It is chock full of jokes and comics, including a joke for every US president illustrated by my sister, Casey Browning. You will get laffs. You will be entertained for 10.6 hours. It’s only $5!!!

Get it here: Future Tense Books

And if you wanted to get my first book of poetry and comics, Either Way I’m Celebrating, from Birds, LLC get it here!

I’ve been working on images for Noah Eli Gordon’s new book This Are the Problem.

Here are a few of them. They go with poems.

What the hell else am I doing? I’m drawing a book cover for Sam Starkweather’s new book, The First Four Books of Sampson Starkweather. I recently blurbed Matt Cook’s new book. It will be out with Publishing Genius in March. I really liked it. I can’t wait until I hold it’s hot pulpy body in my hands. I’m going to read for the Denver Quarterly at AWP. I had a BABY. That was really hard. It pretty much is very painful. But then you have a baby to play with for a long, long time. So it’s cool, says God.

My sister's drawings of Millard Fillmore

Future Tense Books is going to publish a book my jokes and comics called Presidents (And Other Jokes)! The book does have a joke for every president and some new drawings, and lots more jokes.

They are teaming up with Pinball Publishing to create three new books in their Scout Book chapbook series. The other two, to be released simultaneously with mine, are by Melody Owen and Aaron Gilbreath–humans I am excited to learn more about.

Future Tense is a small press out of Portland, Oregon owned and operated by editor Kevin Sampsell and designer Bryan Coffelt.

I have a new campaign. Colorado Public Radio is asking listeners to email them their favorite Christmas Carol. Let’s all vote for Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield AKA the Exorcist Theme Song! There’s no way in hell they will play it on air, but if they did, it would be hilarious.

Email them here: carolcountdown@cpr.org

Say this: My favorite Christmas carol is Tubular Bells (Exorcist theme song) by Mike Oldfield.

If You Can’t Help Big, Help Little
By Toni Browning

In the fifteen years I have been an advocate/case manager for aging services I have seen thousands of older adults; some doing fine on their own, some who were in need of a little help and many who were in predicaments that were desperate and sad.

The common belief that once a person turns sixty there are plenty of services for Older Americans is a myth. Yes, there is Medicaid for a select number of seniors who are in deepest poverty but many older people are not eligible for Medicaid. But even when they have Medicaid it does not pay for the electric bill, the phone bill or buy food. The “government” does not have a pot of money ready to draw on when an older person needs help.

In my fifteen years of working with seniors I have seen children who were determined to make their mother’s or father’s life as comfortable and happy as possible. And sadly, I have also experienced the reverse: children who were oblivious or didn’t care enough to find out if their parents needed help.

Often this is not the fault of the children. They have their own families and must provide for their children and their spouse. And when I talk to the older adult that is exactly what they tell me. “Please don’t bother my children, they have their own families.”
Since when is a mother or a father not a part of a family?

But this article is not about placing blame. It is a plea to get involved in your parent’s life and to try to make that life a little easier, a little less worrisome, a little more comfortable.

Here is an example of how collaboration by the children of one woman helped change her life. Every other month “Edith” became depressed and nervous. She often called just to talk but I could see there was something on her mind. Finally she told me she could no longer pay her electric bill and it was going to be turned off because it had been overdue for many months. I asked if she had told her six children about it. Her reply was “No, they have family of their own and I didn’t want to ask; I know they don’t have it.”

Edith finally gave me permission to contact her youngest daughter, “Joyce.” When I explained the situation, I asked if she would contact the other children to set up a family meeting. One son, “Edgar,” was living in Arizona, one daughter was in Maryland but all except one son wanted to know the outcome of the meeting. On the day of the meeting there were two children present and one on speaker phone. I explained their mother’s situation and they were astonished. “Ma, why didn’t you say something?” “I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell us.” And, her youngest son, who was sitting on the sofa shouted, “Ma, what’s the matter with you?”; which I thought was a little harsh.

After much discussion “Edgar” agreed to pay the overdue bill. The other children, including “Edgar” would send their mother 20 dollars each month toward the electric bill. All during the meeting Edith cried stating she hated to be burden to them and needed a great amount of reassuring.

I am not sure if the one son who didn’t want to be involved ever came around. I have spoken to “Edith” several times since the meeting and in the background I hear the music of the radio or the drone of a TV newsman and I know the lights must be comforting for her in the evening.

But what if you don’t have an extra twenty dollars a month? There are little ways to help. How many times do you and your children go to McDonalds? More than twice? Three times? One of those times get an extra burger and fries and surprise your mom with a visit and dinner with the family.

Does your dad really need another shirt for Christmas? Maybe a better Christmas present would be a paid phone bill for the month of December. Did you make too much roast for dinner? Pack up a Tupperware container and take it over to your parents. If you live out of state or a good distance away; call on a regular basis, at a regular time, even if it’s once a week or once a month. The call will be looked forward to and your mom will make sure she is around to receive the call. Go on a Sunday drive. Stop by with flowers. Plan an evening to watch some favorite TV show or some special event that interests them. Rent an old movie your mom has talked about from “the old days” and watch it with her.

Do these things cost money? Maybe a little. Can they bring happiness or comfort to older folks, knowing someone, their children, are paying attention to them? What do you think?

You and me, let’s learn how to use this jackhammer.
A life full of mystery and suspense,

laundry and a bunch of ways to prepare chicken breasts.
A sixer of Santa’s Butt, fat Sharpies in fists,

this ends now. Are you sure you want to quit?
Any unsaved information will be lost.

The last thing is durable
soft-edged and riddled with perfect deadfalls.

You can see it through the wheat.

I wish I had a nice orange to eat.

II.

I’ve never really harassed a legume, but Elvis Presley molested me.

“oh moon”
“(purpled) canned ravioli”

Little boy, your dog ain’t dead,

he waves as they pass to let them know he’s fine
just watching the hawks.

III.

Eat everything out of a pumpkin.

The unopened coffee tin masks the screams
of the damned contained within

with a yowl harness and a reason to deny it.

What I want to know about you cannot be learned from a bio.

Dear Siamese vagina are u just in my dreams?
I tweet the Vatican and

never hear back.

Underwater talking just sounds like bubbles,
but all the words get going good and then we sink to the pool bottom.

I like cats, but who doesn’t?
Cookies should be made with chaos and love.

IV.

But you, you make me weak. I notice you.
I have fought my way back from better men,

our delicate fail, “the widened ones.”
And the angles

and the lines the shadows drew on the floor
reminded me of your sharp eyes.

This is just to say:
There once was a man from Nantucket.

For 3 days when I was 8 I could speak Chinese.

V.

A stranded envelope quietly sulks
but I’m just a human.

So I was beatin’ my tweet when the doorbell rang,
it was falling down around us,

it was a local brick of coats in the roadway.
As I departed

she loudly farted when the pain of trying
leaves you crying–

I must be the Sysiphus of rain.
And now we’re here, where everything

is tender with the bucolic taste of shame.
I ran out of money to purchase a petard,

so I had to be hoisted on someone else’s.

It’s never a question of whether you should,
it’s whether you tell your friends that you did,

under the tarp of my tongue again

VI.

Caw Caw Caw says the raven and not much else.

The fool escaped from paradise will look over his shoulder and cry:

Straight from Tallahassee with an Irish lassie whose bite is worse than her bark…
Women in airports take bait rather easy, flight delays seem to make everyone sleazy…

It’s parabolic, the way these things stack.
She had post-rustic charm

like the handmade, artisanal space junk secreted under my great uncle’s area rug
But how can you be honest in so little time?

It felt, in fact, like yet another round of strip Cranium.
Spirits come to me and grace my gross tongue,

decomposing is nature’s way of telling you that worms matter!
Cos in the end we are all ugly fuckers!

From the well she watched: waxing and waning;
the sun and the night swam along unknowingly
which is how all whales in wheat fields get there.

Inside the packed bra the rainbow tattoo temporary
mood turned to milk and scared the mature nun slightly blush–

I plunge no pickle in the sickly horn.
In sun dappled shade, it sits gently cooling,

refrigerator whenever a gameshow host says failed structure about the house
you’re in you run to your car which you notice is

not a new car!
Aluminum foil, fisting, dual-traction, torque, carrots, NyQuil, fisting, soccer practice–

Be still the thrill, the thump, the ache!
Sings no more the wire fence in the ceaseless wind

Juanita, Chiquita, my heart went tweet-tweeta–
Rumpus, rumpus, rumpus–

We sing and sign and sleep. Somewhere,
a bird moves, wounded. We lie. We cannot help it.

Equity does not stoop to pick up pins

Wheat berries cannot withstand modern day little toasters
nor uphold the majority of the hipster’s delight:

a vacuum from 1952
the Farm House burning down into memories.

At times entire trees exploded into flames,
lines burnt up,
good go betweens forgetting themselves,

quiet bathysphere stayed on
a whirr against the hammer and anvil of the ear..

Even dub-step needs a gentle caress once in a while
even if it’s from a predatory lender after a heart attack,

a talking cigarette falls head over heels
in love with a clown zombie named Kerosene,
and the large spider jumped onto the car—Is intuition what I think it is?

Sunday’s blossoming inside me.
All things savory were served up cold in the Night Kitchen.

Written over 48 hours by 71 people via Twitter.
October 27-28, 2011