Bogeyland, CT

dawn comes with a stomach ache.
I clear the calendar with my sleeve.
I step in cat pee.

winter rime? You're jogging early.
They'll ground the balloons but not
Stan and Ollie. That's the only meat
I get on this holiday.

I eat beef, I eat saints, I eat seers,
I eat further. My plate was never full;
I need tomatoes, so I ate nothing but
homicidal side-eye from Mom.

"Whatever it is, I'm against it."
When you turn seven, you need to
be exposed to Groucho Marx.
That's my best Thanksgiving memory:
one sleepless night and one PBS
marathon of Marx Brothers movies.

My father stayed up late to watch
and record Jimmy Cagney movies,
one of which was accidentally
taped over to record Wrestlemania IV.
Men on a mission find men on a mission.

The courthouse where I work has
several occupancies. The offices
hold volumes of state appellate reports
and mouse and insect glue traps;
The deadlier are the legal tomes.
When Santa turns his sleigh into the
dog show, I change the batteries in
my razor, but I do not shave.

I e-mail holiday greetings, knowing
damn well the recipients won't respond
because they don't check their e-mail,
because their kids never stop running
so they never stop running and life
never stops running, "it's crazy, the kids
wear me out." My second-grade teacher
would say, "Never call your children 'kids'.
A kid is a baby goat." One friend has a
birthday four days after Thanksgiving, and
I know I will e-mail her

(Kid, you are such a schmuck)

while listen to ambient space music,
thumbing through mental photographs
of my friend as a drunk ballerina, as a
headbangin' farmer's daughter, as a
leapfrog, a jack-in-the-box, a hustler
of billiards, as a casualty of the weekend.

I don't have a photograph of her when she
fell from a roof while trying to bitchslap the
constellations that insulted Dave Matthews;
I was wearing a Cien Caras wrestling mask
ringside at the ECW show at Memorial Hall,
issuing parking lot challenges to the heels:
Lance Diamond, Skull Von Krush, Balls Mahoney.

(Kid, you are such a schmuck)

I am assured by my wife that the hostess
knows I don't enjoy turkey unless it is
deli-sliced and smoked. Her husband
cooks a steak for himself and places
in front of me two barbecued chicken
breasts marinated in what he calls
The Three Wise Men of Hot Sauce.
For supper, I am no mere spectator.
When Tyson bit Holyfield, was he just as satisfied?

I cut the tag from the new pajama pants
while watching the commercial for the
Impossible Whopper. The cowboy

(no, this must be a cowboy bar, he sounds
like he hasn't ventured west of Lackawanna)

says, "I'm a damn fool" when he is told the
patty's plant composition. You can say the
word "damn" in a fast food commercial.
You can say the word "damn" as a matter
of advertising emphasis. Is this evolution?

The nail scissors slice knuckle over tag.
The letters in "damn evolution" spell
"I don't love u, man." This is not evolution.
I'm a damn fool.