Battleground

The final week. Virginia is in play
and western Pennsylvania’s tightening
a bit. It’s just a little frightening.
Republicans don’t take Election Day
so lightly as to fold in fair defeat.
The lawyers take positions for the close
as the electorate, exhausted, goes
the gauntlet, calibrated to the beat
of running time. Most likely we will hear
Bin Laden lecture us before it’s through,
the media complicit in a last
confused extortion. Little else to do
when bastards play into the hand of fear
than spit twice on the single stone I cast.

Biden

We know that Biden’s got some robust moves
across the rattle cannon deck. So what?
His blast of errant rhetoric improves
With age. It fires directly from the gut.
When he digs in and opens up, I find
an element that glows. A solid proof.
He’s pentothal and sodium combined,
a levitating speaker of the truth.
And when the Post presumes to mock and pan
him as a yellow character with donut breath,
it only underscores the Everyman
that gets my vote. He’s “Liberty or Death”–
Thought two the night that “Joe D’oh!” got the nod.
Thought one? Along the line of, “Thank you, God!”

Saturn Series Reading

I am the featured reader, Monday, October 20, at the Saturn Series poetry reading at the Nightingale Lounge in Manhattan (213 2nd Ave, corner of 2nd Ave and W 13th St). See below another Manhattan event. Take your mind off…other things and enjoy a night of poetry including one of the most boisterous and high quality open mics on the planet!

New York

PAINTINGS BY RICK MULLIN

Through October at Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street
Greenwich Village, NYC

Reception–Tuesday, October 14, 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Painting above: West 31st St. (St. Francis of Assisi Church),
oil on canvas, 30″ x 24″