Tonight, I Go Shopping with Woman

The place --- a limbo, a mall
a branch of Marco Polo's voyages to Cathay,
a store by the name of Macys
0n I-65

To my mind, a suffocating mace is Macys
To my eye, a maze of spun polyester,
and of panties, likewise, spun
from petroleum residues,
a poster shop of model girls and model boys

a little bony around knees and hips,
looking like no way they could survive the next great famine
...Macys and tedium, and a spouse who would rather shop all day
than stare down museum corridors at finer exhibits

And then, the lights are offed,
and the burglar proof grills clang shut,
and me thinks, that to be locked in here an eternity
would be a cruel, cruel fate.
It would be useless to scream,

for who would hear you but mannequins
which in time, you'd be turned into one of them
eyelash-less and bald,
and white as chalk

forgetting that once upon a distant time
you were man, you had hope
before you were zapped
while shopping with woman
in mall.

Wolf Pack

Where from comes an image,
where no prior concept existed?
Where from comes an image
to who first had it, before ever we got it?

Art imagines, art conspires,
art impacts the masses
to flock and go "crazig,"
if only we hit the right buttons

I speak of symbols,
but what works in seals and crosses
in other configurations
figure

Passion and zeal and graphics
Eyes roll back into their sockets
Glass cascade like shattered ice,
crash down from yonder heights

Today, we throw a beer festival
Tomorrow, we light the torches
Today, we sing karaoke
Tomorrow, we march on Poland

The Varnish Eats AT His Brain

I am tired of painting portraits
The human countenance depletes me
I see reflected in the eyes my subjects,
my own discomfort

I need change like dry creek needs water
I need a fresh approach to painting
I want the feel of being a student again
I want to paint Prague in winter

English Suite # 6

Oh, if I could only poem
as Johann composed

No, dear, I am not snoring
It's to this divine score, that I am listening

To God be the glory
for Bach and for ears to dig him

My Brother, The Invalid

Rivalry since birth led yet to another misunderstanding
Brother hid under his bed a machete in such an event
should one of his siblings or in-laws come looking for trouble.

His visiting sister from the States sensed the danger,
the morning Horace flew off the handle for no good reason
As tomorrow, she's returning to Mobile
she has come to make peace before leaving.

It's futile, but give the perturbed brother
a parting embrace. He accepts with resistance
No correspondence and stiffens.

That's the way it goes down,
but the story continues
Brother and sister will meet one more time
the circumstances totally different.

He's disabled because of an accident,
she ready to resume the embrace,
maybe to bid him goodbye.

Art Lesson 9

When you accept worst case scenarios,
you are free to fight and kill ... if necessary.

You are untethered as Neanderthals could ever have been,
my brave, hairy ancestors who painted on cavernous walls,
the critters they hunted, in whose skins they dressed,
of whose animals spirits they must have been somewhat curious
as they ravaged the beastly sinew.

This in art
is the power of fatalism.

Ready The Catapults

It is a night to transcend our starved senses
the smoke of sandalwood rising,
unveiling the starry eyes of spirits
The perfume of late bloom gardenias

In verdant shadows,
the fountains gurgling
the plop of falling fruit

Art Lesson 8

Let's say the eggheads got it right for once,
that in the dense stew of night, the cosmos exploded,
and at present we're in an exponential state of expansion

You and me and everything else
sailing the space/time fabric
a la Albert Einstein.

What are the implications for you and me,
and the dog at the hydrant?
A good question.

Until the reversal of current expansion,
if and when the cosmos risks imploding,
be happy, don't worry, stay healthy.


which is to say, that if you are an artist, soldier or clerk,
your work is important, give it your best
but if you're an artist,
you're test could be harder

So what that you can't draw exact like a camera,
neither could Pollack, neither Picasso
and that didn't stop them,
why should it stop us?

who are only dabbling

Art Lesson 7

Art and Science went off to picnic
in an unknown neck of the forest,
That day, the sun set faster than eitherexpected

After a lunch of hard boiled eggs and pickles,
after they sipped wine too long,
they also napped too long,

Because it was dark when they awoke,
said Science to Art, "Where are we? Don't panic."
Replied Art: "Me, panic? I'm digging it."

In the meanwhile, a wizard of hands like claws
intently watched from the shadows,
scheming on how to trap them,

which he most certainly did,
being he, the sly Wizard
of Venture Capitalist

Art Lesson 6

Beware of good intentions
Art and science produce dysfunction;
the latter in mad scientists
the former in sobbing poets

Mad scientists are heartless creatures
Sobbing poets never stop weeping

Art Lesson 5

Art and science are more closely related
than one might think.
Without observation, neither exists.

Without imagination, there is no interpretation.
What is art if not interpretation?
Without interpretation, there is no science.

What is art,
what is science
absent intuition?

Art Lesson 4

You speak to the fool in your mind
The effect we desire, let's go for it
In your mind you search for the missing pieces
In your mind you assemble the parts
In your mind you sense a Monica Lisa,
and leaping lizards, there she is ---
smiling easy

Art Lesson 3

Expression is release
Release makes for free
Free is nice

Art is expression
Therefore, art is release
Art makes for free,
but not always nice

Art is hardly an end
unless you're thinking
of doing a Van Gogh bye bye

Art Lesson 2

Is it because I'm dark, that I paint darkly?

Now, that's a crackpot question, Mapovia
how silly of you to ask

But what must I do to paint light?

First, prime the canvas stark and white.
Next, pour over it sand and low grade cement.

Then what?

Entertain happy thoughts as you dab it with paint.
Hum, "Somewhere over the rainbow."

That's it?

Not quite. Mutilate yourself Van Gogh style
in butterfly fields neath a sky of screaming magenta.

Ira and Catherine Moskowitz

This debt which hangs around my neck
ball and chain and albatross
and harsh collar of rosary beads. Did I say beads?
I meant to say boulders.
This debt, I should call "mother,"
enemy to the gender between my legs

She who, in secret, vows
to bury my masculine traits
developed from the age of Neanderthal,
instincts of survival, she wills to annihilate
for the good of a compromise called marriage.
This debt around my neck.

A man who to his wife is puppet,
you call such, men or adopted orphans?
A man fully puppeted,
sorry excuse for lover.
The sad state of 21st Century
emasculated jerks and suckers.

Been There, Done That

you don't love me
boo, hoo,
I accept

because I accept
I conspire
to do without you.

Anytime, any place
give me heartbreak
to toothache.

Cause and Effect

In the absence of distractions,
observation becomes keener

In the presence of focus.
distractions lessen

Still, in oysters,
irritation results in pearls

Fair Warning

She said to the John,
Not to alarm you John,
but at this particular moment
I could be dangerous

John, burly and uncouth,
took it lightly,
and continued to banter.

Said she to the John,
Let's take a ride
I promise to give you the bang of your life,
and drove she and the John into a truck.

Suddenly

Touched by the invisible,
the cataracts dropped.
I don't know how or why.

Quietly joy welled inside,
sprang and rang
to quench this thirst of mine.

Suddenly, more than needed,
I felt
desired.

Ain't That Groovy

Two poets in a waiting room sit
awaiting a new human being to be delivered.
Says one poet to the other,
Hey, Cumin, I'm this is some trip,
would you not agree?

Replies, Cumin,
You got that right!
Life is a joy, life is sensational.

Sighs, Mapovia
Jesus be praised...
Clears Cumin her throat --- I'm nt sure about that.

In the above exchange, has anything changed?
The room is still groovy
The morning brings light and change
Enters the doctor,
"I hope you brought pink"

To Believe or dot, dot, dot

Who believes
believes in spirits,
in love is a spirit. too
in creation believes
especially in Truth believes and loves
by which Creation
came into existence and is sustained.

Who believes in Truth,
loves true.
Who believes in God
believes the universe is God's Mind.
To say it plain ---
the Uni-Verse
In the beginning was the Verb

And the Word was with God
and the Word
is God
Is that not as reasonable
as believing that the cosmos began
with mass jam packed in the size of an atom
and then went KABOOM?

At Times I Feel Like A Spear

Were I to deny it,
seeking to pass for what I'm most certainly not,
Africa slithers in my veins.
I trust not like the vicious black mamba.

Africa bellows in my dusk,
approaches the breaking point when I am edgy.
I trust not like boisterous hippos,
when they snap in two unsuspecting crocodiles.

I dance Africa in dainty my footsteps,
and like pulse is to the heart, reflection ---
drumbeat is to the heartbeat's instinctive
inflections

I Should Like to Book Passage

transparency is clearly advisable
in considering options
and silver pencils
do outline very nicely

backlight
the hue
most natural to you

a preference to blue
is understandable
but black or red
the spectrum is secondary

finally, riding the bullet
the breath stairs to heaven
were I you, I wouldn't look backwards

soft peddle the pedal
off you go
admit it or no
there are remote factors

Art Lesson 1

shapes spin and change
in functions and tonalities,
that once discovered,
leap on to join them

from in or out,
parachute and size them
ready to sketch
is ready to draw on them

if this be imagined
if this be like living
if this be like living or dieing,
brash world of deceptions

let's go for seconds

After Effects

Tragic occurrences tend to be sharper in memory
than those which provoke you to laugh from the belly.
Tragedy makes you stand up and take notice.
Comedy allows you to roll with the punches.

A lighting bolt out of the blue in 1850 Montana,
startled two horses hitched to a wagon,
heavy with furniture, maybe headed back East.
It had been wanting to rain for nearly a week.

Meanwhile, a child crossing the road with her mother,
the raggedy doll she carried, slipped the kid's grip.
Likewise, the mother failed to refrain the 5 year old
from turning around to retrieve the toy.

Thus, the elements of narrative align.
The flash, the horses startled, the driver thrown from his seat.
The thunderous horses run over the child.
And the rain comes down in torrents.

Some swear to have seen
on moonless nights,
a child in frontier dress,
holding a Raggedy Annie.

Midway between a convenience store
and a closed movie house, the apparition allewdly floats
on the outskirts of Billings, Montana, 2000 and 8.
What about you, you believe in ghosts?

I don't know that I believe.
If I did, I would not want to see one. Spooky events,
true or no, have a way of getting under your skin.
Witness what happened to Michael after Thriller.

Legendary

It's nothing short of miraculous
that humanity survived the prehistoric.
Civilizations how have we managed?
Survival of fittest, survival of opportunists?
Certainly not survival of the kindest.
The meekest are usually the first put on the block.

Manuela was a prostitute. Manuela was retarded,
infested with every virus in the book,
a few yet undetected by modern day medicine.
Her teeth were rotten, her breath most foul
when the Black Plague decimated the Europe of then.

When Napoleon invaded centuries later,
Manuela's was even messier.
The lady was brothel and open air sewer.
In the streets from Antwerp to Moscow,
in Seville on to Bristol, last seen
begging and whoring, selling almost for free.

The lady was accursed.
She was green fog.
The multiple votive she lit, the gusts blew them out
She was a cork bobbing tired by a dock in the bay,
a syphilitic sore, a painful reminder
to history's spirited high stepping romance.

White Cliffs of Pigment

The cosmos fitted tightly,
not even a grain of sand could be removed,
without entire mountain ranges having to be reconfigured

A master of brush says to his 18 year old model,
I could care less about painting you buff,
the interlocking of angles is what intrigues me

Thus having spoken,
Maestro relocates a lock of maiden's hair
from where it falls behind her nape to shoulder in front

The above executed with the delicacy of how effeminate men
hold wine glasses, pinkies extended like digital erections ---
two doves on a window ledge, look at each other and coo

In the streets below, an ambulance sirens to an impressive collision;
the primary sounds of which were screech, bang, crunch and hiss;
its primary odors, the burning of rubber, and gas and blood spilled

An appliance known as " jaws of life" arrives with the cops
to extract victims from the twisted pile up of two cars and a van,
the Nissan destroyed, the van on its side, the jeep now being towed

The northeast corner of Sedwick and Memorial

Where's Your Antennae Pointed

If the universe doesn't end at a beach,
but is infinite as it is supposed,
does energy/matter stay the course
or thin into zilch?

The question spooks,
and I scrutinize the horoscope for clues.
Do I pray to energy/matter in crowded space,
or pray to a sinking feeling of a void awaiting in my chest?

Guys

Right now, we're in a clinic,
one guy in a wheelchair,
one guy, his keeper of the guy
and me, related to neither.

The clinic TV it is locked into a bullet proof cage,
Under lock, so no one can change channels
nor bang on the screen. Soap opera is playing.
The keeper is giggling

The wheelchair guy's head is permanently sideways.
And I'm kinda sideways, too, trying to sketch the moment.
Meanwhile, the bimbos in the soap are looking mean at each other.
They have a beau in between, and who knows what else

Mean looks held in suspense
allow for sponsor endorsements
Introducing Juicy Juice, to help our children's brain develop.
And next, Pizza with a snap, followed by toilet detergent

In these questionable times, these products reassure us.

War at The Oars

Plump can as soon swallow a camel as a pumpkin.
Skinny is as blind as a bat but sings like a robin.
Together they row across placid waters
Towards a volcano now beginning to burp.

Out on the straits, sits squat in the wakes,
iron-plated and gray, a three tier cake of bellicose pose,
a battleship as big as a factory for cannons and tanks,
looking for trouble to left and to right.

Her guns will not smoke today nor tomorrow,
not while the League's emissaries (in tails and pipe hats)
gesticulate pantomime as they do when particularly harried.
Peace is for them a marionette character in Halloween masquerade.

Miss Peace is flat chested and tall as a pole.
Her pallor is pale. Her eyes are hollow but rather seductive.
She does have some curves you could hold on to,
if only she let you. She dances alone to a waltz beloved by all,

The Blue Danube

Libido

urgent desire for immediate release by whatever the means
which driveth the need, careening and wild
wicked concoction of frustration and habit
indelibly "romantic" and utterly practical
as the knitting of mittens for summer
or the cooking of live lobsters
in boiling water

Rear Mirror Catharsis

I'll attempt to write verse on a subject not dear to my heart
a 12 hour haul from the Atlantic seaboard to the hills of Georgia
my back sweating the upholstery

hallucinating on the highway,
shouting to stay awake
radio searching,

singing bluegrass,
singing hip hop
talking to ghosts of friends and relatives

long and uneventful,
the drive not the poem
the poem is short and uneventful,

and done with

Blast on Mount Telescope

Cosmos, cosmos winging strong
from somewhere inward
flying outward,
as we who calls it, sees it ---
Big Banger Theory of Organized Chaos
Cosmos, cosmos
tripping pretty.

Beside being like a grapefruit,
the universe is a multidimensional wheel
the middle, its center,
its center, the engine
center to middle to axle attached,
like fruits are to trees
conjoined by their stems, till ripely detached.

In the beginning, there was no beginning.
There was void and, man, was it void
from bottom to top not even an echo!
But Void soon was loaded,
and crammed to the rim, with all sorts of things,
protons and pings and dings that glowed in the dark.
In the beginning, it was spooky.

And lo,
like a silo
in the Dakotas,
spontaneous combustion,
the silo exploded.

Grapefruit Universe

In a grapefruit universe
life would be simple.
The universe is as is because it's acidic.
Family of oranges, lemons, key limes,
which hang tight to the branches
till picking time, or like spent ammunition,
they drop to the ground.

A grapefruit Universe would be complete as could be,
watered and sunned from above, nourished from under.
Whether Florida yellows or Tex Ruby Reds,
grapefruits don't shrivel like thinly skin fruit.
Of superb design, they're also nutritious.
You won't find grapefruit connoisseurs
overly poundage.

In Grapefruit Universe,
physicists could readily determine the geometric shape
of each of Grapefruit's components.
Thus, higher math would be made as simple as pie;
that mass is no solid but relative fiber,
and space is that allocation where in a given segment
more pulp could be fitted.

In Grapefruit Universe,
the trinity of essence would be
flesh of fruit, seed and juice.
It's rind would be the fabric of time.
In Grapefruit Universe,
you and I
would be god.

Womb World

Womb World turns whore
when she dishonors her teachings.
Where her power she'd peddle,
she reclines with swines.

When she balances the scales,
She's the King's favorite.
When she mothers in mercy,
she's right on the mark.

Astronomical Imponderables

Imagine a star whizzing
at a million miles per hour
Why not a 100 million miles per hour?
Why not a 1,000 million per second?

Truly, 1 million miles per hour
is fascinating --- as are the flights
of hummingbirds, as is the theory
advanced by Sawyer McGurdy in 1911

In his Theory of Alien Species,
Mc Gurdy argued that crickets
immigrated to earth on a comet from Mars
around the time that the dinosaurs extincted.

Mc Gurdy also believed that the cosmos
could be just one big concert hall in the process of emptying.
In his sequel to The Theory of Alien Species,
the author opined, "Mass is merely a cruder form of music."

Is Heaven A Circle

The unknown stands shapeless.
Heaven being an unknown,
its shape is left to calculations of ruler and mathematics.

Ideas have shape,
no matter how oddly configured.
Passion, runs the gamut of shapes and sizes.

Heaven being an idea,
heaven being a gamut,
architects have modeled it Romanesque and Gothic.

Love Arabesque

A man desiring his wife
a wife her husband thirsting
is circle and square
each one in the other

In love, these blooms blossom,
that angels on pins,
if permitted a peep,
might feel a wee woozy,

and soon start to weep.

Let Us Contest The Ill Presumed

Things get mislabeled all the time.
You see it when shopping.

Behold, these historical examples:
Citizens of the United States are called Americans
What about the other Americans who are without papers?

America was discovered in 1492
Forget that there were tons of Americans
living here for over 30,000 years?

Jesus inner circle consisted of 12.
Incorrect, the inner circle consisted of 13.
The 12th committed suicide and was replaced straight away.

1 + 1 = 3

Do not all things come in pairs,
and in their pairings engage and engender?
Thus, alike are paired off from different,
and nostrils akin rejoice at certain wiffings,
while others are caused to sneeze
at a staggering velocity of 120 miles per hour.

Duality is everywhere in homo and hetero,
in Adam and Eve holding on to their fig leaves.
The knowledge of good and evil.
The ignorance of evil and good.
Show me a guy dual to himself,
I'll show you a guy in need of a lobotomy.

Elementary Shape of The Cosmos

Is it round, is it conical?
Is it polyhedra as some insist,
without bounds as me would wish?

Who should get credit for creating the quagmire?
If not God, then those who can explain it to the rest of us dummies.
Enter Plato and company, and centuries of angry professors.

Thus far, the astronomers have our divided attention,
but wait till the North Koreans create a microscope
of greater descent than Hubble has periscope.

Then, shall it be proven once and for all.
Nobody created the universe. The universe created itself.
Thus it and only it can explain itself.

Old Coast Guard House

Smell it fresh like fish, nose wide open
A sea stirs in the depths of every coastal shower
to sheets attached on offshore moving columns.

Here we go again down to the sea in ships,
pray we return to our families.
Stand fast to wind, you race of sailors.

Bend to gale, but be not shattered.
You shutters, facing east, be you stoic.
You gutters and down sprouts come alive.

Deluge of Noah! By Neptune, again it's pouring.
Gables and planks and life boats,
brace yourselves against the stiff Atlantic.

SSS

I love You, my God, with all of my days.
In holy emptiness, would I love you more,
Creator of heaven, Creator of earth,
who fashioned me fingers to touch and to count,
and fashioned me feet with cute little toes.

I adore You,
God of Perfection.
In every which way
I implore your protection.
Life to live, love to give life.
Lord, be You jealous for my soul.
My sole spare from stepping in mess.

Flashes of Fatal

Happy birthday, beloved.
It seems as if it's about to repeat
nearing the hour, 40 years to the hour

The birth certificate read,
that Stan Wackowski was born at high noon,
Knickerbocker Hospital, Borough of Manhattan

Six hours from now, you would be 81
were it not for the accident
Me and the kids were playing scrabble

You went upstairs to nap,
when an easterner blew out the windows
A bolt fell the oak outside the bedroom

Ten years of wedlock crashed through the roof
If you're listening... the kids are grown
Bill's a doctor. Little Stan's with the FBI

Different living arrangement, different scenario
Out of Hatteras, a storm empties again,
my legs are too spinney to run to the basement

When hands on a clock fold
one on top of the other,
the clock cunningly winks.

Thunder nears.