The Wildebeeste on the Conviction of Saddam

My fatuous brother told me
he would never be convicted
because he would never come
to trial, and if he did

they’d kill him before
it ended. Instead
they killed his lawyers.

Saddam’s that is. My brother
doesn’t have a lawyer
just a weird bunch

of lawyer friends who
smoke dope when they should
be keeping their fee accounts.

But no, they took my fatuous brother’s
$50 bet instead, and that will get
them to the next one
eighth of an ounce

. . . if he ever pays. Good
for all of them. They
had it coming.

My Dentist
for Jabes

Wasn’t it Pynchon, in V, who
floated the notion that dentistry
was the mid-century answer

to Psychiatry? (See the chapter
in which Rachel Owlglass
Gets a Nose Job. Or is it the one

where Stencil simply gets Dentistry?)
Go read V again, lazy citizen!
Do your own research!

And my dentist was talking
and one of the great things
about my dentist is he

steps back and lets me talk
too, whatever he or I
have in my mouth.

My dentist was, not
that long ago, a
San Francisco Fireman

of Assyrian decent.
He is a Christian
(of an Assyrian sort).

The other firemen called
him a Sand Nigger.
(Check out the SFFD’s record

on tolerance, sometime.) And now
he’s telling me all
about how great the Bill

Moyers series on the
right wing has been, & how it
reminds him of what it means

to be an American. I
agree, although I’ve seen
none of it, explain

I only watch baseball
& the occasional movie on TV if
there aren’t any commercials, that

I don’t even listen to
the emerging liberal radio
because I get better

information from the Texas
& Canadian songwriters
they play on KPIG. People

talking about the decisions that
will kill us all depress me
enormously. I’d rather

hear it in a song. Preferably
with a baseball game

on TV in the background,
and those nattering “commentators”
fully muted.

Dear Abbey
(w/ apologies both
to Ed, and John Prine)

My TV tells me I
can grow hair by smearing
this shit that they

sell as foam
on my dome &
hair just like I

used to have
will grow. My email
tells me it can

cure my penile
woes, make me hard
again. I wonder

what they got for
my belly. Fuck
all, turns out,

eating & drinking less
not being a a viable option.
So, Ed, apologies

reiterated, what can
we smear on our
global dome to make

life itself grow
back, even as
global hair, something

anything on which
a revenant might live?
Your silence, sir, is

illuminating, you got all
you had to say
said & right now it

doesn’t seem to have
done a damn bit
of good. Nice try,

though, fella, nobody’s
best shot seems
good enough in these

evil days. But that is
not to say we
should not keep fighting them,

it, whatever that demonic
energy is that seems
determined to kill us all.