the word
mmm-demic ever again
from now on its baklava
and this baklava is endless!
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
13Apr2022
Gehenna is rocking
and I’m rolling over.
There is nowhere else to go
so I build up.
Falstaff, teeters on the brink
of warbling.
They accepted the poem
but reheated my bio he says.
This is not the second time for everything
because iconography is his first language.
An adjective gets stuck in your throat
you begin coughing up nouns.
Elvis stokes the crucible with words
It’s going to be a long night.
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
12Apr2022
All of the wee folk of my youth
grew up to become the Angels of my now.
They no longer scare me and
we speak lively when we’ve the chance.
Often, I listen to their council
and regret it sure when I don’t.
I kept them rather busy as a child
rescuing me from the fires of Gahanna.
Where as once we were mischievous and bold
now they are my councilors and we are old.
“Remember that time…” I hear one say.
“Yes, and that other time…”
“How did we ever survive?!” I cheek.
In dreams, in dreams, in dreams…. They reply.
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
08Apr2022
The banishing of Plump Jack:
If I am old, and plump,
and with white hairs
do not witness it. Please
ignore my whiteness. Discount
my innocence. I don’t want
your reverence. I know by my color
that I am damned. And if I am hated
because I am white, and fat, then so be it.
If you can love only the pharaohs lean kin
then you can’t see me anymore than I am
predisposed to no longer harbor a glimpse of you.
More is the pity. For what is unity without
tolerance? What is us without we?
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
29Mar2022
My ornery old cuss keeps leaking out:
and I am no longer
as convinced
of my correctness
as I was when I was young.
Also, I find I have little tolerance for stupid.
So please, stop proselytizing.
You don’t get to be an expert
just because you have
found yourself on a soapbox.
Everyone can still throw tomatoes.
And I would rather
eat mine
than waste it on you.
©️Mark W. ÓBrien
20Mar2022
#81 (Crypt 261.)
It is three in the morning and my mind asks:
“Who was Lillian Webster?”
What am I doing?
Why am I asking this question?
“Well? Who is she?”
Wiki says she was a starlet who was famous
for a silent film named “Everybody’s doing it.”
The film is no longer in existence
so no one knows what everybody was doing.
Her boyfriend who was supposed to marry her
was arrested for passing bad checks.
Three months after he went to jail
Lillian Webster died during an operation.
I guess we know what “everybody” was doing.
©️Mark W. ÓBrien
14Mar2022
80
“A visor for a visor.—What care I.”
My brother Jim bought a black VW Beetle
with a piece of duct tape
on the passenger side fender.
We called it it’s Beetlebrow.
The guy who sold it to Jim said:
That tape is a lucky charm.
Jim drove around with the piece of tape
on there for years.
Then he sold the car to our friend named Hat.
Jim told Hat the story about the duct tape.
Hat ripped it off saying he was Going to paint it.
He totaled the car on the way home.
Car-ma. my brother said.
©️Mark W. Ó Brien
01/22/2022.
