Rest Easy

Enter Groucho Violent,
star of the nerves and streets,
a double threat if there ever was one.

His reputation precedes him as witty enough to turn a phrase and hard-knuckled enough to know when to admit defeat in the face of a petulant and pernicious foe who, in all likelihood, believes that their position of power has been handed down to them from the LORD ALMIGHTY, and any little rivulet of diarrhea that escapes their corpulence is to be rendered an earth-shattering development in the field of extrapersonal material management, now and forevermore.

Groucho is no stranger to the justice-enforcement arm of things. When his even-keel demeanor and righteous self-taught martial arts techniques combined on one fateful and blustery Flag Day eve, the Justice Jab was born. If you’re still unfamiliar with the singlemost effective crimefighting maneuver ever concocted by man or beast (in Mr. Violent’s last-ditch effort to uncover the overall reason as to our lack of humility when confronted with reasoning), you have some real catching up to do.

The Justice Jab is a miracle worker when the recipient of said jab needs to be awoken from the haze that they’ve come to accept over time, through sheer laziness and self-disrespect. The haze’s effect causes but is not limited to: depression, sluggishness, flatulence, lack of interest in things one would normally enjoy, unjustified sporadic agitation, and death. Such a disconcerting malady comes as a direct byproduct of this world we’ve inherited (through no fault of our own). Rather than face the music, the vast majority of we, the privileged few, have chosen to consume the content created specifically to manipulate our emotional and physical dependencies more efficiently and cheaply than cocaine ever could.

So the next time you see Groucho Violent
meting out swift street vengeance,
you can rest easy
knowing that he’s doing humanity a service.

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Flesh and Blood

Mannequin rest is a sign of weakness
and cheap plastic.
My stock at the Sears downtown
believes that since they look human,
they should receive pay and benefits
like my flesh and blood employees.

I’m so tired of emphasizing
to these hollow Betties and Bernies
that they were designed, built and purchased
for the sole purpose of displaying garments.
I’m not the one to blame
for their poor quality of life.

Even if their plight was real
or at all justifiable,
how am I supposed to provide
services for company property?
I’m just a shift manager!

I’ve tided them over for now
by letting them form an in-store mannequin union
in the basement (Thursday and Saturday nights
from 7 to 9), but until they’re legitimate,
I’m not breathing a word of this to the higher-ups.

———-
Originally published as part of inaugural post (12/20/2010)
First titled “Swivel Rights”

One Fine Day

There’s something so sublime
about observing and admiring
an intriguing-yet-mundane object in space
that has never failed
to lend credence to that ages-old belief,
often eloquently-stated as the following:

beauty, that relatively universal indicator of aesthetic appeal, is more or less subjective depending upon the perception of the individual/s observing the particular object or phenomenon in question.

Why, I was gazing one fine day–
surveying the park of common human consequence
(observable to very few by the naked eye)–
when my eyes rested upon a preponderance
of turtledove squadron trainers,
and as they went about their daily regimented activities,

I looked deeply into the pools of their eyes

while they continually exhibited
the inability to break out of the checkboxes
they’d been forced to occupy through one coup or another
somewhere along the line as young (or at least, younger)
men with a passion for doing things a different way
than all those other pencil-pushing types
who would be quick to declare their allegiance
to the guild of orderliness (or brotherhood
of smug rule-abiding, and also occasionally
the bean counters collective, depending on who you ask).

Not a woman in the bunch. I chalked that up
as the fairer sex’s natural disinclination toward
imposing human rules upon flighted creatures
with the ultimate goal of turning a profit.
That’s at least
what every woman I’ve ever known
has told me about the situation.

Tempered — Pre-Primaries, 2016

Tempered by the blunt end
of a stainless steak knife,
throttled by a lack of anything
interesting to say–

say, how’s that weather?

Primary’s coming up,
don’t trust any of those clowns;
the whole system’s downright screwy anyway.
Can’t get behind those corporations
parading around as individuals,
CEOs making their dirty millions.

Can’t keep up this smalltalk,
I just want to scream
unintelligibly
at those crows hopping
over there. Who told them
they could have fun
while I’m around?

I can’t stand it
when others enjoy themselves,
especially animals. I can’t
tell them off
like I can a human, not that
I make it my business
to harass people.
The closest I’d ever get
would be a stoic monologue
about the nature of the universe
and its tendency to dissolve
into nothingness
without a moment’s notice.

I can make many a soul
uneasy
with that shrapnel language,
if you can believe it.

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