AfterPunk

 Juan “Jay” Jones No, not him. His daughter. I alone in the universe have a photo of Jay. I can see it, he’s standing there with his lovely wife Sue, but I have 60,000 photos and can’t find this one. I hunted down the obits , all of which said the same thing. Great guy. Nice smile. Which is not the the whole story. I’m writing this for his daughter, whom you can see up top when she was just a little kid. Can’t even find the one when she was loving red flowers at Longwood. What Jay would like best. Anna is now an athletic beauty. Why I can’t show you her. Because there are so many perverts out there. I remember Jay. I still miss him. I wanted him to know I was thinking of him even though he refused to talk about the death thing. I sent him clothes, T-shirts, my own Dawkins Eagles jerseys to wear as a way of knowing I was with him. I sent him a recording of a book — the Joneses had this odd kinship with Canada — and I’m pretty sure he never heard it. “Stay Away Joe.” He was just such...

I can’t do the campaign thing anymore. They ARE going to take Trump down. The lawyerz don’t understand the wymyns will refuse to elect him because of that pussy remark, because they just will. The wymyns have never had any moral sense. They’re just wymyns when all is said and done. And the pitiful, ridiculous case of Stormy Daniels will finish him. My wife knows this. Why she told me to stop. She’s known all along I wouldn’t eat a dinner in my house with Trump. I just know the difference between him and the horrors of his enemies.  She told me I should stop many months ago and I agreed to. Seventy is too old for fiction. Then she read a novel  manuscript I stopped because I was too old. She liked it. Said it should be done. Ain’t that a b*tch? Now I have to work again. So I made a new website just for her. Still trying to earn her love before I die.

Some days you’re thin, some days you have hair, but you’re always old . I had friends who were sociopaths  What I wondered made me friends Howard was the worst He tortured Clarence and the physics boy he called In the middle of the night But he died at 40 and I could stop thinking Will was bad an awful model I followed all over We went everywhere in cars at 130 or more And he did not care who won but him I also knew a ravaged man who thought he had the Christ But didn’t even mistaken understand I was close to Him for real And he never ever  Like any of them Knew a credit card from the commandments or God I have had bad friends But they have saved me from time to time Howard said, ‘Hit them before they get done yelling,’ and he was right. Will said, “Turn off the back lights and they can’t find you,” and he was right Rob Davey said, ‘Never let them find you on the Internet.’ Why They’re still after me… But they will find you Rob and you will see the night Because I now know why...

 Black Boxes in Greenwich You could look down the yards and see them Hear them almost On spindly legs but coffins the buzzing Greenheads like heavy bombers drawing blood After the first wave of strawberry flies And why they never had strawberry flies or greenheads at Hine Quarters Where the pool breathed blue and and life was safe And the women baked like leftover chicken Except for Addie and Addie Who hated each other and had thighs like cords One from Smith and one from high school Exuding locker rooms that both smelled wet But for the hatred of nasty words left in lockers One was my second mother She died long after her husband and knew me better than my own mother ever did And then there were the cub scouts Volkswagen bus to beatings Knee to the groin then apology When dads were upright Told you three counties were the poem Played songs to make it right Tom Waits at Academy of Music Easy chair and nothing easy Stones I wore the Flying Skull  Jacket painted with his paint f...

 I only write this way deep in the night When the darkness I have battled returns stronger and immerses hope. This would be a poem but it cannot be because poetry no longer exists, lacking commas, periods, and question marks. Since we decided rhymes were rap and seers were lacking punctuation And I am accordingly Letting slip the parsers called commas and question marks as well I was raised on hope and faith as they once were My faith is Christian unacceptably unique Part Buddhist I have nearly attained the Zen ideal Loss of both desire and fear But I am not Zen but Zerone And Nirvana is no release Another cul de sac It is just an evening Chance at wisdom And it leaves out all the colors of the dark The dark I feel on deepest nights When I know I’m the only Zerone in the crowd The skeptics go for macro Size of universe and all So big so vast so Hubble way beyond ya When I know it’s so much more intimate than that The small the micro the hologram the everything all contained in ever...

  I’m going to preface this post with some personal provenance, to show that its subject is nothing new but an idea I have held for decades. Back in 1993, I received a call from my client at Whirlpool Corporation wanting an overnight rewrite of an article slated for publication in the Harvard Business Review, which was not acceptable in its current form to the executive committee. It was Christmas Eve. I was given a phone number for the HBR editor, who gave the go-ahead after informing me that it was expressly contrary for HBR to accept ghost submissions from consultants to Fortune executives. I told him I was intimately involved in Whirlpool global initiatives and could meet the 24-hour deadline. The latter commitment carried the day. On schedule I emailed him the rewritten copy and within hours received an unexpected encomium from the editor. He said he couldn’t believe what I had done within the permitted timeframe and allowed that he would be open to other submissions by me. I...