My reaction to your Mudcat monier is like
Smoking hash from a pumpkin
and thinking of Thanksgiving.
A difficult trick to turn…
especially around the holidays.

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!
I say "let him eat!"
There's more then one way to skin a cat!
…but the other eight methods
aren't being taught in schools!
And those books aren't cheap, damn it!
I'm here for learn'n.

The early bird gets the worm!
…yet, nobody seems to notice
that the early worm gets eaten!!
At least it's never addressed…
sun gazing as it were…
and only rats are winning rat races…it's fixed…
saving their pennies and stitching their petticoats!
It was never explained to me with any satisfactory…
my lessons didn't cover that!

It's a good thing that bees aren't the size of barn owls!
It's a damn good thing!
I'd be awfully nervous at picnics.
Bugs are terribly upset with us.

If children aren't allowed to smoke…
Especially at school…why is that the first thing
Your forced to make in art class is a ceramic ashtray??!!
Damn confusing signals.

Yogurt has an active living culture…
yet I'm forced to put up with strip clubs and those
annoying shops that sell nothing but baskets!
Nobody complains -
I'm certain the majority has been infected!
I see these arcane baskets everywhere now.
My brother's wife has a basket for the television remote!
A little remote basket!!

I'm certain they're on to me -
there's few I trust with this!
I'm on the lookout.
It's a bloodless basket cult that I'm sure are responsible
for all of those heartless paintings of geese flying over water,
and all of those covered bridges!

Bob Ross was involved I'm certain!

You show my a Lady Diana commemorative plate,
and I'll bet there's a damn basket within 5 feet of it!
They show at your door, early, on your day off…
grinning…asking if you'd like to learn to make baskets
right in the privacy of your home.
Become one of the few, the proud, the basket brigade!
I know what their up to.

Once I was at Union Station,
Just killing time for the Antioch 5:45
When somewhere among the unending surges,
Of the infinite hordes of gainfully employed -
Moving smoothly and rudely from the cattle cars,
To the bright blinding glare of commercialism…
I distinctly heard a low "MOO"

Never a native…I ambled forward,
Just this side of the people aquarium,
Until, I too surfaced…
The prime material plane.
Somewhere in the phallic metropolis -
Lounging gaggles of busy street birds
The city buzz and the impressive asphalt grid,
The ceaseless swath of dull yellow taxis
And the sweet smell of the chocolate factory
Like the lingering scent of a child's burp.

But details faded outside my peripherals,
Making room for the slow rendering images,
And high ended bitmaps…and JPEGS…
…Outside the horizons of my spheres of influence.
One hell of a trick,
700 dots per square inch.
How thorough…but,
They're not fooling me like they used to.

Hell…didn't I see that cloud bank the day before yesterday?
And there's something familiar about those strays.
Is this urban static a sound loop looping?
Those waiters look suspiciously flat…
Was that a bar code on his lapel?
Can synchronicity be explained away
By the eyeball in my system tray?
Is that butterfly a government spy?
Such a convenient biology.

I rush across the street…
I pick up a pay phone and shout PLUTONIUM!
PRESIDENTAL SLUDGE!
FISHER SALAD!!
PHOTOSHOP!
And wait for the squad cars and armored soldiers,
Who flog and cuff me and toss my dangerous form,
Into the back of an Amway truck.
I know too much!

Some hours later -
Lobotomized and grinning,
I saunter out of the Pentagon wearing an embroidered patch,
That coldly tags me as "Camus Absurd Man"
700 dots per square inch.

The cicadas were warming up their instruments
as echoes of "last call" were ebbing in the canyons,
behind every crooked smiling window tooth,
grinning the moon glow collective…

Eight miles north of a camp site in Quebec,
Big Foot was pissing in the bushes
and softly whistling a Scott Joplin tune in F#…
seems it was a favorite of the Pharaohs.

In Denny's diners from every horse post and paved deer trail
on the planet, creatures of almost subhuman bearing were filing in.
"Moons over My'Hammy"…smoking please.
Whores were shutting the doors behind drunken conventioneers…
Pillowed mints already tasted.

On some road outside of Sharpsville
a fiber optics peddler was snorting coke
and wishing he looked better naked.
Police were breaking down a door in Tampa…
3 dead in a domestic tif.

Somewhere in Rossville a farmer's wife was making coffee
while an Andromedian Spacecraft hovered silently above the corn,
microwaving circled glyphs for the crop-dusters to marvel over.

A recently divorced woman in Jersey was check'n her e-mail and
cruising a Bi-curious chat room…cordless in tow,
while a tuna boat was trolling over an observant giant squid.

It was on.

Free will was ebbing on the pre-dawn foam…
washing in on the rhythmic ripples of all that other free will
in a sea of wills that couldn't hold their own alone.
Good morning Earth…
I ain't sleepy 'no' more.

It's true
I'd like to walk the Earth -
Tread the full circle in a lazy stride
Unshaven
Unwashed
Not minding my own filth
And the stink of my own breath
Never-minding that my sight is slowly fading
As my footsteps vanish behind me
I'd feed a deer an apple right out of my hand
And sleep in the darkness of a cougar's cave
Throw stones and shadow fence with fallen branches
Cry out loud and sing to the migrating Monarchs
And whisper secrets to the bare earth beneath me
I'd ride atop a coal car and smoke fresh marijuana from a coke can
Stay up for days in a daze
Dodging and hiding…teaching myself to whistle Mississippi Queen
To the moon frogs and night beams
Scratch myself raw and walk on all fours
Ignore the collective consciousness
Talk openly to Gods
And masturbate right in front of them
I'd sneak into the farmers house and swipe all the labels from his canned goods
Leaf through his Max Brand western novels and pet his dog
I'd navigate by starlight
Map the earth with my shoes
Walk all the way to Italy
Holding my breath and waving at Poseidon
Tell him not to look so glum
He looks good in green…"stop your bitching"
I'd collect pixie dust in a fishing net
And blow it into the open windows of sleeping children's rooms
Turn over a large flat stone and count the spider eggs and magic Sal Bugs
Sit on a thick Sycamore limb and swing my legs
Play nine pins with the forest folk
Unslip the moist restraints of my fragile mind in a long fine curve
I'd become meat
I'd become the quick blooded beat
I'd be ripe and randy
Be sick and soaked to my knees in selfish swallows
Be greedy and smooth
Be ready but wait
Be an animal God and court mother nature with a fresh bouquet of bright puffy weeds
Get down to some serious cloud busting
Get a full body tattoo of myself…only larger
And parade my naked ass through the silent sleepy streets
Wear a bright red fiber-glass jock strap and a jet black wig
Hand out photo copies of my birth certificate to blind broom makers and elder barbers
Snore loudly from the filthy floors of bus station bathrooms
Scrawl my private journal on restaurant napkins with a ball point pen
Dissect the human condition with a soup spoon
Protest the senseless waste of time
Protest the preoccupation of time
Make myself available once a week to vomit outside Chinese buffets
While astride a speeding shopping cart shouting…"I am king-shit of fuck mountain"
Wear a Lone Ranger costume and shoot blanks at passing motorists
I'd breathe easily through a snorkel…everywhere I went
Sell my semen, my blood, and donate all my organs to science
But I'm keeping my skull damn it…it's just too fucking cool
I'd live in a waking dream…unable to run for shit, but flying like a bird
Walking right through walls and making little sense of the printed word
Phone in anonymous bomb threats to telephone psychics
Sure…
I'd like to walk the Earth
I'd like to perform live at my own funeral
I'd like to avoid my unpredictable doom
I'd like to know why it's not polite to eat the bride and groom
on a wedding cake
Or play an accordion during a somber wake
Or storm the pentagon with torches and farm implements
I'd relocate to a new shadow
I'd step lively
Or simply…eat Coco-puffs and watch cartoons

Hey Osiris!…go back and walk

Pop's slamming his hand in the fork drawer…screaming.
There's the next ( week's fickle ) flavor of the month!
Miss Teen pop star popping diet pills…pop.
Popping up on a two page spread…beaded sweat and soda ( pop ).
Hand in her panties, selling toothpaste…pop…
while the skulking thought police set their snares,

Pop goes my culture right under my nose.
I never wanted the Mickey Mouse Club
To become a breeding stable…for the next lolita
heavy weight champ of soft porn corn.
Pop corn porn…candied apples and sun screen tan lines.
That peck, peck, pecking didn't seem like much…
yet, over years it ate clean through the bone, bones bleeding.
Pop!
Something to do with the sun's lack of mystery…
it was no longer charming to throw stones at it…screaming.

Popping Fresh, Pop-ups, pop the iron lung…pop my reptilian core.
Pop me until I can't feel my arms.
Pop me until I shuffle like a corpse beneath the blinding light
of pop sun shopping malls…dragging my cold dead arms.
Peel my urban husk…unzip my membrane, raw…
let all that urban static blink me strobe, strobe blinking
into the neon nexus of blissful lobotomized butterfly milk.
Got Pop?

Let me ride astride the astral molasses!
Set me to slow roast on the bare horizon…
and in a breathtaking glimpse of one infallible purpose,
martyr myself in a tight viscous pupa…
no more confusing then clay.
…just let me wake up…
discover that I was my own god dreaming…
that the whole of this mess was just a grand example
of full scale multi-tasking of my buried consciousness.
Blame me.
Pop!
Make me stand in the corner and think about it.
Pop!
Make me go back and walk.
Pop!
Tell me that I can't go out and play until I've eaten everything on my plate.
Make me walk out and get my own switch…
And make me watch while you trim the leaves off.
Pop!
Make me hold my ankles and bend over…tight lipped…waiting.
Pop!
Stripe my ass with scolding red penance.
I'll still love you.
I'm Glob-Stop-McPop Top!
I sang in seven flavors.
If all your taste was in your mouth…
You didn't bitch about getting sick.
Pop!
You always asked for seconds…hell, you waited for seconds!
You didn't mind it that your favorite musician
doesn't even play an instrument!
So long as they tasted good, Charlie Tuna!
Your day dreams were pop dreams…
Your monicer a brand name of desire.