Specious Interspecies Psychonaut Cape/r?

...And Madonna, she still has not showed

We see this empty cage now corrode

Where her cape of the stage once had flowed

The fiddler, he now steps to the road...

—Bob Dylan, Visions of Johanna

––––––––

Rule of your road

silento meditation

rather than a retro

club scene surfeit

with molly rollers

+ kitty flipperinos

we all gather ‘round

virginal wild oak wood

meadow’s Bodhi tree.

My M.D. 125 pounds

now fit as proverbial

fiddle but nada J.Lo

cagier disco steps

here, I am able to

assess risks from

cardiovascular

diseases—-plus

obtain directly

from chemists

unadulterated

goodies uncut

with fentanyl

or strychnine.

Bud offers, Ger

you know what

to do. It is time

just walk away.

It don’t matter

how smart or

experienced.

Said as friend

not as parent.

––––––––

Late-phase often graphic poet arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s a multiple Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee who also has been invited to serve as judge for competitions. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is a 2025 retrospective. His words have been widely published in four collections; by Rattle, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Gravity of the Thing, Poetry Center of San Jose, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, Deronda Review, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Mount Saint Mary’s University/LA, Oberlin, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, CUNY, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago, Virginia and Alabama university presses — and more. He’s a Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources to dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s been married since 1969 and has three kids, seven grandsons — and looks forward to future granddaughters. Learn more at gerardsarnat.com.