What Did You Do Today? (I Wrote Some Poems)

poem written on our way to Costco

self storage
means something
different
to buddhists

. . .

tree poem

a tree surgeon
whacked off
all the diseased branches
with a chainsaw
and the stumpy remains
of the main trunk
and the truncated limbs
looks like
a giant stubby fingered hand
bursting out of the soil
like an elemental
spirit
grasping for the sun

. . .

once upon a porn theater

for years
literally years
the old porn theater
on Hollywood near Highland
ran Deep Throat
again and again and again
until videotape
and the Internet
did what the law
and legions of moralists
couldn’t
and ran them
out of business

they were replaced
by a Spanish evangelical church
that painted the exterior
gleaming white
to represent
its pure new soul

they lasted
not even half as long
as Deep Throat

now
a gaudy
faux museum
lures in suckers
from the streets

(from the streets? 
ha! 
tourists
from the sticks)

there’s a moral
to be gleamed
from all this
but damned
if I can
figure out
what it
is

. . .

the time when the luck runs out

eventually
everybody
sees their luck
run out
you finally roll
snake-eyes
and everything
you had
vanishes
either you die
or someone else

and that’s
the good news
that’s
the blessing

because at least
there’s a heart
left to mourn

you think
your money
will give
a fuck?

. . .

is money sentient?

I come up
with crazy ideas
like this one:

what if
money is sentient
self-aware
not the physical coins
or paper bills but
the algorithms
the patterns
the idea behind
modern finances

what if
money
is alive
and blames us
for its hellish existence

never capable of feeling love
of any
kind
it wants
to die
and that means
it has
to kill
us first

and the way
that works best
lets us eat and drink
poisons to
our hearts’ content
until dead
influencing our choices
as both buyers
and sellers
to self-destruct

like I
said
I come up
with crazy ideas
but are they
crazy enough?

© Buzz Dixon