My family often call me a bear.
Perhaps it’s my grumpy nature.
I’m known to roar if startled,
behave badly if woken abruptly.

The world needs comedians,
comedians need people who laugh,
the comedians have Arlen.

A boy with a big laugh,
to fill a hall, a building, to fill the world

A tremulous place of anticipation and dread,
suspicion the colours are changing, are they changing?
What is the sound of a silent train arriving?
Apparently, I’m to depart. I’ve been informed
I have a ticket. I seem to have forgotten

I asked Artificial Intelligence
to write a poem
in the style of Ward Maxwell.
It worked so well
I’m going to use it again.

some people drift through life
others steam ahead, forge their destiny
I’m a pinball

in the midst of our teeming squalor
our inexcusable excesses
the moments when everyone says
shut the fuck up, not right now