1

If we only spoke numeric
how to express supreme intelligence?
Perhaps: 1 = creation = creator

If we only spoke numeric
how to express disagreement ?
Perhaps: creation = 0

The value of one is greater than the value of zero

Intimacy

You're suppose to be my friend
than why throw in my face admitted flaws
"To err is human, to forgive is divine"
to be unforgiving is unforgiving

Elementary

Poetry is okay, music is fine
Nothing beats the cook, however,
who searching for a particular taste
finds it by chance or by design

State of Emptiness

A feeling of having won the race,
of pulse and breath regained
and now a drift in flat-lining

To war or not to war

To analyze a confrontation
take a deep breath, turn the other cheek
Serene detachment makes it happen

Does this mean not to ever war ?
Not necessarily
It means detachment

The Embezzler

A good joke and a bad joke have timing and execution in common
It was like a bad joke, that Bethune died a week after retiring
He had already booked a long overdue vacation in Brazil

Why Believe

Creation is an utterance
i am in the utterance
therefore, i believe in me
Do not those who won't in God
nonetheless believe in themselves?

In our given senses, we all believe.
If you believe in numbers
will you not subscribe to math?
If there is music are there not voices?
Where there's not a wheel is there not a center?
If there's a me, is there not a U?

As Wall Street Shakes

Wealth and pleasure are momentary
If you have, live as if you have not
Worry leads to lost of faith

Optimism

Why argue
Enough hate abounds
as to plant doubt if God exists
I wish to live, however, in the faith that God is
and furthermore, that God is Love and Love is God

Scarce, as it may be, love exist (so let us wish).

Message in Code

Poverty ongoing everywhere meanders
intensely sorry
home underscored returns tomorrow

On Selecting Descendents

You'll invariably find a flaw in whatever is submitted to microscopic inspection
The prospective mate who's scrutinized is usually discovered to be a mess

To determine if potential prorogation is worth the sex it takes,
ignore obvious distractions, and zoom in on what's beneath

Snow Storm

A bird perches tall on a borrowed limp
Fading light reflects from its scarlet breast
It opens wide its blue wings and flies off into permeation
The rush of flight flicks snow flakes to the ground
which shimmering fall through the night
till the blanket of white is heavy on Sunday
and heavier the day which follows

Here We Go Again

Sitting on a ledge, on the very edge
feet dangling over the precipice
One false move and off you go
tumbling head first into the vortex,
the whirlpool below, the dizzying swirl of 100 billion
100 billion million constellations
in disconcerting clock work

However, it's only up to one's losing consciousness
that the experience seems the bleakest, Get over it,
it's not like this is your first time. There was that when...
when the comet streaked into the big Mama
and impregnated her with the big bambino,
the opportunity you seized, and leaped into the pod,
no second guessing. Come on, Voyager,
it is as now as it was then, Black Hole of sorts?
Welcome to the Deja Vu universe

This is not funny!

Under the effects of jet lag,I drift through the terminal
I look for my cell phone but where did I put it
I must have packed with the tooth brush
So I go over to a bank of coin phones to call my wife
A recording tells me, that if I wanna make a call,
deposit 50 cents, which I do twice but don't get through
So I move to the next phone, which has no dial tone,
So I move to a third; same recording as the first,
same two quarters, same no connection

The last phone's recording is different though:
"If you want to make a call, hang up!"
Hang up? That's different and economical, too
So I hang up and wait and wait, but nothing happens.
...I'll call from the taxi stand

Shuffling through the airport
on the way to baggage claim
I come upon a lounge for smokers.
I see a face pressed against the window,
staring at me through a nicotine fog
the guy looks vaguely familiar,
and to tell the truth, he looks kinda dead
his eyes are hollow, his complexion jaundice
we never smile, we never wave, I simply turn away

Further down, I see an Air France poster
On it, Mona Lisa bids me to visit the Louvre
I pause a moment to entertain a suspicion
regarding Mr. Da Vinci's enigmatic model
Just then, I hear over a muffled loudspeaker,
an ethereal voice which hauntingly draws out every syllable:
"Might not the Mona Lisa have been a womb-man???

Like a cadaver flung at me by catapult, it hits me
This ain't no airport, screw the luggage!
I must have died on the dentist chair

The Quality of Mercy is Not Strained

The one you can't forgive is the one who has you beat
There are those near impossible to forgive
Holocaust victims how can they forgive
should they even attempt it?

Being not a Holocaust victim,
I dare not consider the question
beyond its immediacy

It would seem to me the thing to do
is bury the wrong doers so deep
it would be impractical to exhume them
or extract from them remaining flesh

Where to find such a shovel?
How deep to dig the pit?
To hell or heaven?

Help, can you heal me ?

The young doctor in setting up his practice,
might first consider first commercial viability
To cure with no nonsense is Hippocrates

Patient, beware!
Behind a seemingly compassionate exterior
may hide a cartel of drug pushers

Trust versus Faith (draft)

Trust is hedging on some notion of probability
Faith sees with other eyes
You may trust in a dollar to buy you a dollar's worth
of what a dollar maybe worth at the time of purchase
Trust, in that instance, is trust in the dollar versus supply

I base no faith on that kind of trust
My faith is in trust of God

True Joy

We thank you for this day,
Lord of Rain and Sunshine
We drink again from the fountain
and perceive, again, that life is pure

The morning starts off cold
By mid-day, hats and jackets are discarded
to work loose the garden
We move rock, we see worms
new green breaking through the earth

At three o'clock, the sun begins to set
into some other forest sunrise
We put away the tools. We close the shed
We return to the house to drink and think
that life is grand, that life is love,
that love is God. Even the love of a couple
even the love for their garden

The Nail Cutter

What you accept as reality
becomes your reality, real or not
If you accept 9 to 5 as all too real,
be careful, you may not be able to soon escape it

I accept the cutting of my nails as real
other obligations are more debatable

The Passenger Next Seat (draft)

Truitt Doors is tripping to New York
strangers we were before
and strangers we'll remain after we deplane
a two hour flight from Hartsfield-Jackson International
He seems stressed, says on a cell
that he's missed a flight
and won't make the three o'clock meeting

Truitt, maybe to relieve himself,
fidgets with curious contraptions electronically driven
bewildering to me, a Neanderthal in disguise

Wayland's Barbecue, Texas Syle (draft)

Enterprise once thrived in Swaggerville
before ambition hopped a bus
its young headed for other haunts
a common affliction in middle America
first arthritis, then dementia
before you know it, the town's a bust

Jeremy Wayland is holding fast
Where he is is where he's at
What would he do New York?
Nobody greets you with a "howdy" there
What would he do in California?
Hollywood and the Vatican are the Great Harlots
So preaches the Reverend Fillmore Hightower
at First Baptist

Jeremy is the third generation to run the family business
Wayland's Barbecue on Main Street, a Texas eating tradition
Doesn't make a helluva lot of money. No liens on it, either
One day, Jeremy has an ass kickin' epiphany
Why not celebrate Swaggerville, its quirkiness, its swagger?
We're a nation of little towns, aren't we?
And little towns are little heavens and awfully cute

Come one, come all. Everyone's invited; who can yodel
who can juggle, who can make you wanna piss
"Saturday Nite at Wayland's - The Talent Show"
Barbecue up the kazoo, every five drinks gets you two,
During which time Jeremy shoots a documentary -
"Swaggerville, Bluster and Braggarts,"
an immediate cult success

Jeremy Cricket Wayland...
last seen on Hollywood and Vine,
living his dreams in living color

Big Bang's Enigma

The expansion should be decelerating
some scientists believe
Why the opposite is happening
is anybody's guess

Perhaps its not expansion
perhaps it's contraction
a sucking in like a whirlpool
when water goes down a sink

The Gauntlet of Boulders

What, memory can a river have
that is not the plowing of its present course
which jumps, pushes, extends into itself
upward ever upward in sheets of thunder
that in blizzards return as mean

Melting snow charts the summer creek
liquid diamonds cut through the granite
white water tongue for the flings of rafters
the path to heaven for those who were

Don't think I don't see the irony

On Sundays and Wednesday late
I roll out the garbage can to the sidewalk
to be collected the next day
I look into the night sky
and see there the candle stars and other debris
I recognize I had a more hairier ancestor than I
who did the same thing a hundred thousand years ago
the trash from the cave
the candle stars and other debris

The Richest Man I Ever Knew

You ask me if I'm wealthy. You gotta be joking
That's like asking a worm if he thinks he's a snake
because snakes, also, crawl on their bellies

I'm poor because I own nothing.
I'm rich because nobody owns me

You reply, but you seem not to worry about money
Why worry when you have enough for tomorrow,
and the day after you might be gone

The Enigma of The Prodigal Son

You wanna do right by a prodigal son
give him leave to live with the pigs a while

Propogation

More sleep has been lost over the changing of diapers
than wondering who God is and was --- such a Creator
as in the creation of sex, the ultimate trip
the ultimate trap in the creation of others

Gugu gaga (draft)

You learn to stand
you learn to crawl
you learn to walk and then to talk
and then to dance and then to run
and in old age in reverse to do...
in your head
if you are gifted

Born Again

Babies are masters of crawl
they're also super in the practice of reach,
I've seen them grab with extended fingers
the tips of which may not be human
It's difficult to stop them, they're so darn determined

This I've seen as a mother,
infants are power pumps of toothless wonder
However, once they've teethed they'll bleed you silly
Once they get started it's hard to stop them,
if your bra is not re-strapped quick time

Should my nipples one day reach to touch my knee caps,
and could I have but one payback on creation,
it would be to turn the endless stars into crying infants
to crawl all over space and time like crazy
I've had seven and not another one!

My Atlanta Also

Collars and ties, and suit jacket vacate in troves
the downtown district of government and commerce
Think of the long commute back home as a mandatory transition
Don't dream of getting depressed by 9 to 5, Monday through Friday
We're working in heaven, buster, as opposed to a sweat shop
Here in the U.S. of A, we goof around the frequent water cooler
There in Asia, they go robotic for 30 cents a day for 14 hours

As we commute back home to suburban estates
from the downtown government and commerce district
we leave behind the seamy sores of inner city
the pit stops of zombies, of pedophiles and other felons,
"Hey Mister, can you spare a buck?
I haven't had a square meal since I got dumped
(He means to say he's just been released from jail)

In the gusts of an impending late March ice storm
in the dim and gloom intensifying, I, a shiftless man,
dingily slip off the shoes of a sleeping, homeless ex sergeant
a criminal act to be sure, and of self preservation be assured
There are no enemy combatants between him and me,
only the Republic for which we stand on bread lines
No medals of valor shall be awarded the walking wounded
This war ain't like others.
The price of honor ain't worth a bully pulpit
Go piss in the alley, and while you're there
find a cardboard mattress on which to spend the evening
It's getting colder than a witches tit
It's a night to freeze your toes off

Back to Us

Poetry engages, intends, insists
that love run after truth

I've seen in cities, a poor frazzled lady
spend days into weeks
in a post office writing away
page after page of an endless letter
to an unknown correspondent

Invitation to A Cross Atlantic

Come fly with me
You've been in the closet too long
Be young, be bold, shake off the cobwebs
Let's see if it is as we conceived it,
that the door to out is the door to in
We do not guarantee success in this business
We only opine as to what escape is

How Poetry

This full moon night in August
Like a moth drawn to a street light
I swoon over you
Be my lamp post tonight or burn me
My legs tremble, my knees buckle
my door is off the hinges
I wait here behind a beaded curtain
A kiss would not offend me
Come closer that I may smell you
Is it your cologne that spins me
or the crickets and the frog songs
in the thicket

You smoke my expectations with smoldering timber
Can we survive the tremors till September?
An early frost would be really yippee
to the blaze in our groin and loins
oh, to be cozy by a fireplace to vary a bit the intercourse
an October blanket over our legs
a cup of wine, the kisses mild, the caresses barely
reprieve at last from summer's swelter
Could this three alarm fire we that has hit us
is the pepperoni pizza we just finished?

Oh, my Sweetness, what will be of us?
So many hayrides before it snows
like now, my breath heaves to and fro
as me breast strokes rip tides out the window,
and please do serve yourself to my knishes
but listen, will you, to what the green skin things croak
in gasps of conjoined exasperation in yonder swamp
listen, that you may interpret to the decibel:

Our fingers march like troop of minstrel singers
to castle ramparts in forest dark
Ought I be more explicit?
Let acupressure tell the rest
as if the rest need be told
Hold fast, from here on the ride gets rough

Frankly, all this preoccupation with sex is stupid
but absent it, would any egg get laid
As it is, it's mostly accidental
Let us have a family, by mutual consent
By and by, let's go for tribe

I ask you not blush, but suspect already
you're going through 12 shades from pink to red
my beau from Kiev, I your Chomsky Village bride
In America we landed 5 years ago,
requesting asylum five years this day
twice we married that same year
once in a LA chapel...
second time, a woman rabbi said, go have some fun
And here we are back in Brooklyn where we stated
green cards newly issued. Happy birthday, Irving
may we live to be a hundred plus
and never live to regret it

Feline Fit and Fabulous

The cat's nature coaches her
you'll never see a cat acting like an ape
or waddling like a duck, a total disgrace
No cat's a slinking salamander
no cat's a stinking rat
Call a squirrel cute
What's cute about a rat
who does trees instead of sewers?

You'll never meet the cat
who wished was born a bat
Something weird are bats,
Mice who fly? Charles, kindly explain

No, my kitten. The lady is a pussy
who stalks and pounces
and kills without contrition
A smaller version of the bobcat
as deadly as a jaguar
All eyes and claws,
she gifts the planet with more litters
than humans could ever wish for, even artificial

Behold the high grass stalker
in the foreclosed jungle
across the street from my house
where I keep its nemesis, my doberman
nicknamed "Heinrich Himmler"

Why Poetry

As "Y" follows "X"
As "Z" follows "Y"
Why-Poetry lies somewhere betwixt
Lady Yin and Master Yang

If Y could be released,
would not all our inhibitions scattered fly?
Then, would we be liberated to really go bananas,
the witch would give a different spin to Darwin's Theory of Evolution,
that sequences, random or programmable,
are prone to return to their primal state of conscience
except, perhaps, a kosher haiku, as primal as it gets

Why poetry? Why not!
It's just another kind of crossword puzzle
self composed crossword puzzle and more entrancing

When Poetry

When is poetry ripe to write
when urgency cries you pin it down
before it eats you out of board and spouse,
for poetry is the domain of the chronically possessed
like a wicked itch much scratching does not put to rest,
may even bruise, hose it down,or else
it'll make you climb the wall, or send you down the tube
If it takes from now to Tuesday, exorcise the bastard now!
In order for a seed to sprout,the pod must fall
the pod must crack. It's a matter of surrender and release
...to another pass the contagion

Who are Poets

Giselle virgins skip rope
which is the shimmering and taut horizon ---
i'm talking 'bout antelopes
on the mirage plains of Mother Africa

A mile high where the air is cooler
the sun is also hotter,
and the vulture hooded scope below
dieing beasts, what feasts to pick to the bone
and mind your bloody manners, you clawed and beaked
raw is good, cooked is all too human


I'm wildebeest...this is my story waterhole
where my herd scents danger lurking
as crocodiles shut down their periscopes
the more adroitly to triangulate their massive jaws
and chomp the dreaming drinkers who untimely ignored
the stream from which they were sipping
raw is good, but cursed cooking incinerates the grasslands

Ye, fellow wildebeests and other panicked creatures
it's always is as foretold it was:
We all are one in happenstance
to predators - meal
to poets - food for thought
poets who unmercifully scavenge
the fallen, the feeding and the eaten

What is Poetry?

It's the view from the window
as well as the rear view mirror
the window, you and me
oft times painfully reminisce
kinda what you supposed and to it are predisposed
but kinda missed it when you start to flesh it out
so you backtrack a bit, and leaping lizards!
you tend to wander way off the track
and before you know it,
you're in an "other venue"
the only thing you ever keep
this laughable frame of window
this preposterous will to submit
verse to verse, ghost to ghost,
one adventure to the next in line

Before The Pill

Had I a say in the matter, I would've picked a future time.
Instead, I get dropped into this hostile environment of 19o9,
where all the pants are creased and men and their hats
are as inseparable as women's girth and girdles,
a time before the incineration of brassieres,
a time before the invention of the pill,
when barefoot in winter and pregnant in summer
meant a women had no place to run,
only where to get laid
and 9 months late, scream and deliver---
babies forever

Instrument of Tortture, RSVP

Indeed, the cross was choice Roman instrument of horrors
and on seeing its power to entertain in the Coliseum
cats were rounded up in Africa and advertised on local billboards
which made the gore more thrilling
to frenzy the crowd to a pitch
to give them gladiators thumbs up or thumbs down
the second half of the performance, after the break
...stuffing and orgies, as it was called back then

Even today, a cross can be pushed to the hilt
when the self righteous feel an itch
to wield religion like a sword...
and stick it to them to whom it ought not be stuck
...no worry, no body move, no body gets hurt

An interesting geometric presents the cross,
turned on its side looks like an "X"
upright can symbolize a compass
or a skinny figure, arms outstretched

An interesting question mark is the cross of Jesus
Was the victim offered to tell us something about him and us?
Was that something an offer to accept that for wicked us
love's ultimate sacrifice was naked nailed to a bloody cross,
Caesar's then instrument of justice and imperial peace?

Were it only a poem up for discussion
it would not be so theologically loaded
let us accept that to believe or not
is an issue as perplexing as Hamlet's "To be or not..."
(which always seemed to me more an answer than a question)
To believe in Jesus nailing,
I'll concede the story is breathtaking
the idea of rescue from loveless-ness,
so simple, that illogical?
But is love any more logical,
or any less simple or impractical?
Yes, it is --- and no it isn't.
this part of it is obvious.

But again, as to believe or not
either way, doubts persist
when do they not!
Still, since you're a gambling fool
you play the hunch,what to lose if you believe,
what to gain when you won't?
What could be more simple
what more excruciatingly attractive?

Now, let's say that to the offer believe
a guy responds affirmatively---
an exclamatory, Yes, count me in!
while another guy of different mind set reacts,
Hell no, you're joking. You think I'm stupid!

Either way, in the exclamation point of your yea or nay
you've managed to stand the cross geometric on its head
arms tucked in, now eat it!

Were Mapovia selling you a car, buddy
she'd invite you to give it a spin around the block
Were it but a car,
Oi, would she have a deal for you!

To Atheists and Believers Alike

These are the suspicions which Mapovia has harbored throughout;
that the twinkling of stars are supernova periwinkles and traffic lights,
that spiraling galaxies is time retraced
that color may be more, a map of transcendental space,
that there is a harmonic which accounts for creation,
that in the beginning was the verse and the verse was made universe,
that mirrors are the shallowest of reflecting surfaces
the deepest being human faces,
that everyone (no matter who) believes in language
how else would we argue
that there is no "me" without a "we"
and no "we" without a super ego,
finally, that one earth orbit equals a year
times 50, that's why we sag...
No kidding

To Loving Atheists

What a gap hard to close
---not difficult,
i believe, you don't
what could be more simple
what could be so final

Rose and Nightingale

Have you ever seen a meadow so green,
that with eyes turning green you devour it piece by piece ?

Have you ever seen a day so blue
you know your truer self is rolled up in it?

Have you ever passed a tree
you did not want to take home to your mother?

Have you ever seen a roach,
that on closer inspection does not resemble a broach?

And when a baby smiles, does it not make you wish
to be radiate again the innocence?

Is this not all discernible of Everlasting Mystery?
Who rejects that Lord of Awakenings is here present for You and Us ?

Certainly not a rose... nor any nightingale that ever was

The Friendly Skies

The pilot has a Southern drawl, and I'm loving it
as she tells the altitude we are cruising,
the passing regions neath the 800 miles of cloud,
that has not let us see through the windows since takeoff,
and oh yes, the blue moon somewhere out there
at us peeping.

Darn, these Southerners are all first class charm and business.

If the flight runs into trouble,
let it be a Texas angel to inform me
or a voice from Sweet Home Alabama
or from slow as molasses Mississippi.

The last damn thing, I'd wanna hear
is a guy that sounds like a Wall Street banker
telling us he might have to ditch the Boeing.

Doors

He's on the cell resigned to flight's delay
Ring-a-Ling....Pruitt Doors from L.A.
calling Gale Higgins, Cleveland Office
"Three o'clock Meeting "I'm gonna miss,
but try like dickens to conference call it."

The Age of Wonders, virtual offices in cockpit space
The Pruitt Doors, the Gale Higgins, so completely with it,
so utterly web.

Makes poor Mapovia feel helplessly Neanderthal,
wouldn't exchange it, however,
to be a Joe Biden.

Not All Is What It Seems (draft)

I love the mate as much as one possibly could
one who complains to make himself feel good
getting out might cheer him up
for sure, the occasional escape on my part
keep me sane and fit
I invite the wet blanket to tour with me
but he prefers to remain secluded
I tell him,there's nothing like travel to give you perspective
but the mate's a dour writer, who claims travel far and wide
in wordy concepts, must be a dark neighborhood his closet

Thus, I being different, keep my passport close
I'd really like to visit India and Morocco,
I think in my other life, I might have been a Bedouin
hoping it was a Bedouin male, not one of his camels
nor one of his harem.

Now, dig this
when I get back to the cellar apartment
the mate complains I never take him anywhere
that I never bring him flowers
The first is false, the second true
maybe I ought to bring the writer his due
bloody roses when I'm on mine
a gesture of thanksgiving for permitting us,
for me to fly alone... Just he try to stop me!
Why should Mapovia slink in Harvard
when tomorrow, I could be skiing
the snowy slopes of the Pyrenees

for

Little Girl (III) - draft

Up front, let me tell you, little boys and girls
that like Marlene Dietrich,"I sometimes like a man
who doesn't believe what a woman tells him."

By the cackling fire slept a party of four
to keep predators at bay
in a northern portion of Wyoming
overhead, an ink well of a night,
its stillness is engulfing
if stars could sing like cherubim, believe me
more than misty, my eyes would be splintered
sometimes, I wish just for that
for a million stars to pierce me through
and heaven's mercy might be just like that
as cold as the passing fire of meteors

And then the sky begins to pale in the quadrant
the foursome by the cackling begin to stir
and awake without alarm clock
to pack the gear in silence, which is rare for tourists
and drink a cup of bitter coffee, which too is rare
for only the flimsy drink black coffee sweet
and they that won't sip it deep or pack their gear in silence
for heaven's mercy might be like so
the fire doused, a new day dawning
and the steady flow of channeled water

they push the rubber into the stream
two men and a women and a girl, maybe all of 11,
a bit of sleep still in her eyes, it was not coffee that she drank
instead a cup of Ovaltine. Her mother believes
you drink coffee before menstruation
your growth may be stunted

Before they all get soaked and harried
I nuzzle up to the woman to inquire as to who she is
and coy within, she replies,
"Some of my friends call me Janet Reno"
and I to keep the gag aloft ask
"So who then is the President?"

For you who may not be in the know
Reno was once Clinton's Attorney General
infamous for the incident at Waco

Replies Sister Girlfriend
"Don't make me laugh until I cry
Bill's my ex but his last name's Davies
as to the other guy, he's next in line
to try to groom me...that is, if he survives the rapids


I, River Squaw, wink at the girl all of 11
flat chested, who's not yet to seen her first egg drop
and make to her a soft suggestion,
"Best hold on tight, Clementine,
this ride is just beginning."

And up and down they go,
a-rafting through canyon slides
as if shot from one helluva water cannon
white waters are not by boulders stopped
they cut their path through rocks and glassy mountains
with dipped and tipped and studded rings
of fingered aquatic diamonds
dipped and tipped and stutted

The Evolution of Species (draft)

Love me or leave me
but do not detest me
I am true to my calling
every contraption in the cellar
every trick up my sleeve
I have mastered for your pleasure
you want performance, so I give you
for I delight in entertainment
my shtick is one of three professions
that in Genesis evolved
farming first, mine the second,
Cain's homicide, placing third
than I think came prostitution

Legions of scholars and politicians
owe much to our ancient fellowship
Socrates, Freud and Darwin
especially Darwin whose disciples contend
that because man-sperm resembles wiggly fish
and man-blood in salinity resembles ocean
it follows, then, that fingers and toes evolved from fins
which would explain why once we lost our scales
we became susceptible to leprosy and itchiness

I'll do you better, than the evolutionists
hand me my trunk and high hat
watch me pull rabbits
I'll hold my breath underwater
longer than any fishy could survive the dry
but I won't cheat and call it religion
nor shall I dare to call it science
but what it is is what it is,
purely fog and mirrors
magic tricks like sawing pretty girls in two
and reassembling them anew
without transfusions nor need of stitches,
for life is art and art is trickery

Like Coffee Freshly Roasted (draft)

I am a poor boy farmer
who when weather permits,
plows the frost bitten fields
when a little sunshine warms

Then at sunset, me and the mule retire
the mule to the barn, me to my shack
the mule to where mules drift when they get sleepy
me to a lover of ebony arms, of eyes that look like coffee
darker is she than midnight, she sparkles in the darkness
more beautiful than morning light is she
my cocoa girl, where in her bosom
I am more than just a poor boy farmer

Tomorrow, should I live to see the sunrise
and if not, I die in peace,
for she is there to box the pieces

The Lovely Garland (draft)

In my garden, it grows abundant
I eat it by the bushel
any way that I can cook it
or else throw it in a blender
and pour it on a sundae
So what if this be Denmark
and "Mediterranean" is the least desirable
of body orders, it works for me to reek of garlic
thus, no one gets too close
which suits me fine
the smell of man, I can not stand
and lillies make me dizzy

Accept me as I am or find yourself a Danish
Were tar a fragrance, I would wear it
As for garlic, I'm worth my breath in tons

Invitation to The Masses (draft)

Who does not wish it for themselves
the perfect life, to live complete without contrition
to greet each moment confident
to have the right reply when faced with threats
to live so honest as to fear no man, no animal

To live complete, to live to die
when to die in order to survive is most desirable
to live the perfect life and suffer the perfect closure
but what is perfect?
Only One in whom my faith is treasured

Oh my, loving atheist
why cringe because I believe in what you don't
why fuss that I believe in what you won't
I extend the hand of peace
the white rose of humanity

Where Hell Would Freeze (draft)

He was born in the Congo
which once belonged to the King of Belgium
she was a missionary's daughter
in what was once called Rhodesia

In sophomore year they met in college
he studying to be an accountant
she wanting to be a tooth doctor
there they wed where they had met
in Black historical college, city of Atlanta
state named for English monarch, one of many Georges
Atlanta, Georgia where The Center for Disease Control safely stores
the Seven Plaques of Egypt and worst ---
virus capable of eating the poles and the earth's core
Atlanta hometown to the Cable News Network
which Bin Laden watches from his penthouse rock


Eiffel Ungali the accountant and Murray his dental wife
live presently in Minnesota with their kids of perfect teeth
Minnesota is where the great Mississippi River springs
it's a state rich in dairy where for the most part people are friendly
and not as dark as you'd expect
considering they are Lutherans
in a land that hardly thaws

Nirvana (draft)

we breathe from and into the thoughts of others
the poem unwritten the place that's wished
the way of deep affection, autumn passing into winter
planet tilt to or from the star that's fixed
but for how long
the thought to be extinguished
which suffers planetary birth and death