A Short Dog Calendar Page 2023

Place curb your inner- Mutt- New Work Winter 23

Winter 2023-

Last Call for Short Dog Food

Once upon a lecturer

Sometimes I lapse into talking like Doctor Phil

In full Soto vox cadence

In lecture when my students seem uninterested

Yes I know I have a problem

Working on it-

Judge Judy is next.

*

So. You do watch Fox

So just where does Geraldo Rivera keep his portrait

Of Dorian Gray ?

Thinking I saw digital him

On there last night.

*

Every New Programming year

I become more naked and afraid –

And soon I fear

I will be reduced to

Watching Swamp People

While dreaming of Ice Road Truckers

*

The Devils Phone

Only question remains.

How soon will they

Develop it to fit snugly

Up in one of our orifices ?

*

In Silence

I was born in silence

And remain deaf to my pending release date

Just drinking my ears down the drain-

But still insisting upon listening

*

Your 3 minutes

What can happen in 3 minutes ?

It took you seconds of your time to take his life.

It took seconds.

For a second

Where have your hands been?

What have your eyes seen?

That last time your ears rang.

Like a lost errant call that reverberated

Remembered right in middle of the terrible now

And as swiftly forgotten as an opportunistic defense strategy

Could you still last 3 minutes?

Just how much could you lose in three minutes?

Or perhaps shimmer and shiver for a second

It took seconds of your time.

It Took seconds of your time to take his life

It took seconds.

For a second

Reference-

Uncollected 2/21/23

Short Dog Sunday

After church that morning

My Mother called me a Lothario

In the aisles of the IGA

Went I thanked the Bakery Isle

For getting her warm bread.

We headed out to the car

And standing outside

Looking especially

Lost

Sad

And stunned

There he was

Short Dog

Not a story collection

But a real man.

His space of that chilly,

 gray sidewalk stunned

A shadow of lost life

Indecision

And a very quiet

Desperation.

In the car we looked at each other.

I’ve got a couple of bucks

Edna said she did too.

We pooled the bills

And I went out to him

Said, Morning Short Dog

And pressed the few bucks into his hand.

His eyes watered slightly

And he mumbled

Thank you.

Getting back in the car

I called Edna an

Enabler.

                                                                                                                 5/2011

You on Ice

So I’m sitting out in the garage again

having another nervous breakdown

in black and white February Sunday

afternoon and it’s all pretty boring

and there is sound of dripping icicles

from the roof that having dagger like

razor teeth grinning at your emotional

illness and sweating drop after drop

of Crocodile tears that nobody is buying.

So I’m sitting out in the garage again

having the same nervous break down

using the snow banks outside the side door

as beer refrigerators. Each tall neck bottle

loaded in a snow cone slot like a 12 ounce

ordinance on ice.

So I’m stilling out in the garage again

trying to out run another nervous breakdown

by retrieving and detonating the barley grenade

while the snow clings like white wire filings

of cotton to the neck on the bottle.

That’s the good thing about

having another nervous breakdown

while sitting out in the garage on

a black and white February Sunday afternoon. 

No need to buy ice to keep the beer cold.

And you too.

You on Ice.

                                                                                      2/2011

To Catch the Light

Late Afternoon

February rare sun

snow sets

the white on

orange fire

You ran out her

to try and put it

all out by burying

those bottles

up to the tip of

their

tall necks

chill golden foam

to try and either warm

or drown the bone.

I rattle the bars

of this cage,

And somewhere else

birds sing lost Summer

in

train horns.

What’s eating me ?

What’s eating me ?

alive.

I can see my breath evaporating

in front of my very eyes.

A faint plume of white

an exhaled ghost.

A wisp of confinement

that endures barely beyond

duration shivering in isolation.

                                                                                     2/2011

February Shorts 2016

Of Odds & Pitch Counts

Some people are born

With two strikes on them

Others start out with the count 3 and 0

And go through life

Always content to just take that walk

While the former keep swinging at one in the dirt.

*

How the West was Lost

Have we all become a race

Of distracted cyber pioneers

who forgot the Frontiers

while discovering being too embarrassed to admit

All that we never knew was

Remembering the trivial

Forgetting the essential.

*

Hearing Aide

Received a postcard in the mail yesterday

Offering either deaf agnostic apostle

with a generic prosthesis-

And I didn’t hear a thing.

*

Fuck Waste book

Listen here

You can just skip the Like Box

And the dislike Box

Heading straight for the

I don’t give a shit icon.