Rich Rant

You joy toy, you laughter crafter. A regular at the charm farm and glee spelling bee. You satisfaction wagon, captain of the wonder bus. Ecstasy T-Rex, folic mollusk. Mirth birth in a pleasure fez. Proprietor of fulfillment’s filling station in Felicity City. You fruition tuition at jewel school. Solid reverence investment with a hardcore humor score. Come, capture my rapture, delight me…

Dear Abby, I’m planning on killing time by marrying it to habitual rituals and improvisations, lightly dusted with occasional guilt— doomscrolling, drumming on dashboards, rehearsing arguments I’ll never use. Making and undoing lists, eavesdropping, people watching, replaying memories with better lighting and funnier lines. Dear Abby, my question is this: if the time I kill ever comes back…

My morning mirror studies astrology, asks which sign I’d like as my death date. I say I haven’t thought that far ahead, I’m just trying to make it to my first cup of coffee. A day like this feels like a backstage pass at the symphony for the devil: so much heat coming my way when all I want is a pop song to autograph my aura in training. The chain letter I once refused to forward is now…

Maps charting states of denial can’t be trusted for long. Better to get your hands on one offering a state-of-the-art way of being, a tried-and-true fortified state of the union. Even a state of flux offers insight and delight when you’re free to travel between one place and another. Forked roads may induce a state of inertia, but only briefly, once laissez-faire is reminded it’s only riding…

While lying in the park, I admire the clouds above. Never mind that they resemble enormous cotton balls in the sky’s blue hospital; they speak amongst themselves, wondering which shapes I most resemble. One says I look like a dinosaur. Another, a rolling hill. Still another, a dog with wings. I want to call out, tell them I’m just another human enjoying the day. Instead, I remain silent, let…

For breakfast, I have coffee and two scoops of Wanda Coleman. While strolling through the neighborhood, a murder of crows studies me with coal eyes that remember and whisper, “Wanda Coleman.” At a freeway entrance ramp, a man holds a sign asking for change; I offer him a five and a copy of Wanda Coleman. As the sun slow-walks across the sky, I visit a fortuneteller whose every prediction…

The sky is teaching my daughter how to write cloud haikus, and I am in talks with Hollywood bigwigs to rewrite all of Monday’s failed movie scripts. The neighbor across the way grunts and growls in Neanderthal video-game speak and has a dog whose native tongue is bark all day. The cosmic conductor bangs on my door, threatening to cancel my train of thought as the dead letter office keeps…

I witness hollow politicians lip-syncing to the sounds of falling bombs. A fortune cookie warns it’s not a good idea to hire a skunk as your aromatherapist. A woman, moonlighting as a metaphor for the moon when it’s drained of borrowed light, comforts a bullet-toothed man who plays double or nothing with his last pocketful of luck. While waiting for the hour of peace, broken pianos abandon…

seeks quiet, but rebellious adjective that may agree or disagree with nouns. A non-intersective adjective, as in an alleged crime or former friend. Moodiness and occasional bouts of depression, okay. So too, an adjective that shifts meaning by position— the reliability of a responsible person versus the guilt of a person responsible. Looking for quick cashiers, slim hipsters, and pragmatic…

Leave it to a sunny day to turn a boring chord progression into a bright war against imperialism. A day that shimmers you pearl-promised, tranced in rays of purple unhazed, unfazed by the boom of doomsday’s drums. Leave it to a sunny day to steam your third eye clean, to make you feel so far out you can hear the stars sneeze. On a sunny day, no need to have an eraser big enough to correct the…

the city breathes in 4/4. A trumpet bell aimed at sky calls down stars as a busted streetlight asks for a last cigarette before the firing squad. Indigo, ash, neon blur. A last train home and blue lullabies in dark alleyways whispering tales of tenderness without apologies or regret. Up and down these brass-knuckled streets, people live through doubt, survive rust. Breathe in cheer. Speak a…

It was the day when people dressed up in their hopes and dreams and threw a party. Many wished for world peace or lavish fortunes. Others carried quieter, heavier wants: a Cincinnati accountant longed to be a Parisian pastry chef; a man prayed for his wife to be cancer-free; a transgender youth yearned to be understood and accepted by their parents; a brokenhearted mother ached for the warm…

educated by dog-eared books, Billboard hits, and tea-leaf predictions. We witness the faces of our neighbors in clouds, tree trunks, burnt tortillas. Instead of breathing in the fumes of old regrets or heckling the possibility of redemption, we place the voices of our higher selves into the mouths of cops, true-crime podcasters, weary Walmart greeters. As if we’re no longer condemned to…

earth, fire, air, and water trade elemental blows while the masses surge forward and backward like an eight-day clock. Good fortune waits just beyond the shadow of a cross-eyed cross as raucous radio stations sweet-talk cities with searing sonic sway. Bright ideas burn, then get banned by the loathsome elite. Headlines cry the unreal estate market is soaring while citizens are shoved to the…

Don’t heave-ho the get-up-and-go. Just heavyweight. Heavy the wait until you’re sure you’re light on your feet. Hopscotch. Don’t dodge the logic. Log. Ick. Don’t jump in the deep end if you can’t swim. A metaphor is as deep or shallow as its maker dreams it to be. But even if you have little currency or current seeds growing in the brain trust, it’s never too late to learn all the ways an ill…

Praiseworthy ups to all the pregnant pauses birthing real conversations. To humanity’s bountiful soil, forever blooming new becomings. To the boot-scuffed voices of the rough and ready, scar-mapped karmas, but ready to make things right. Praiseworthy ups to bullets that become sunflower seeds rather than learn the dark grammar of gun barrels. To beauty that makes its own rules, Goodwill chic…

This land of struggle and unity is a land of ash. This land of rage and reconciliation is a land of awakening. Stories of grace and discrimination, disease and regeneration keep cycling through history. Will the guns and powers that bleed ever wake one another from their violent sleep? This land of perish, this land of promise. Land of blood, land of love. Right now, what do we hold in our…