Ye Olde Blogspot, neglected lo these many years (10), still exists! Also, the counter I left ticking claims over 169,000 page views, so I feel like I ought to feed it again and see if it grows... like sourdough, like baby lizards, like gross extrusions from a Play-Doh fun factory.

So, until my attention span craps out again, I will collect the poems from my burgeoning bookling, Raised By TV. 

Looney Tunes

We watch the beatings Sylvester takes
from Granny’s umbrella, from a bowling ball
downspouted down his gullet
and into his now bulbous abdomen;
the anvils, bombs, and boulders
inflicted on Wile E. Coyote by himself;
the backfiring cannons that blacken
Yosemite Sam’s mad mug, and his militaristic
malfeasance blowing back on him
by way of his underpants—bulging diaper-like—
loaded with black powder sifting out of course
in a perfect trail, an unbroken fuse
from match to horizon, to a hiding place
among powder kegs itching to blow.
And that hunted, haunted anti-Buddha,
Daffy Duck, whose Thanatos complex bloats
with every shot, realigning his bill
after each shotgun blast, scorched but self-restoring,
made pure by bitter outrage, crying foul,
spouting verses of versus on a rise of spittle,
his faith in humanity always smithereened.

At what age did we learn such injuries
translated into real life—our bodies—
are unendurable? That heads made flat
move us beyond dizzy stars and black curtains,
that the hilarious noise of accordion legs
is quite unlike the sound of shattered femurs? 
Like Elmer Fudd resigned to his place 
as an outdoorsman in an eternal hunting season, 
I load the DVD for my daughter.

Because no one can give her a world 
without violence, we give her this one.
With her little wooden carrot, she points
and jabbers like Bugs as the first elastic note
of the Warner theme bends space and time
ahead of the changes to come.