2011

Horn blue blows,
and dancers slunk
as slinkers sometimes do.

Bass punctuates.
Trumpet trumps it
as trumpets do.

Piano fingers plane the keyboard.
Lounge is smoking. Everyone is sliding,
slipping, riding into trip waves.

Music brave us.
Jazz keep us.
Horn-blow blue us always.

Earl Lee Dusk

Slippage child did exit hole,
followed flowed its after birth.

For distant dawn, You I care to know.
In earl lee dusk, You I dare will touch.

Galileo in Heaven

From ocean bottoms,
piercing eyes look out and in.

Of course, Cosmos is no ocean
as the watery oceans are.
No bottom, no top has Cosmos
except to tempt us steeper
deeper down endless tracks.

An infant takes to mouth the waiting nipple.
What piercing eyes Mr. Galileo telescopes.

Holy Hunt

Skins of drums, earth pounds our soles.
Robotic we march into waiting guns.
The hunt is on that blood must wash.

Appease the god of the rag heads.
Bring to naught the IT beast,
the beast who ghosts the hamlets
the beast who snipers at our comrades.

Host revenge.
Ask no quarter.
None be given.

The Taste of Rain

Just before or after, or during the deluge?

The oceans of my childhood puddles,
green lightning flashes the grottoes hidden,
the downpour, the clockwork rivulets,
her face and mine behind the drizzle's ribbons.

Rain, indeed, is every woman. Every woman wettens.

You see it right --- "wettens,"
the textured taste, the double "t"
as nipple has two "ps," two hills and valley in between

the taste of rain is like submergence

Undersea Tunnel to The Jungle

rain forest is many kinds of plants and animals
that habitat neath drooping, dripping branches
where birdies peck at fruit and poop out seeds
in the dark art forms of solar energy

Mother Jumper Scenario

Full moon silvers earth's embroidery
in folds soldiers trudge to and from
the battle din,

in whose umbra march, ghost riders hitch,
while crouched in caves, foes with spears make ready.
But wait! Is this not Afghanistan 2010?

Till holy wars one day may end,
what difference makes
if wild Apache or Taliban!

The Poor Will Always Be Amongst You

Plowing up to Cape May from Norfolk
we strike upon bonanza.
We deck our nets stretched to the max.
Ice holes filled, Neptune blessed,
we head south to sell the catch.

In Port of Spain (during Lent especially)
the market's good for fish that's salted,
and ours is fresh as fresh can get.
So party hardy, ready the gang plank.
Make way, ye fete-loving Calypso people .

However, the drunk we hang,
before we even pass the lighthouse is epic,
and slumbers us like sloths in a hammock.
thus, instead of the Antilles, we find ourselves
in waters off Valdivia, which is to say southern Chile.

Where in Scriptures does it forbid,
fishermen from partaking of their fish?
Thus, scallops gathered in the Atlantic,
we devour along with the last of ship's provision
What sorry losers are we. We are, we arrr!

Back again, here where we started.
Cape May at our starboard... out of luck,
no babes on board, low on liquor,
no fishes biting, and nothing in the trawls
but candy wrappers.

Power Pump Pound Cake Times

In Blue Grass Country where free enterprise thrives,
two families compete for supremacy
in home baked economics.

The Powers and the Pumps are hill people,
raccoon capped, straight shooters.
as far back their roots of when they were British.

They traded furs and purveyed moonshine,
beverage of mountain kind,
also known as panther piss.

Alas, urbanity reached their neck of the boondocks
as it does all fart out places, that brings with it
Oriental goods and Walmart services.

Thus, it was that the Powers and the Pumps,
morphed from tobacco chewing hicks
into entrepreneurs of broader webbing,

fabricating Bourbon soaked pound cakes
marketed on Craig's List --- cakes aged in burials
as Chinese do their eggs,

that gives egg and pound cake, too,
an extra zing and funk of whiff.
Don't knock it till you've tried one!

Now, it happened that for an inexplicable,
the interred pound cakes of the Powers exploded,
but not so the pounds of Pump & Company.

Notwithstanding lack of evidence, the Powers held the Pumps responsible.
Naturally, each party became indignant and litigation followed,
which in former times would've been shotgun prosecuted and shotgun settled.

All the while, the Power Pound Cakes kept on popping,
which allowed Alvin Pump to corner the market.
Thus, belly up went Justus Power.

Now this might sound contrite, you all,
but it's a metaphor for us Americans, power pumped and harried
in these don't ask don't tell, troubled times.

All I can say ---
thank God,
we have a Barack Obama for President!

Fourth Grade Writing Assignment

Without leaving home, I can see a movie.
On my laptop I can travel the world.
I can eyeball distant constellations.
I can microwave breakfast to dinner.

We need machines. Machines need us.
Let's hope technology continues
and continues to make life more interesting.

During the Industrial Revolution,
kids like me were worked like donkeys.
Life sucked. Factories enslaved us,
but technology can also set us free.

Technology surrounds us.
Them folk that prosper,
make the smarter instruments,
get the upper hand on them that don't.

Through My Most Grevious Fault

You inject your poison at daybreak
as if you festered it the night.

By noon I succumb to the downing antidote,
strong drink to numb the wound you've inflicted.

On the eve of extinction, whoever exits first,
will impart deserving rest to those who survive us.

Where no harm's been caused,
forgiveness is wasted.

Where speech is sparse,
wrongdoings gleam Spartan.

S. C.

I'm overwhelmed by thoughts of Jolly Nick.
of whom I had a fleeting glimpse tonight.
I'm distrusting of men in red pajamas.
He looked to me a fat cat sizing up a rodent.
He looked to me unclean.

On his head he wore a three cornered hat.
Like his vest and beard, his hat --- it too was greasy,
slipped down his forehead, shielding beady eyes
that glowed with cinders of gluttony and other unholy appetites.
He smoked hashish from a Turkish pipe, and the smoke he blew
looked as if from villages burned to the ground.

His voice sounded like boulders pushed by deluge.
Can such an unsavory type, though he wishes you a Happy Hanukkah
put survival anxieties to rest? No way!
My memory of pogroms is too long.
Thus, I'd prefer a convention of witches

than to be in the company of festive Cossacks.

Near Night Siberia

Tonight I feel like screaming,
and running head first
into a more possible Me.

But here I am before an open window,
wishing the stars were my body's atoms,
longing for the north wind green.

Longing for the arctic white,
at sunset I go howling into the Taiga,
Taiga of my frosted breath, Taiga of my girlhood boots.

Botex Lips like Baboon Butt

Who should care what actors do in private?
Have they not sacrificed enough to please us?
Who should care how many wailers the goddess births?
Is she not like neighbor wash woman down the street?
Let her be off screen as if forgotten.
Let us not all be like sticky paparazzi.

Hum under Mitigation

Another leaf glides earthward.
Evening's dust migrates towards its parallel.

Thoughts of love do loosely fit.
I am with You. Be with me.

In the lock of secrets kept,
the key begins to turn.

Elizabeth and The Senator

It's being called a tragedy.
A tragedy it is.
Marrying Johnny was one bad move.
He looked so presidential, though.
He smiled all teeth like J. F. Kennedy.

Elizabeth was the leader
of the Edwards' Fan Club.
Her and him had four kids.
She died of cancer in 2010.
It's to see if the creep re-parties.

Life with John was a disaster.

V for Victorious

I will not poem defeat,
for only in poetry am I undefeated.
The heartaches I occasionally suffer,
I fake for the sake of masochistic pleasure.

Tickle me pretty, my sweet.
I'm the bravest damsel
you'll ever meet.

I'll weird you wicked,
I who wobble tigers into Sunday pudding,
I who torch bushes into new commandments,
I who offer no excuse for always winning.

The Anisette We Share

I can not give the date exact of when we met on the Costa Azul.
I recall trying to shake off a guy out to get into my stash,
when fatefully you intercepted.

I have not succeeded in shaking you off since then,
nor do I care to. You are my lasting act of contrition,
a case of unmerited heaven.

Butterfly Revision

She does not circulate around the block
as she did before autumn probably sent her packing,
or last night's freeze finally did her in for sure.

No matter, if still I am twig come April,
I'll see her back in flutter form. Shall I then
resent a butterfly's gift to reincarnate?

The same old tough,
of crust and bark
in new leaf wrapping.

Path to The Loropetalum in Shadow

You dedicate yourself to a garden
as a man gives himself to a woman
as a woman dedicates herself to a man.

Productivity's milk is labor's tally,
fertility released in sperm and eggs,
and heavy breathing...of course!

Importation.

What's important, what imports?
Love sent returns to sender.

What's to grieve about?
Not a scent. How then about a smile?
A faint smile rarely hurts!

See the tears quaking on yon ocular banks,
it's the smile of what imports.

Decembers

Remember these days
as best as you are able
for when life comes at you
at the speed of an ambulance.

Remember the hues
the intense blues, the magentas underneath
the reds, the yellows, the season's faded blooms.
These embers do remember... how many more Decembers?

Flemish

Through ice crystals,
winter stokes the sky
more vibrant.

I'm back in Flanders of my youth,
the schooner still life,
the anchored seascape.

Old School

I knew them once as "fags."
Ought I now call them "gay?"

Why should I,
are they really gay?

Kosmos The Clown

"Quanto sento"
How I miss

"bajee ponto."
the Brooklyn Bridge, the Brooklyn fog
the parting horns of freight yard ships.

"Sois gitan."
Thou art Gypsy
Thou canst help it

"Soi valandolero"
I wander,too, the lower reaches
of Flatbush.

Mother of Provision

I love you
more than ever I loved.

You took my hand and lead me out of chaos,
In the simple you show me splendors.

You feed me when I hunger,
you stand by me in heavy weather.

You never entertain betrayal.
Of those who bless me, you are the truest,

wife
and mother of my children.

G

When men are weak,
women are strong.

When women behave like blushing brides,
the boys will strut about like bantam cocks.

Time after Time

I am enamored of Time.
Time after time, Time
has been good to me.

Time has been good to me?
What nonsense, Time is indifferent
as to if I exist.

If Time knew how I exploit it,
Time might take it personal,
and seek revenge.

Story of A Black Woman

Born in Siberia,
I grew up in Morocco,
where I considerably darkened.
In mixed up America, some people
take me for a black woman.
They should see me when I'm not.

No Love Lost

Who knows for sure?
Might the silent ones know for sure?
If you're correct, no one knows for sure.

None knows for sure while we are breathing
if indeed there is an after birth after death experience.
It might not be as I suppose (thinking it over)
that the stars are souls burning passionate for each other.

If, however, to bite the dust, means, to shake it off
and start all over,and God there is and God there was
between the worst and best of us,

we'll split Him even,
if you are willing.

Sky Altar

The tree on the hill
before it dips into the highway,
the tree my side of the easement,
the tree which stands candle stoic,
its leaf in yellow folding,
tinges of green remaining,
the tree where might live the bat
I haven't seen since late October,
the tree bridal dressed
now bare bone before the altar.

Garden

The walls, the door, the windows
the double "o" in the word room
like zeros gazing inward.

Be courteous, knock and wait.
Do not speak until you're undressed.

Native Beauty

She was an ugly little thing,
like the Ethiopian maid
of 500 thousand years ago.
Not a pretty sight at all.

Give her credit.
The power of visualization.
She saw herself beautiful,
and by Jove accomplished it.

Her body became female perfection.
The ointments made her skin like satin.
And this was before the time when surgeons
became Frankenstein and saline practitioners.

Mrs Palin

Should she run for president, I'd vote for her.
Why not? Her face reminds me of the Statue of Liberty.
Secondly, I could use a good laugh for the term of her presidency.

Moore

The still metallic twilight glints
the leafy calm of night

November's swan night
sinks me, dear.

I love you more
than I care to think.

The Hubble Example

I tried hard rock,
it was loud and frantic.

I switched to smooth jazz.
It was soft and practically tasteless.

In creative punctuation,
I at last founs my groove.

Succeed,
experiment.

Of Alien Origin in Quotes

Be a clean slate in observing nature ---
empty, empty of self that nothing of alien origin
may threaten such as spiders and yellow jackets.

The Envelope

Explain to Self and Self alone.
Take care not to be overhead.
Those apt not to misunderstand,
hear just what they want to hear.

Who Are They?

All they ask is that they be given the chance
to find their place in the sun and the shade,
and be recipients of food and compassion.
Furthermore, they delight in my company.

Who are they?
They are for me like little children,
who for my love, give me love back ---
the plants that sit upon my window sill.

Black Birds

Toned bells of blue
and autumn's fires salute in kind.

What better reason, we have no reason
to linger here more than we have.

Sorry

Three beautiful children came knocking at my wee, small door.
Oh what a lovely sight. They looked like angels.
One even held a battery powered candle and a halo.

I forgot tonight is the night of angels and goblins.
I was sorry to have to tell them
I don't celebrate Halloween.

Closet Capers

You're on your easy chair. You've toiled hard and long.
Remote control in hand, you turn on the luminous contraption
and lo, a freak show parades across your living room!

As with installations built to shelter against disasters,
television ought to be watched in bomb proof closets.

Trial and Error

Observation begets knowledge
Observation and experimentation begets the scientific method.

The who are studious never tire
and rarely are superstitious.

Cookie Crumble

Make a fervent New Year's wish,
broadcast it to your friends,
see it melt away in a fortnight.

If you want to see your resolution through,
whisper it to no one, except perhaps your mother.
Don't tell me about it, do I look like your mother?

Tell Me About It.

If you think man is basically a noble savage,
disadvantaged by societal circumstances,
exploited by class warfare, etc. ---
believe in Marx.

If you think, man is a loser
bound to self destruct,
pray to Jesus.

If your beliefs are somewhere else,
tell me about them.

Antebellum

Where bondage is love is at risk.
The dysfunction lasts generations.

A Near Rape in A Near Prision

Risks must be weighed,
dangers considered,

I informed the formidable opponent
that one of us could be murdered,
the other seriously injured.

We could have wound up holding hands.
Instead, we learned the advantage of distance.
Territorial respect makes for civil cell mates.

I Live In A Burrow.

True wealth provides leisure ---
leisure to indulge in tasks generally non productive.

Do you want to desire friends?
Make them believe you're rich and famous.

Do you wish to get rid of some that you have?
Make them think that you've gone hopelessly indigent.

Invariably, the fewer your friends,
the greater your leisure.

Humbuggery

There is no such thing as little white lies,
only big white lies, disguising as Santa Clausery.

Merry Christmas to his elves.
Peace on earth to the meanies in North Korea.

Ready or Not

You take precautions
to not live in dread.

You are not entertained by violence
unless it be by mutual consent.

You accept that anytime is dying time,
that living full is living without regret.

The World was Smaller Then

I saw in his sketches of playing cards,
keys and loose change scattered on a table,
in the lampshades of tassels that he drew
in styles baroque, cubist and classical,
I discerned the artist was into pubic hair.

It was a time of poetic license
and Freudian liberation.
The human form seemed less curious
than in former times.

Wonder Woman

I would not ask you to break a promise
to do charity beyond what I have budgeted.
Time after time, you have proven,
you are the Mother of Provision.

As my young bride, I took satisfaction,
that beautiful women make humanity proud,
Thirty five years married to you,
I celebrate something greater;

a virtuous wife is a gift from God.

To The Late John Baptist

Mister, for me I would not have asked for your heart in a bowl of linguine,
nor that your head be brought on a silver platter.

I merely did what Mom expected.
Blame her and Herod's sweaty, stick fingers.

Love and Resignation

Get rid of the messenger
but keep the message
this is love's enduring tribute

That Keeps It Dutch

My hand is trellis to your flower,
your body which comely ages
like a Rembrandt painting
that darkens in the frame
yet retains the glow
that keeps it Netherlands.

Balanced

In fullness, I am rejoicing
nature is rebounding,
the universe is juggling.

The Newmans

Grandma remembered only a few disjointed verses
of the thousands she wrote as a child,
gone up the chimney in Holocaust smoke.

This is the sad part of life,
that things treasured are lost forever.

Grandfather's Iron Cross, awarded for World War I service -
well, that too was lost in the Holocaust confusion.

This is the sad part of life,
that some things cherished
may not having been worth keeping.

Finality

In a banquet of delights
nothing is ever as it seems.
You will pay the tab before you exit!

You need not tip the waiter
to ensure proper service.
Pain more than pleasure is on the menu.

O'Clock

Hands of a clock render the example,
that movement traces space,
that time traces movement.

Thus, the myriad theories of relativity,
and swinging pendulum guillotines
and non stop cuckoo interjections.

Black, White and Greenbacked

Let's not bullshit each other,
we're too mature for that!
We know racism is at the core
of the American experience.

The enlightened fight it everyday within themselves.
I once was attacked by a pit bull so viciously
I must remind myself, not every dog is a pit bull.
Similarly, not every offense is racist motivated.

To quote Rodney King, martyred by the LAPD:
"Can't we all live together,"
At the very least, let's laugh it off.
Ain't we Americans and good at that!

Armfull

I have and will always need you
With mind open, I embrace you
to express my defeats and purpose.

With eyes shut, I kiss you
to look beyond this moment.

Blue Danube

One can be conked on the head with falling debris.
The planet is still smoking. From high ground,
the rain of stars is more apparent.

One can forage for days
and not come upon another upright.

The sphere vibrates with the sound of music
which one day will be called; blues, jazz
and heavy metal. The Waltz is yet to be invented.

Crocks on The Banks

Idle chatter diminishes the workplace's productivity,
yet, who does not relish a little water cooler tidbit?
It also fosters a sense of camaraderie.

As with Acquaintances

Stand too close to a picture,
you may see it blurry.
Stand too distant,
you may not see it.

To view a person clearly,
the proper distance is crucial.

Too Close for Comfort

"Familiarity breeds contempt,"
goes the popular saying,
popular because it's time proven.

With lovers, though, might not
familiarity breed content? Still,
conditions can change and readily do;

as happened with Murial and Tom,
as happened to Tom when he wearied of Sally,
as happened to Sally when she dumped Mark.

Might not indeed, familiarity breed contempt,
political and religious affiliations
being no exception?

Bipolar National Anthem

Experience guides,
intuition prompts.
Between the layers,
duds and mine fields,
bullet ridden bodies,
rust pitted armor,
trenches and groaning

the night

Slab Face

Flattery's purpose is to entrap.
The purpose of entrapment is to extract.
One easily flattered is easily undressed,
and may be slapped onto a slap, as naked
as the day he saw first light.
Musings in a morgue.

I Got Your Back Covered

Intelligence is not the master. Spirit is.
Intelligence is a but a foot soldier,
a ninja warrior at best, to serve at the bidding
and pleasure of her Master.

Cheek to Cheek

How to trust one's gut feelings
in a mugger encounter or on Wall Street?

Be there for the right reason,
and be prepared to exit smartly.

A Simple Day of Rain

As the tortoise's shell is hinged
so also should be one's persona
for the shielding of ego
when blushing is insufficient
to cop a plea of innocence.

It is a simple day of rain.
The pain restrained almost washes
of when I almost lost my one true love ---
me, of course --- the beginning and end of life
as I knows it.

Psychology

The hole is the sum of missing parts.

Hangman's Noose

Only the goal of securing escape proof prisons,
and of attaining liberation for all parties involved,
justifies capital homicide.

Babcroft and A Half

Babcroft's pieces were altar offerings to destruction;
the candles he waxed to the size of condos;
the houses built from broom sticks,
without knots to bind them .

Each work stood out as much in its falling apart
as in its building up. Babcroft considered
a piece complete only after it had reached
the state of collapse.

Art is quirky. The first to think of a tombstone
created a utilitarian sculpture for many to copy.
The first to decorate the wall of a cavern
was a precursor of Picasso.

Art exhibits are essentially showcases of vanity.
Long live vanity, without which we'd be short of entertainment.

Witchcraft

Pretend is powerful,
but not invincible.
Genius and imbecile
can be one in the same.

Show Business

The more you're sought,
the more you're booked,
banquet of make believe,
feeding frenzy of pretend and tell.

Center Stage

An actress plays many parts.
At the end of her career, who is she really?
A script unread, the theater emptied,

the hologram she was fades to dark.

Before

This we do not know
where we were in the before.

Still, wherever that may have been,
attached we were like vines to trees,
like trees to rivers invisible,

like prisoners sentenced
to vagabond ancestors.

Sticky

So much wonder all about about
why dwell on mean and ugly,
except to extract the thorn,
cancerous suckerous and gooey.

It's a sticky navigation between self exorcism
and resisting the call to exercise blatant justice.

Strawberryfields for Crynowloud

Dead or alive, fame doesn't go unattended.
Everyone wants a piece of the action.
The Force be with us to protect us.

Fanatical fans go homicidal
in the attempt to change history forever,
and so they do, they really do.

I'd say invisibility is preferable
to being a bull's eye out on the town.
Remembering John Lennon and others.

Their Weekend Vacations

Because misery loves company,
it's a sure bet they'll leave you
feeling miserable.

If your life is nearly perfect,
you mustn't have relatives.
Give me solitude
and give me gold fish.

Says She

When I was a kid,
I regretted nothing.

Older and on higher ground,
I regret almost everything,

which is like casting a bucket of sand
in the ocean.

Move on, the ghosts of the past
can't touch me.

J.K. Rowling and Oprah Winfrey

Two billionaire women, eye ball to eyeball,
musing, amusing the perils of their unrivaled successes.

The author on the left looks like she could pilot a broom.
The media empire on the right resembles a gigantic frog on a down-sized couch.

Does the world window lie?
Surely not. It magnifies.

Joe Cocker

Says Eve to Adam: Let's have sex.
Asks the Mud: What that, I never heard of it.
Replies the Rib: "I don't know either, but it sure feels good."

Lola

This poem is untitled,
it's grossly unfair.

Stay tune while poem and me
work it out.

The muse is maniacal.
She's on steroids tonight.

Mole The Aggressor

Free as the wind? Think again.
The wind is pulled, the wind is pushed.

So, too, with free as the birds -
depends on who's eating whom.

Same with the worms,
menaced by robins.

Poor worms menaced not just from above,
but underground as well by Mole The Aggressor.

Surgical Gardening

The tree, a gardener means to strengthen,
he grooms by pruning.

Such as to trees, the one who loves me
does me.

Mirroed Changes

Spring ballerinas across the stage, pink and white,
casting pollen, provoking tornadoes of sneezing.

Busty summer pours her sweat into fleshy crevices.
Autumn reveals sinews now rigid.

A pale recollection of summer sits in the woods
watching the gathering of winter kindling.

Again, Spring skates across a just thawed pond
on the bank of which, a slit eye serpent winks.

Near Space

A bird overhead throats its ping,
and brings to mind jogging fields in Hermann Park
and in Austin, where one spooky night I sprang out of bed,
and rather than walk through bedroom walls
I visited, instead, the Athletic Field of UTA.

It was the year, twins to me were born.
I was not completely bald back then.
Neither had my beard reached the solar nexus.
I ran and ran June through September,
barefooted, blistered, pus infested.

The Athletic Field was full moon bright.
At times, both feet floated as I galloped,
a stange presence was at my back.
I found out later, Indians there had been massacred.
Thirty years later, in near space I reminisce.

Harry Porter, you've not been forgotten.
If I could have but one wish still, it would be
to master the language of the thrasher
who whistled in the alleys, sunflower sown,
sunflower height in Texas splendor.

Observation

Are you a predator?
Study the quirks of your prey.

Are you a tracker?
Search for the irregular clue.

Education

The first goal of educators
is to form good habits
and undo bad ones.

Nationalism

You wave your flag excitedly.
It's like waving your pants in public.
Either way, you have an audience.

Territorial

Means streets provided me religious reference points
but the wilderness taught me rifle diplomacy

Culture

Culture is written on restaurant menus
and in sacred texts of hairy prophets

Culture lies wide open under microscopes.

In a nation, culture is a hodgepodge.
In yogurt, it almost looks like custard.

Mercy

Extend no favor to lazy louts

Evidenced

Fidelity proves love.
Loyalty proves friendship.

Those who are promiscuous,
talk jive and love no one.

Traitors!

Apprenticeship

Teachers, who while instructing,
do not touch on a subject's contradictions and mysteries
fail future generations, as well as themselves.

There are more to basics than meets the eye.

Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer

A new season's introduction is light flirtation,
followed by invasion, followed by military occupation
of the regimen: shoot first and don't bother asking any questions

Time In A Sniffer

A thousand years in a snuff.
Time does not fly, time does not crawl.
It does not smile nor cringe at timekeeping tactics.

In strait situations, time appears stretched on a rack,
but when life is good, it moves fast and easy.

In contrast, a week in the army feels like a year
If that's not you, live and be glad for what remains of the evening,
And let us remember our soldiers eating sand in the Middle East.

Nothingness is Unreal

If nothingness indeed exists, how to deal with it as if it's real, as real as stuff you can sniff, touch or swallow, like clams on a half shell being an example?

With "real," you can extrapolate to science fiction tomfoolery,
but with nothingness, you can't do a thing.

The concept leaves you minus not even with a piece of chalk
to draw from it absent zeroes.

Nonetheless, "nothingness" remains a curious word,
better it than no verbal equivalent.

Days of Our Dives

These sweet days I unravel. At once I am compressed.
What happened to the carefree child who, one day, met a door
that bade her enter, I do not bite a bit?

Uncertain, unready she hesitate. Since then, she lives precarious.
She feeds her eyes the heaven's meadows. The mini van
she feeds the rest.

She needs to practice yoga, Carrie. Forget she married
a used car salesmen, who each new day reminds her of her father,
missionary to the unsaved pagans of Sumatra.

Carrie becomes her mother,
not the first Mrs. Missionary, killed on motorcycle,
but the other who birthed her in Indiana.

Beeped to The Underpage

Radial transmissions force emissions in bug land garden,
where piano fingers no longer tip the usual morning tea,
but rather surround-sound deconstructs its pauses.

You know what I mean.
This coded message is from me to thee.
Beware of hit men disguised as Fed Ex drivers.

Expectations

Reality is a curtain
Behind the curtain there's a wall

Reality is a wall
Behind the wall there's space

Reality is space
Behind space, there's time

Reality is time
Behind time, there's nothingness

Hour Glass

Her signature rests upon the Sahara, and shifts to accommodate
the will of wind, the weight of camels and of their masked Bedouin riders.

An hour glass measures time like a showering princess takes her pleasure,
coolly indifferent to humanity's hurt or to the empire next to flip her.

If the universe has heart, it is fluid and transparent
in the unrelenting flow of particles.

Where Garbage Is Not Collected

As idle chatter dishonors its speakers,
urban blight dishonors a citizenry.

Strive to be perfect,
do not litter.

Perversion Is

You need not step into Dempsey Dumpsters
to ascertain the risks of exiting them soiled and smelly.

Neither be intrigued by criminal minds,
which can seduce you by and bye.

Resident Evil

The reason why I can relate to Stalin
is because we are related.
I see in me shards and shades of him.

Trickster

Kick the rumor mill into full production.
Whisper to the blabber mouth secrets
only for their hearing.

A Population of Two

I wish I wouldn't have to write you about my chronic, acute depression.
I wish I wouldn't have to tell how many times I've thought of suicide
but didn't.

What, Phil ought I confess, if not my Personal Compulsive Disorder
of which you've contributed no small part, you bastard!
So what else is new!

Sorry, if this is making you feel shitty.
It ought to. Notwithstanding, I've found a boyfriend
who loves me true.

I suggest you do likewise,
and never write me ever again...
ever!

Green Wash Chamber Drama

The track "Detour" was catapulted
and lanced the cloud works tumulus,
flying upside down across
the Martian landscape.

From the spacecraft frig, two stiffs appear,
icicles dripping from their undergarments,
Upon thawing, they manage to breach the alien distance
once between them.

Now let's see what vocals bring
as they scrabble and toy the night long
in ever constricting
Kama Sutra poses.

No worry, no rush.
They got light years of HBO
before the journey's
done and over.

High Blood Pressure

He hears the laughter
He sees the knife
The rest is splatter poetry

French Revolution Nerve

We become what we speak.
We are what we think.

You pursue achievement, your body odor
and the perfume you wear smells sweeter.

You who belittled me, get a load of me now.
Mind you, you haven't seen nothing yet.

From Corsican whore, I made the leap
to Parisian darling.

Today the Bastille.
Tomorrow the Bonaparte.

Mayberry

Law and order serves the common good.
Observance of traffic rules (to cite but one example)
is a well of infinite joy to those of us cognizant
of the benefits of living in North Carolina.

Fat Books

Meals which appeal to gluttonous tastes
cost more in dollars and health than do the lean kind.

In like manner, be suspicious of fat books.
Children books tend to be are more nutritious.

The Trickling

Tempers are generally shorter
in hot, uncomfortable places.
Behold the Congo

Beware, Switzerland,
thy glaciers are melting.

Hawk King

There is no time that is not now,
so stop talking about traveling through time.

You're talking about falling through a hole.

With all due respect,
you're there already.

Let's Party

Tell me Webmaster, is this for real?

Replies a character on my right shoulder:
Dig it, you got the shovel. Here's the chance
to hurl stones and not show your glass side.

Then, and angel on my left side intervenes:
Every swinging Dick here and tender Jane is crying loud.
Here's your chance to serve them rum and myrrh.

Ain't goofing good on an otherwise abysmal Saturday night!

To The Lady of The Book and Torch

Great day in the morning!
I'm here to tell you, I just won the visa lottery,
and I'm off to the dazzling country.
Boy, am I a lucky maiden!

I have heard that there is some disenchantment there,
that there are more prisoners there than Cuba.
Still, nothing beats not ever having a chance
at a piece of the pie in your native Siberia.

I have died a hundred deaths under communism,
due to having been born queer, because all I ever wanted
our of life was to be my own free agent.
Can you dig it?

In not kissing commissar ass, I've shunned rank and privilege.
Give me an American style romp, a free for all
where winners at investing are permitted to clean off the table.
Truly, all is well that escapes the gulag.

Off to America, in pursuit of take it or leave it!

Free Style

Tom's woes and joys were recorded on three hole, blue line paper.
Different openings, the same conclusion --- shredder fodder.
Tom really didn't have much to write about.

His mental block was the cleanest of slates, but write Tom had to
as Kenyans run, as bowlers bowl,
as peepers can't help leering.

Voyeurism produces fruit.
Writing juices.
Pulp is good.

How Very English

croak, croak
chirp chirp
crick cricket

Before the Anglos and the Saxons ferried to Britain,
a rudimentary form English may have already been spoken
by the wee cricket people of Cherokee Country, present day Georgia.

Emerald

These swollen hands,
this weathered brow
neath tattered cap of salmon catch

My rubber boots,
three times bartered, thrice resoled
am I the stronger for past displacements?

I dare not say,
but that my soul belongs to Ireland,
for Ireland made me Irish.

Sunday Thought

The appreciation of nature
is the purest form of worship

Rocker Knocker

The sizzle upbraids me silly when Wild Jill struts on stage
and gets in my groove with sweat and funk, and undulations.

I need picker upper the morning after 'cause It ain't easy being Norm
in hot group of frenzied harpies.

I fear, my Jill, I might one day derail, and skin one of your temp lover,
'cause I too, Jill have my dark side.

I'll plead the Judge in self defense, I should have seen it coming,
and chosen the church organ over The Bitch Rock Five.

Our latest album, "Lobotomy." Get it!
Got it?

Reincarnate

How lovely is my house,
the gate to it is ivy laced
under the magnifying glass where I'm content.

How orderly is my garden, tree embraced,
that like veined arms in sleeves of green
raise to the sky the smoking reed of breathing.

From there, fingers of the week deposit days of fruit.
From there, ice strips naked and performs erotic
to the hosts of sweeping stars and falling comets.

I walk these swirls of fragmentation; the nearly distant strands of death.
I come upon butterflies celebrating their own emancipation.
Up and down and around they figure till they themselves are finished.

I see stars a twinkling.
Of course it's true that stars don't twink.
At given moments they blow their fuses.

Harpooned in Cancun

In order to succeed; you must do better than just survive.
How well you survive depends on how well you procure.
Pimps, hookers, beggars --- everybody procures,
the Marxist pig included.

Somehow, I missed the obvious,
salvaged in a moment of snort epiphany,
while I vacationed in wicked Mexico,
that if you procure, you're a cartel accomplice,
for there is no innocence in straw-driven, nasal connections.

The Given

If you want to play it safe,
assume no one speaks true.

Only poets do not lie.
We create alternate realities.

Rob Roy, Entrepeneur

Who would've thought that a revival of an ancient artifact
would have secured for its capitalist a handsome franchise.

In olden days, photo booths were virtually everywhere; in amusement parks,
airports, bus stations as well as other places of pedestrian traffic.

There also existed back then, coin operated scales for weighing and fortune telling,
turban-wearing, talking mannequins who for quarters dispensed snippets of wisdom.

In the photo booth,a flash behind drawn curtains and there you had it;
a portrait of you and your soul mate making funny faces at the camera.

Photo booth were made possible, thanks to the innovation of snapshots developed, framed and delivered in minutes.

Photo booths disappeared when snapshots could be shot on the fly
with even the cheapest of cellphones.

In the year 2030, however, the "Booths" were back with hologram enhancements.
The lure of drawn curtain had once more gained consumer favor.

Today, there's hardly a municipal center in the nation that doesn't have a booth where nuptials are officiated and divorces decreed.

Certain fads wax wane, and after an absence are back in vogue.
Therefore, there's a chance heterosexuality might yet stage a comeback

Retired Hairdresser

She's 64, single and loving it,
retired and tourist, craning her neck
to look up at Manhattan's big ones.

New York, might be an interesting city to live in,
but it's a hell of a city to visit. The rush on the streets,
it's like people are fleeing from falling buildings.

On a busy thoroughfare, a freak in vinyl overcoat flashes my Aunt Sarah.
His hairy chest is so unkempt, it utterly absorbs the beautician's eye
and somehow she ignores the vertical stance of the pointing penis.

Says she to the middle age lad, in Jewish Mississippi drawl:
"You call that a weave, Sonny?" Sonny takes off in a flash,
bothered... and now with erectile dysfunction.

Stand up Schlemiel

his vision is blurry
his tuxedo resembles scrambled pizza

yesterday's best man at the wedding
wakes up smelling of urine and puke

he's spent the night in the slammer
how he landed there, doesn't have a clue

a day late with the ha,ha -
he struggles to get through

the mass, the mess of stand up comics,
toasters and roasters and anal based humor

Retired Hitman

You weary of the stupid turf wars.
Age brings golf. As your time on earth grows shorter,
you nap a lot, but hardly feel well rested.
Someone has pinned to your back a sign that reads:
"Target Gallardo."

It took 7 lieutenants to bring down Francisco Pizarro,
ambushed at the age of over 90, but he wasn't armed as you are
with an arsenal that would make envious the Newark Police Department
What's more, you're escorted by your trusty Five,
prettier than poison ninja daughters.

Old assassins never retire. Eventually, they get wasted.

Lib's Lips

learn the game you should have learned
you live with quick sand under your feet
everything she says is to set you up
she wants your balls and she'll have them

This is The Age of Women

Closet Moments

Upon awakening, I wash my face.
I brush my teeth with Colgate.
I gargle Listerine.
Then I go into closet isolation
where I light incense:

Lord, my brother Dimitri is hurting badly,
but he's no easy candidate for salvation.
A shot of haiku wisdom might do him wonders,
like that advanced in "Ever since my house burned down,
I have a better view of the rising moon."

Sometimes, all a guy needs is a change of scenery.

Rollers

We two are from the coast.
While we were still in embryo,
fog horns tuned our ears.

Far from this place of origin we languish,
but hasten here from spell to spell.

We pack the wagon lightly,
and feed the engine horses ethanol,
and ankle deep, wade in.

We talk the talk of couples
and of gulls bound to the reappear.

Blessed are The Pacemakers

Let me be re-reminded,
"Blessed are the peacemakers."

The urge to hit back is quickly passing.
I see no gain in protracting anger.

Is this maturity awakening
or might it be the bypass?

Eight Ball, Side Pocket

Embrace the possibility all might end in an instant
Walk free amongst the fossils,
the relics and the living.

Tomorrow is "domani,"
and so is the day after domani ---
dopodomani

Forward and Onward

Flee the destructive critic. She seeks
to make opaque your moral clarity.

Trust your instincts, brother.
You desire no one evil.

It's always be about survival
and enjoyment, isn't it?

I Thought I Read a Pussy Cat

How now pale shadow --- toothless wonder of romance gone sour.
She ditched you in renewed midlife crisis.
Get over it, frat boy! Didn't your mother tell you, that life moves on?

Shouldn't those failed twosomes and a half
be like open doors --- of little import
in your going in and out? Get over it, frat boy!

Ain't it high time, you dwell on true adventures
than pretend you're back in teenage angst?
As you are I was once.

Missing Parts

The ethereal kind have no feet
They float tethered to circumstances
theirs alone

We call them ghosts
Were they more annoying
We'd have them fumigated

HIM

My love is his.
His love is mine.

He spoke to me.
I hear,
I listen.

"Be still and know that I am God."

Survival of Fruit

Black butterflies of luminous markings
have found a place in sun and shade,
in dry and wet, under entanglement
of heavily laden branches.

Here, as well,resides a wasp,
the size of a middle finger,
whose legs set wide apart,
ravages rotting figs.

A gardener in rubber boots,
happens on the feast
and bludgeons the beast
in throes of elevation.

The Caribbean, Pacific Gamut

A highway runs through downtown,
east and west into the hinterland.

The merchandise moves heavy,
in from Asia, down to Colombia.

Through Gulf slicks
plow the container ships.

The whales don't stand an Irishman's chance
of surviving this doom's day scenario.

Japanese harpoons await.

On Crater's Edge

Vapors ascend the acme face,
sulfur scarred, hardened black,
yellow laced.

Clouds sweep over the outer wall.
Lies on the other side
an expanse of pumice beach.

A noiseless height this place,
that sucks the stress out of feet.
The moment would be perfect,

were it not for the grandson tagging,
whose non stop gab and facial quirks
remind me of a baboon's ass,

severely orange and out of touch
with the present need to absorb the peace and quiet.
Here the wind sails gallantly and circulates silently,

no chirp of bird to assist,
no tick of insect to mitigate.
Were it not for the kid,

I'd speak to God personal.

You think Ants worry about if it will rain?

Is human nature at its rawest
at odds with Mother Nature?

What makes us the so destructive?
Our intelligence or our inheritance original sin?

I observe the antisocial behavior and am confounded.
I pick my nose in disbelief.

Raining In Weather

What instrument is more passive than an umbrella
that makes its bearer impermeable,
unless its thin cage and bat-tipped wings
are turned inside out by act of wind?

Might be a Pedaphile

He's beefy, balding and seemingly uncomfortable.
He's entered the hotel's pool area, camera in hand.
Two young boys are splashing about.

The man seems intent on shooting the courtyard trees.
A botanist? Perhaps, why then can't he decide what trees to photograph,
and if to shoot them bottom up or from the palm heads down?

Give the benefit of doubt, but fakes are easy to detect.
The first sight of him sent a tingle down my back.
Am I right or imagining things?

The trap is set.
Vigilante justice
must be flawless

Breakfast at Denny's

I overhear two crusaders discussing commerce.
Bold face, devious, they pretend to be honest.

We forget how late in the day it is
to make amends and die with clarity.

Art's Purpose

Bring harmony back into our lives,
disjointed, emotionally disemboweled
by subversive forces.

Art sustains us, science drains us.
And yet, one without the other does not continue
just as dysfunctional marriage endures, in spite of everything.

Filling

The broad smile of a pretty girl
invigorates like a cold shower,
snaps as a bursting dawn
and makes an old heart feel young again
as he stumbles and canes his way into fading day.

Hiho, Silver, the ole Ranger.

Advice to Louise

You fret much too much, my Queen,
about what people might say or think.

What people say and think is for the most part whimsical.

If you are rich, lead them to think you're poor.
If you're poor, it's to your advantage they think you rich.

The Big Walk

We do the procession through downtown's decrepit streets
of mansions done melting back into adobe. The time is passed
when parasol ladies strolled and gentlemen tilted their hats.
Likewise,is gone the time before, when our long breasted girls
wore no brassieres, when the Americas discovered
the terribly, awful Europeans.

We do the pilgrim's walk
passing habitats on stilts standing rickety by creeks,
flushed with recyclables and shanty waste.
We pass toilet facilities rented out to the pilgrimage.
We hundreds of thousands in the uphill march,
our forehead vapors evaporate into the clouds.

Lightning flashes. Rain descends.
At day's end, we reach the sacred place
where Virgin Mother appeared to humble girl
gathering kindling by a brook.
Without faith, you cannot live.
Without water, you cannot survive.

Earthquake 1910

Be dull, be gray, be boring, be passionless.
Be not a slave to emotions,
neither of exaltation nor of depression.
One is no better than the other.
Each carries its own liabilities.

Let people call you lifeless.
You know better, you experience anxiety daily,
but restrain yourself to not show it.
Only when one has become totally dull, boring, and passionless
can one turn on the fire hydrant of true happiness.

Play It Again, Louise

Another day of anchorage severed,
Louise wants to change hotels, again.
The maid did not clean the room to her liking.

"Louise, honey, it's a hotel, a place mainly for sleeping.
Two more days, and we're back in Sunnydale."

We tour the Third World
to better appreciate what we have back home.

Consider the girth of our available credit.
Consider how much taller we are than the natives,
how our eyes sparkle at Happy Hour.

Relax.
Next year, Pasadena

Abbreviated History of Colonialism

It's only a dream, a burp in subconscious digestion.
A crystal sphere hold within it the universal sign for love.
The sphere and the heart sign rotate in opposite directions.
It's only a dream, so don't complicate it.

There are 365 curves down to the beach,
where the natives go to sun. Ages ago,
great balls of stones of unknown craftsmen
washed ashore on these very beaches.

This was before the arrival of seafarers,
whose spears discharged fire and thunder,
stunning the loin cloth people into submission
for over 10 generations.

The present inhabitants,
the blends and bends of cultures,
travel down to the beach in antiquated buses,
reminiscent of Mad Max vehicles.

Gran Hotel

Down in the Plaza of Culture,
beneath my third floor hotel room till Monday
flows the energy of city chaos.

Tooting horns,
wailing sirens
the midnight silly.

The parrots fly down from the hills at daybreak,
and take squawk over city central.
The street vendors chant the numbers they are selling.

Lovers peck on park benches oblivious of pedestrian traffic,
which confirms that the notion of romance
is nothing more than the corny foreplay.

Insistent I have always been to mate only
with intellectual equals, which explains why I am single,
awaiting Prince Neanderthal.

Jack of Spades

Before the popularization of the internet,
flights of fantasy were the exclusive domain
of great inventors, Disney cartoon characters,
despots and saints.

Web is now everybody's portal to infinite possibilities
Our collective intelligence is the god of all spiders,
Now is the time to make contagious
our fondest hallucinations.

Queen of Clubs

No worries about shelter or subsistence.
Is this heaven or socialism?

And yet my soul craves for something more.
Monday to Sunday, I find no fool to entertain me for long.

Gulag the entertainers!
Cry The Beloved Country? Bet your jollies, not this time!

Cold Turkey

Silence reaches depths
silence enters realms
idle mouthing has blocked for years

Be emptied says an inner voice
The ear responds, Mapovia dear,
get off the medication.

In The Flicker

I rise to her, Queen that she was, Marlene Dietrich, she of the legs,
nicotine muse whose angel light could blink a city,
as she did, Berlin to Hollywood.

Lola Lola of gaslight blues, who fired up my nocturnal Siberias;
her silver voice, a drone for sure, flew from out of the wings
of darkness.

In seance, I ask the Goddess what was her favorite movie.
Perhaps, Rancho Notorius. What my dismay, the one I thought,
she hardly can remember.

This proves the point: We girls, be we young or be we old,
swan neck dames or weathered babushkas,
nature has endowed us thespians.

The roles play,
we alone can rate them,
duds or killers.

The same with suitors who pursued us true,
might run a distant second to the scamps
who left us standing at the altar.

Post 911

Whispered I, a Goy,
to one of prominent side locks.
(he looked at me suspiciously,
might have been my turban):

Sir, you are obviously an Ultra Orthodox Son of Moses
therefore, familiar with biblical Hebrew.
There are two verses I often repeat in the lingo
but am unsure as to their proper pronunciation.
Would you please give a listen and fine tune me, please?

He did and the pronunciation has improved.
I would not approach an Ultra Orthodox in this manner
anywhere but in an airport, where it may be preassumed
passengers have been adequately searched for weapons.

Try It

Should I be bothered because for no good reason
my brother is pissed with me?

What could I have said, what could I have done,
that was not pure vintage me?

I'll not plead innocence
I'll not ask forgiveness for mishaps of which I'm ignorant.

If I'm grumpy,
senior citizenry has its privileges, has it perks.

I have a solution to erasing any bad blood
between my brother and I. Fold up the matter 13 times.

Bind it good and tight,
weigh it down with concrete boots,

drop it in an imagined bottomless sea,
from which no unearthly power can trawl it back up.

That simple?
That easy, try it!

Heart, Mind and Spirit

Religion and Science have this in common;
they are coy about asking difficult questions.

Do I consider myself scientifically minded? For sure!
I begin with the premise, God is all.

Do I consider myself religious as well? Indeed I am,
in need of no rituals, no special location, no special affiliation

to love Creator, heart,mind and soul.
Difficult questions, they're always there.

Slow Motion Slide

Wind stirs,
leaves rustle,a petal tumbles
a circular flight of pigeons settles

The old man's pulse taps cadence.
Gravity beckons. Time trips him.
Again, he's back on his feet.

Merry-go-Chase

Age makes reasonable
today's radical youths
will be tomorrow's passive retirees.

Subsequent generations fly to the rescue
to right the wrongs we didn't.
They, too, are entitled to screw things up
some more.

Paces

Give me poems with flesh on their bones
though lighter fare sometimes suffices
like that of visions floating stiffly,
of white lipstick and makeup thickly.

Please, don't make them to Stephen Kingish
impaled bloody on old Maine steeples.
Please poem me instead in a gentle speak,

not a Poe of Tell Tale Hearts,
nor cries me of weather vanes spinning contrary
to nor-easterners turning keel up fishermen husbands.

Don't haunt me nights with the ghostly fair Leonora
drowned in frothy sea, her lockets tossed
ever before she saw the bringer bring
the crimson carnations of her menstrual cycle.

Halfway to Chinatown

The 7 foot transvestite could have played center for the Lakers,
of waist and thighs slender, of buttocks strong as an ox.

I wished the critter had remained in dream a genuine Amazon.
cause if in that narrow vent of night, feverish desires are not fulfilled
what provokes night after night sleep walker's indigestion?

Ilya

You might wonder why his lips are permanently pursed
---is right term for lips pushed forward as if to whistle?
It happened on a midnight drive from Suffolk to Pongo
when for the trip's duration he whistled "Dixie,"
a ploy he used to mitigate what nearly happened,
when in him surged the urge to bloody mayhem Nuda,

faithful bride of 20 years.

For no apparent reason,Nuda freaks out every now and then
and cursing gushes awful. Poor Ilya Andreiavich, what for him to do?
To slam a woman is not civil; to slam one as crazy as Nuda is wicket.
To get away from the temptation, Ilya does the haul to Pungo by the sea,
listening to radio, intermittently whistling "Dixie,
stopping at Stop and Go to re-stock beer,

and buying ticket that may win a million, maybe home to somewhere far.

Arriving at Pongo, Ilya goes barefooted onto the strand to share the sand
neath spiraling stars with homeless strangers coughing, groaning in the dark.
The sound of morning breakers awaken him in the grip of a mystery embrace.
Fortunately, for Ilya and Nuda, this tryst (unlike that of another time)
is but a middle age illusion amongst hermit crabs, huddled bodies,
ambitions abandoned and a washed in so much flotsam.

So back to Suffolk in the F-150 with dual exhausts.

How different it would have been,
were Nuda still playing viola
with string quartet in Mother Russia
and Ilya Andreiavich were still teaching calculus
to disinterested youths, future skinheads?
Tomorrow will be another year for the couple in self exile.

As for tonight, they watch in abject silence, The David Letterman.

She Flashes SOS

She walks the floor
flashlight in hand
seeking evidence
she's not sleepwalking

She flashes SOSs
from the bedroom window,
Nuda, the fruitcake
Ilya married

The Party Crasher

I am no hugger of men,
but when wind unexpectedly lifts my hair,
I welcome a masculine shoulder for support.
It's why I took your arm to cross the street

Thanks for the invitation to visit the mountain behind your house.
Some other time, perhaps. I must travel down to Chile, in the morn.
Before I do, I have a few things to tell you.
Let your guests go home, first.

Playing Chicken on A Country Road

Crack the shell,
a dash of cold sweat
downs the egg in one gulp.

Meals should be chewed 32 times per bite
but an egg's an egg, and there ain't much chewing there.

Hormonal slurp was the mix I saw
a case of piss-poor timing,
when neither Roy nor I chickened out

against a fool's I-double-dare-you.

Torque

The hollow in sound
absorbs the sounds without

It's the metaphorical black hole
for the poems that shall never unwritten.

Get Well Card to America

What a word, what a super duper concept!
Without delay, let's info commercial it!

S is for satisfaction
U for you all
C equals cash...and credit (of course!)
C for compute and compete your ass off
E is for enterprise, enticing and enveloping
S equals seduction
S is for your soul's salvation

Hurry up, America, let's get it on,
the world is waiting to exhale.

Bunker Proof

How you handle a crisis unveils your meddle.
Our nerves are shot from the steady bombardment.
We barely shut our eyes and when we do it's in a blink.

Lance Corporal Helmut Peters has had enough.
He defects to the other side waving his draws,
the coward's flag of truce. He'll see his.

Who would have guessed Die Meistersinger
would be played by a band of roving Mongolians
jumping around like apes.

The Russians are at the gate. The hour is now
to suicide or have our body juices ravaged
by lesser men.

Who knew it would end this way
after such an auspicious, non Jewish beginning?
Who knew, not I.

Preparing The Canvas

What shall be the canvas
for this midnight whispered mantra?

I'll hum it color,
textured thick to slim.

The scales river.
My mantra sings.

Like dawn finds worm,
dawn finds me,

no deeper dug
than when I began.

Vladimir

I met famous person two times, weeks apart, same year.
The first was decoy lookalike.
The second (real deal) did not look to me
like plastered billboard poster.

In first meeting, nothing consequential followed.
After second chance encounter, secret police came knocking.
They questioned me and Grandma what little girl was doing
so close to famous leader.

We sobbed we did not plan on Lenin being present
when Grandma sent Natasha for head of cabbage.
Comrades, what 9 year old has anything to say
about such errands, except to run to attic?

From Bottom Up

A piece of what?

A piece of planetarium artifact,
a memory telescopic in, a whiz, a moment,
a fractured comet, it could have hit a grazing goat,

it could have vaporized a planet.

What Shall Be This Mantra

Respect the memory of the big cat killed
Its turn had come not yours

Green the glaze of forest shakes
their canopies that shade the ground

Green the taste of living strong
sun and water bring to sound

Walk the steps of breath
inlaid trailing awakenings

Wishbone

Took to wet me finger
palms of hand to paint your torso
over night

in scissors cut,
stretched canvas
squeezed tube to blow the cap

airplane to us
explain to us
the physics of a kite

In Furrows

The flood of light is morning,
the leakage bring night
each riptides the other
upon the briefest kiss.

Neither dominates complete
in heaven sent,
male and female
traits.

Chamber Pursuits

Slow ingestion
smooth digestion
observation assembles tongue

blood pressure rising
delivers the message
sex on the elevator straightaway

Prozac

The ability to sustain focus and concentration
is the genie genius in your lamp.

Creative process (like posting poetry)
is salvation.

Get rid of the shrink,
get rid of the pills

get rid of the lover
who's giving you a complex

Frankenstein onThe Cutting Table

I'm prepared to say, "get on with it" to Father Time,
that mad German physician.

I'm prepared to see the world transition,
the which of which that in me hollers "murder."

Prepared am I to bid farewell
to memories evil and sentimental.

For the fish fry,
I am ready.

Buddha Floats Over A Lamp Post

Do not shun your skin.
See how naturally it ages.
like over the mountains comes the weather.

In acknowledged impermanence,
the heart purrs like a kitten,
the mind finds calm's first acorns.

Peeved?

I am not annoyed by what is beyond my range to fix;
officials who cater to lobbyist whores, and nationalism
--- the fine excuse for waging wars to secure more oil.

You want to follow lemmings?
Join a cult rich in pretensions
which forbids you to question the boss.

If I really, really wanted to be peeved, I'd look to
cell phone motorists driving retarded, and shopping delays
caused by junk coupons to save a dime, or buyers who can not add.

Be grateful for these.
Should push comes to shove,
they'll be the easiest to push off the cliff.

Satin Lady

Do you know how beautiful you are?
The way you dress is that your habit?

I dread you catch me staring,
you think me stalker.

Not for lust, but for beauty,
I shed these tears in private.

I Forgot I Brought A Camera

We went to feast our pupils on yon holiday fireworks
I thought them a foretaste of tentative immortality
colored stars in exploding, expanding spheres
whilst outside in, orgasmically contracting

Jester

I live in a cozy village,
whose cartoon citizens I cherish.
I do not... I shall not laugh at them in derision.

They keep me howling.
Laughter is good medicine.
Laugh hardy if you're still breathing.

This morning, the redhead Orangutan
steps out of his cottage, wearing the face
of Marilyn Monroe on his green pajama bottoms.

He gawks at the sky.
He pauses to scratch. Sure enough,
Three months of balmy weather remain.

Go twitter and tell.

Dysfunctional You, Dysfunctional Me

Crape myrtles in flower, white, violet and pink ---
cicadas rubbing their feet in summer's pledge of allegiance
to the flag and empire for which they stand (till it freezes.)

Paradise lost, the Gulf covered with oil.
At least, it's birth control for the mosquitoes.

Blame it on the misfit couple
who conceived us; she voluptuous,
he an ape,

both duped by a fallen angel,
a player of harp, worm of a snake,
plainly no good, absolutely evil.

Crown Our Caverns

Days like this are heaven sent.
I read in them childhood promises.

Love's prayer is heard,
the blessing fast approaches.

Sky beam down,
forest spirits speak.

Crown our caverns
with melting ice, waterfalls.

To All The Iron Crosses

We were shooting the breeze as guys tend to do,
when a disruptive silence intruded
that put us on edge.

Then Jim Boy entered into our midst,
and looking grim and disheveled,
announced the bad news,

that in a dusty action on a dusty plain,
by the remains of a decaying village,
Jim Boy had been blown up.

In combat (hand to hand or at sniper range)
You can be maimed more times than you're slain.
So let's rejoice for what's left survival.

Williams (who's good with words) said it right:
It's not becoming of veterans to cry like raw recruits.
Unending wakes dishonor the fallen.

Let us march forward, then, in the soldiers ballad,
the glory, gory mix of camaraderie, medals and ribbon
and spent munitions.

Her Tenuous Hold on Life

Because I'm still semi attached,
I'll describe her as I remember her;
physically an underdeveloped 16 year old,
hairdo in the imagined style of Joan The Warrior,

a face only France could produce every hundred years.

As regards affection, Cybil was fatal.
Were she to find in you some curiosity,
it would be but a passing fancy.
Her indulgences were not for gain,

not for kicks nor sadistic satisfaction.

What's a wick for, if not to light then to smother?
Her potter's wheel spun asexual,
and still she sculptured sensual.
Her dripping hands, her tapered fingers,

her foot persistently pushed the pedal,

the clay submitted willingly.
And me? I never was.
Cybil gave
and Cybil took.

Booth and Lincoln

Intention is not everything.
Execution is of prime importance.

Listen with not just your ears,
listen to your heart but most especially with your intellect.

Don't be too impulsive, either.
Precision requires trigger timing.

Release doubt and unchain the action.

Incidental Meditation

very little of me is romantic.
all of me is investigative.
i do not write poems,
i ask questions

Double Dare

My spirit is in the hinterland in dismal forest,
home to moss, mushroom and tree frog.

My song walks the oceanfront, where it watches after me
like mother porpoises care for their babies.

On the mountaintops I'm set free
still, I hesitate to fly away.

More fearsome than death
is fear of success.

Relativity

In the spin of Mr. Magoo's bicycle wheel,
in the semblance of from where he rode,
to where he's headed, everything
is relativity art because
everything in the park
is related,

even the terrorist carrying the bomb.

Currents of Summer

This is a warning to all who are listening,
you are about to enter the world of bewitchment.

I am persuaded ---dragonflies hover,
the season a floats. Beauty is medicine.

Beware, love's enchantment threads.
The eye of the needle is everlasting hope.

Someset Village

Lornetta Podge's grandson, Will,
just delivered Avon's catalog, The Sale of Summer.

Prior to his arrival, I had been spying old man Zieglar,
mow over and over the same spot of lawn.

In senility, fly wheels slip,
gears and clogs lose their grip.

At 78, I might be the youngest person in the neighborhood,
which allows for the leisurely study of the unhinging of peers.

You, who might be younger than me,
if you want to age gracefully, learn to be patient.

You see, it's not the good who die young,
but the young and the impatient.

What Really Happened There?

A camera is recovered from bomb shelter debris,
30 years after the signing of unconditional surrender.

Five photographs of the roll were shot.
Their historical value is yet undetermined.

Snapshot number 1 is of a group of burly men
of uncouth appearance sitting around a conference table.

The second photo is of a bunker type space
filled with calabashes and ax handles.

Photo number 3 speaks to me in the dialect of Upper Silesia.
It is of an elderly lady heavily made up.

The fourth snapshot is of 3 Gypsies,
wild and crazy, dancing on the head of a pin.

Snapshot number 5 is blurred,and looks like
a sudden flash of light might have fogged the negative.

19 of 24 photos left blank for posterity.

Art of The Bite

Give me your tongue
and I'll give you my teeth
in the bitter sweet
a drop of blood

Reality and Illusion

A given reality is not an illusion
if you make allowances for the incursion of other forces.

The microscope shows the cell is cancerous
not invincible.

The morning is no more settled
than the Milky Way

Almost Bloodless

Everyone of their houses has the same white coffin
tucked away under the family altar.

I have sat in their parlors and heard their excuses.

I do not light candles. Were it in my spirit,
I would burn down mansions.

Night Pitches Her Tent

Your mind is of perfect symmetry
Your thoughts construct seamless inventions

Your words breach out-of-body dimensions
Your heart radiates across the pulsating vastness

Do not forbid me to touch you, Walker of the Desert
I'm here to wash your feet with tears of joy

How Very Small of You

I bring you pebbles by the ton
for your one-woman sandbox.

How do you reward
my team spirit?

You begrudge me moments
to cry my heart out.

Ding Dong, You Bastard

Every clock on every wall
is a definition of logic
and nothing more.

Every poem defies that logic
except this one, cool as a cucumber
and rather tasteless

A Happy Camper

I have a garden all my own
where no one trespasses at all

these the poems of garden that are mine
where spiders may spin and need not fear destruction
by frantic Little Ms Muffetts ---

child brides who snagged me
while I was not yet of sound mind.

Poet

Never do I feel freer than when I write,
for should I live a thousand years
no one have I known nor should hope to meet
who pays more reverence to what I verse than me
(or is it I?)

Australia

Of aborigine genesis
40,000 ages ago,
I scrutinize your face.
I am myself a walkabout

Your dreaming eyes, I search
for those my missing parts
the lay of Land
the heart of Man.

Black Diamond

The smell of your coffee
brings tears to my eyes.

It is the scent of your body.
I have seen you pick the berries.

I AM

We all can be murderers
we all can be paupers
we all can be saints
we all can be rich
To every infection
we all are open

I am
we are
humankind

Bottom Up Construction

The curiosity is not morose.
it is a bygone fact of life.
we color reality by the words we speak.

In that regard, death is like sex.

We ask again,
is that all there is?

Vacation Time

Why were we happy?
Because we knew no other world.

We looked forward to school getting out,
so we could prepare leisurely for the next semester.

We whited our shoes and put them in the sun to dry.

And What About Atlantis?

Yesterday, I was a man.
Today, I am a woman.
In every bit of fiction,
there is an element of truth.

And what about Atlantis?

It's There

Under the summer sheen,
the autumn flare.

Under the skin of silk and touch of satin,
the first of wrinkles.

Behind the perky nose, a wart
from which springs a sprig.

We, Cinderellas, all
we morph.

River Swims

Keep distant for I am an anaconda
I do not constrict unless I am jerked
I do not swallow unless I am famished

A meal per month is all I require
to keep me fighting trim
so that I can swim like a river nymph
the undulating, murky currents.

The Lawn Mower

It is in the ripple effect,
we drift to the far bank.

You turn heavy on the bed and sputter:
"Sometimes, you are obscure, my dear."
I am a poetess - my reply,

to which you hurl this careless comment:
"I see you as a housewife, first."
Sure enough,

to me you are
a used lawn mower.

Atlanta

A ghostly Georgia underpinning
the city that I love, Atlanta
burned to the ground by Sherman
rebirths in fog and morning stretch.

No black and white there is,
save in pain and memory.

Tag

dance slow motion
turn the table
with knee, toe and ankle.

take my words
know, i dare undress you
solemn.

when indeed,
we dance
slow motion.

chain and Consequence

Stand straight, stand tall
you earthly growths.

Not of your root,
I am yet chained.

Pale and Feather Leaf

Privet, privet
in the sun
so much poison
so invasive
so very lady

Robin and Sparrow

Thank you, Robin
I'll spin the wheel

Tell the moon
Do likewise

For love of song
we beg the piper

Canto

What prompts the birds to break into song
at first light? Are they cognizant of what they're about,
or it only me who sees but does not comprehend what God is doing?

When Then You Leave Me

In the distances I have traverse
from birth to now, no one succeeds
to wipe away entirely my persistent smirk
It's a private affair I have with me
I hold on to anything that turns me on
I never have enough of me

The Sailor Speaks

Every dream is navigation,
every sailing is a dream.

Only when the dream is over,
we awake and vaguely understand,

the kernel remains
but not the shell.

K-9

My thought processes
remind me of a dog

whose four legs
move along

and barely touch
and do not trip

First Love

I seek the shadow in the wind.
Your face, I seek among the clouds.
In every cricket sound,
in every leaf that shakes
I am assured,

You hear me now.

Colour

The bird song tones are colored
The colored folk songs are mainly blue
In a chorus of Handel there is daybreak
In me, I color You.

Heaven

Determine what is permanent,
then go for it and hope to share
in its permanence.

Few Things

I make a fist of few things;
the rip of breaking wind under sheets,
the wailing of ambulances
that carry disquieted souls.

I'm on the slumber side of railroad tracks,
awaiting the nightly passage of tugging freight,
here to the Gulf in rumble mantra of steel wheels,
the distances crossed in whistle stops.

Oil Spill Recovery Plan

"Top kill," bottom kill,"
pipe down heavy mud and seal with cement.
Been there, done that!
What are they talking about?
So far it hasn't worked.

Here's an idea: Try hosing in McDonald's Milk Shakes
and Happy Meals(super sized.)
That ought to do the trick.
Worst case scenario, what globs should wash ashore
would look and taste like Crispy Donuts.

My Mother's Eyes

Green is not only a color,
it's also sounds and a place.
This I knew as child, when summer storms,
flooded the house with emerald light.
This I perceived in my mother's glance,
and heard in her voice transfused in hazel,

a woman of verdant eyes.

Human Engineering

To cope means to shape
Shaping reshapes
Reshaping transforms
Transformation replaces
Replacement displaces

Replacement is inevitable

Unforgiven

In your venomous opinion, what ought I do?
Commit suicide or do penance till one of us is no more?
Hopefully, me, since I deserve it.

Is there no joy left in you,
that you can not bring yourself
to forgive the sinner?

Missing in Action

Into a family of strange women he entered
through marriage contract ever lasting
Their husbands departed either mangled,
drunkards or senile.

One brother-in-law, last seen in a visit to the Island,
hardly spoke, hidden under a pile of pillows.
Months later, he was reported running naked
through the village towards the ocean,

from which he has yet to return,
and most likely won't,
hoping he found himself
another Calypso

Distractions Will Happen

A ring on the "Bell,"
the periodic annoyance,
the irritating interruption
to theories progressing nicely.

Henceforth,
I'll screen every call
to not give ear to degenerates
of deep breath, of moaning and panting.

They do not know
who they have bothered
on whose heads I pin with dainty fingers
curses of which I'm capable

"Hail Bright Cecilia"

Poetry flies in the face of reality,
or is it reality that flies away
in the face torture?

In a balanced state,
science and art compliment,
art being intuition,
science building on experience.

Hail Bright Cecilia,
Patron Saint of Musicians.
Who are curious,google her.

The Barber of 125th

Everything in music is musical
Notes and stops work in unison

Everything in physics is particle
Energy, matter, space is trinity

My barber in Harlem is correct
"Everything is everything"

Lover

I am a wimp,
you know it.

I count on you
to get me through the day.

Without you,
I'd be a bigger mess.

Wrath of God

Can the President plug it with his finger?
Nope.

Can BP put a cap on it, and bolt it down with nothing?
Nope.

Can Whitney Houston's ex bodyguard, The Post Man,
Kevin Costner of Water World give us the solution?

Nope.
This is the wrath of Nature.

No Guarantee

It might not work
but what's there to lose
If you sleep turned to the right
try sleeping turned to the left

You may awake a better person
I once knew a bloke ravished by lust
who on switching right to left
was less plagued by wet dreams

he suffered since he was five

Poemer

Write the verse as if it's the last.
Everyone has one last chance.

The thunder is muffled.
It nears.

I'm dreaming the morning
today.

Last Will and Testament

Spare expense
Save the fuss
Dispose of corpse
without delay

Before cremating,
please confirm,
I'm no where near it,
who would not care
a taste of hell
who so much prayed
to enter heaven.

Mother Night

In sanctum of migrating souls
in wake of travel speed of light
stars for candles have been stored
no past, no future stands to shake
its present tense now evermore

First Lesson

If you don't work,
you don't eat.

You can beg money for food,
but that too is work.

Serpents in Mauve and Yellow Leotards

Grogginess has rendered them harmless.
Keep the aquarium light of low intensity.
It will take days for them to recover.

To quote Hippopotamus:
Healing is a matter of aquatic relaxation

CF >RF

I look at the plate set before me -
as of yet empty of dinner -
a plate in expansion,
in representation of an expanding universe.

A force thrusts outward the plate's perimeter.
Simultaneously, there might be an inward retraction;
the outward motion perceptible;
the inward one imagined.

Is not order equilibrium?
Is not equilibrium the essence of order?
Might not the mind mirror the reverse -
outward contraction and inward expansion?

In a drop,an ocean - a drop in the ocean.
For the sake of argument, let's say
there exists a common origin to all things.
Let us denote this dark origin as CF (Centric Force).

Let us also agree, for the sake of expanding the idea,
that we take as a given that all things change,
and as such, there are no limits permanently fixed,
except in so far as we perceive them to be boundaries.

Let us call this "perception," the Reality Factor (RF).
Though RF obviously corresponds to CF,
RF does not equal CF
because CF is greater than RF

And here we go again,
The plate and I.
Enter the waiter,
who finally delivers the lobster dinner.

Know Thyself

One would think she's courageous
judging by her calm demeanor in the face of danger
and in the presence of physical threats.

She's never backed down from a fight,
and gets a rush when she's on the edge
or about to lose.

Why then does suspense and violence in films
terrorize her so, that even a child
is braver than she?

In A Blink

I heard the plane
before I saw its shadow
go over the lawn
fly over the gardenia in flower
like in the shutter of a camera

From My Telescope

Dark Energy,
Exploding Cosmos,
sound to me
as if someone wants
to get its rocks off.

I feel that way
sometimes myself.

Gender

Lately, there has been some interest expressed
regarding my sexuality.

I am the voice of one in web darkness.
where spiders weave and small fry hide for protection.

I have no weapons.
None are necessary.

I am virtual.
I am celibate.

My gender is nobody's business.
Yesterday I was a bat living in a steeple.

He Could Have Burned Down The House

Rightly said;
horses can be lead to water
but can't be made to drink.
Same applies to vain attempts to reform.

A childless couple prays for a bambino,
and receives a blue eye wonder via adoption services.
They didn't count on getting a monster toddler, however.
Husband pulls off a slight of tongue, and mother-in-law inherits the felon.

A month later, understanding that the new addition
is hazardous to senior citizen well being and health,
Granny ships the lad back to his Motherland not far from Mongolia.
"Of all sad words of mouth and pen..." Screw it, don't look back!

The sly orphanage had not informed,
the birth womb had been a boozer, conception to finish.
The kid is presently in the former USSR, relearning the ways,
relearning the orphanage, relearning, of course, his native Ukrainian.

Colonialism

The helmet is a vessel for the soldier's shaving,
serves as a cooking pot as well.

The island's sweat is in its sugar cane.
Damn the English and their tea.

Once a year we have a blowout called Carnival.
Damn the Vatican and its Catholicism.

We earn what we karma

Trouble visits and does not depart from the mischievous.
Sister Mary White-hot Knuckles makes me write :
"Today, I misbehaved. God will punish me," 40 times.

I wonder if my present situation
is not the holy woman's curse fulfilled.

Here me in Kansas 40 years later,
home schooling a moronic grandchild.
Mirror image of myself, only dumber.

Shuttle to Mars

The plant is metallic massive, colored engine red.
The plant is strapped, banded, bolted together to hold in place
vats and tanks of contents stressed from boiler distillation.

The factory's floor has been emptied of robotics,
thus, Ranger Walker walks by himself the graveyard shift,
which in half an hour (approximately) he'll shuttle back
to Mojave of Used Parts to file his monthly report.

This is too weird.
This is too amusingly scary.
I think I'll just take a piss,
and go back to sleep.

Bold Told

"The poor shall always be amongst you."

Does the above refer exclusively to the poor of money?
Or does it include the poor of information,
the poor of imagination, the poor of motivational drive
the poor of organizational skills?
In other words, the ghetto poor?

Ah, you thought I was gonna say "dirt poor,"didn't you?

Advice to Self

Fools do not consider
that ill considered thoughts
are dogs that turn against you.

Poor judgment considers only the obvious,
solely the immediate.

AisleTake Romance

Blankly window
words roll right through
the static view outside the pupil

Day in May
No good reason
to consider males or mating

we slaves to passion
that for the sake of propagation
immensely complicate the rationale

Why not just get down
and pledge solidarity
till death rolls down the window

Preposition "to"

beep when beeped
ring when rung
text when texted

Speak only when spoken to

Today is Saturday

Accumulation of helpful information
depends largely on user friendly applications

Dedication to Martin Luther Jr's. Free At Last,
strives to remove impediments along the way.

Example: Free of doubt is free of fear
The young lady had had on her tail

a stalker trailing for days

Lot's Wife

Pause, Lady
listen deep to what you're saying

At the speed of your spewing,
you're risking becoming a column of salt

Collective Innocence

History who can read it squarely?
Can the oppressed, can the oppressors?

I've seen vintage photos
of war victims and criminals.

Every village, every street corner
have their own unwritten dramas.

Generally speaking, though
historical tomes gather dust.

If silence is mortar,
is noise, then, brick?

A Day In Planet

Morning breaks quiet
serpent man unwraps
bug stirs in the mire

Song bird morphs from dinosaur
runs the 15 mile dash
in its beak prize rat
size of hippopotamus

Before the pines of Georgia erupted,
before the granite hardened
before the clay turned red,
everything fumed and stank

And then, me from earth was formed
And you? Hear now, I name you,
"womb man!"

Angel Gets His Wings

I would have gladly emptied into zero,
looped the noodle, flown the coup.
had I known it were this easy.

I would have perched on the ceiling,
watched the interns pound my chest,
had some fun before deceasing.

I would have exited in a grander style
had I known it were this smooth,
to knock an 8 on it side.

Look at me now, and see your tomorrow.
There will be things we'll miss, for sure;
foods we ate, games we played, we told.

A fine example from Long Island -
cherry stone clams on the half shell ;
a squeeze of lemon, a dash of Tabasco

No more to devour.
The seas are spoiled,
and me --- I am maggotted.

Publish Post

Sucker

Think extra critically when people talk,
especially when they're at the receiving end
of your money.

The pond is filled with open mouths
gasping hard, practically begging
con artists to row by and stick them.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Dedicated to The Missing In Action

When cherished poets cease to post,

one is only left to hope
they'll return in their good time
as monarch butterflies do
when in from Europe flutter,
Atlantic crossing daring
to reach of all places ---
Guatemala.

When cherished poets cease to consider us;

their periodic absences unexplained,
their readership thrown to the gulls,
they leave us beached.
Their wanderlust has no remorse.
How could they have cared for us so little
who pledged us once eternal verse?
You got to be at heart a pirate.

When these ex-lovers, in high tide,

without farewell lift anchor
(let's keep it honest)
we are for them,
forgotten wake,
barroom fodder,
one night stands,
no better than emptied bottles.



waxing and waning
of high and low

We are to them addicted
like moths to lamp fire

Mother's Day Will Come

Makes you wonder about reincarnation,
what wrong doings in past existences
earns you the present state of penance.

It's bad enough to be born a bastard,
as the term was originally understood,
but to have a bitch of mother is far worst.

Bitch of a mother (no offense to dogs)
has no man to recognize her two kids
That for her is woman's lib

Bitch of a mother still looks for a mate,
though the proper term would be the "occasional "fucking."
Her two bastards kids? She manages thanks to her parents.

Suckers are they, Granny and Pops.
Goody-Two-Shoes out to save the boy from the world
and the world from the boy. Better have God on their side.

On the eve of Mothers Day, the wayward, heartless mom
ships the boy child to Siberia --- an indefinite stay with Granny.
The girl she keeps to further teach the ropes of generational dysfunction.

Bitch of a mother's keeps hope alive to find a guy
reminiscent of the one who broke her cherry at sweet 13.
Woman "never is, but always to be blessed."

Apologies to William Shakespeare.

Orgasmically-speaking

Like climbing Everest,
the peak is where to rest
and celebrate persistence over peril.

An orgasm is similar. The peak has challenged
but the calming effect which follows
is the true reward that

Or is it?

The Dream Within A Dream

The things you sense, bewilder me.
From where comes such conviction
which makes you oblivious to any obstacle?

Why should I have been so privileged
that you picked me to partner with?
Is marriage destined or finally, a thing accidental?

I wish I had noted the day of the week,
the hour of the day when first I laid eyes on you.
You thought it my pickup line; "You speak English, don't you?"

We have traveled far and wide,
with band of kids by our side,
our scant possessions in nomad parcels.

You always warn me to employ stealth,
and so I have and so I do, and here we are today,
sitting pretty, ready for the next Great Depression.

You are my strong arm Queen,
a king's delight, a virtuous woman,
a woman who fits right...

the dream within a dream.

Show Time

I seize the evening blaze
as I manage to open an eye
and vacate my bladder
to the visitor in the night-scape;
yippee, yonder Northern Lights
undulating serpentine.

In my head,
every bar, every note.
In my soprano ecstasy
a chorus of falsettos,
winging the stellar cue,
blowing out my brains.

Can this be transfiguration,
roller coaster buddy?
No hands, no safety net,
no fear of falling as we skip
quantum riptides in a universe
entirely gone ballistic

Reconstituted United Peoples,
in flips and twirls a dancing,
a human cosmic keyboard
of let's buggy from now
till the 13th of August,
You and Eye in Seventh Heaven

A. M. Reilly

In a two word sentence write,
in a to verb zen tense rite;
in a too world cent tens right:

Am Reilly.
There I done it.

Window

Dreary drizzle digging,
running down cobbled lanes
captivates the kid alone,
save for the ticking of a clock,
and portraits looking down on her.

Standing by a window,
caught in the electricity of the moment,
floods the room in prism glow
while family altar candles flicker
and aquiline noses look down some more.

Outside in haunted Vinegar Hill
the rhapsody of tire threads on slippery asphalt,
rain in transit and thunder slow to go,
a sudden welling of conscious...
an incarnation awakening.

The witness clock
and little girl
of spider fingers
and spinster hands.

All of Me

Secret safe, almost soundproof hiding place
by a heart beat missed, Gestapo overlooks.
They collar others.

Their train ride is not for me this time
across a landscape of Kafkaesque villages
to courtyards of barber wire, where snows of ash rain down.

Since then, I've lost my taste for barbecue.
Of Holocaust it reminds.

Threesome in Brooklyn Heights

Release, relief is brief.
Regret is knot.

Or What's A Poet For

It's kind of you to furrow paths between the lines,
where trees of waving limbs bid us enter
fog and mist that bear your radiance,
a while ago in frost was sheathed.

It's generous of you to muse upon our pale existence,
and to that end, light us votive candles. We are grateful,
and forgive your sometimes crazy metaphors.

You have opened stanza gates and ivy grills. You allow sea and sky
to further flood hidden meanings, that you dispatch as if by angel.
You do not fret if they arrive. Content you are, that like a message in a bottle,
a random verse might find a reader..

Thus, suffer us to recite you simple
as we release our cares to earth like over ripened fruit.
The needed backward glance we'll risk, and then read on.

Fatal Condition

Between bouts of sneeze, eyes tight shut
in an average life of 8 hour naps,
between constant blinking
that does we most
to moisten lens

sometimes
some things
we see.

Conspiracy Theory

I'm scrutinizing Star Trek episodes nightly,
as I've suspected for some time, and am presently convinced,
that the alien characters Captain Picard tests, as well protects,
are in reality the same folks I see in malls and farmer markets.
but in reverse, disguised to fool us they are humans.

I dare not share my theory with Homeland Security, for I myself am counterfeit,
having swum ashore onto the Okefenokee, ten years ago next week;
having, then, changed my name from Rodriguez Dominquez to Derek Roderick,
and half way there to speaking English as if I could be from Indianapolis.

All of which goes to prove, where there's a way there's a Cuban.

Birds of Pray

Thrashers, who are mockers,
initiate first light ceremonies,
(or be it, their morning worship)
imitating Robins, a bird who hops around
in red breast so imperial, it leads me to believe
these birds might indeed be English.

A Robin's chorus is less substantial than that of a Thrasher's.
Yet, its simple phrasing draws worms to surface
like cobras out of woven baskets. It's an evolutionary device
which confounds caterpillars into falling off of tricky boughs.
The vocalization also mimics the mating call of thicket crickets:
"Hither, Hot Pants, hasten. I itch, come scratch my genus."

By noon, when Robins sing no more,
The Thrasher's solo has just begun.
By August night, the repertoire is absolutely lunar,
that if the deceased in Confederate grave yards had but ears,
and semblance of tissue upon their once tight lips,
they'd join in trill the non stop jazz all evening.

I tell you friend,
Georgia nights are holy riotous,
but far too few live to breathe them.
Glance now up at the moon mooning her thinning veils.
Do you what you see? Bats like kamikaze, flying unevenly
into aerial insect eateries

Romance, The Second Time

Play the hunch.
What do you have to lose?
The new risk to lose is just a part of breathing.

Look at the opportunity as another chance to play it smarter.
This time forget looks. Ignore charm.
Be flat out annoyed by idle chatter and flattery.

Focus only on minutiae.
Question "pure coincidence." Be alert
for what in polite discourse may pass undetected.

Romance is not just art. It's also science.

A Long Story

And where you think it ends, it doesn't.
It continues.

Recipe

Simplicity, frugality, concerted effort for self improvement.
Work ---glorious work, respite from relaxation.
Relaxation ---welcomed break from fatiguing work.

Love Creation. Be creative.
Work honestly, invest smartly.
Be compassionate.

The meanest weirdo wants only wants to be loved.
He'll rampage for days to get your attention.
If you can't kill him, try to pacify him.

U Have

You have peace,
you have health,
you have health,
you have wealth

Question for The Census

Are our children at Piny Head Elementary lazy
because they are innately stupid?
Or are they innately lazy because of genetic deficiencies?

The only time I see the little suckers get excited,
is when the garbage truck rolls up to make its pickups on Fridays.
Perhaps, straight away, we ought to prepare them for trash collection careers.

Here is a question to the USA Census of 2010:

Is the intention of lower grade public education to perpetuate generational inferiority
so that those in highfalutin establishments don't knock heads in the future
with those least expected?

There must be leaders. There must be followers.

Convent of The Sacred Heart

The Irish nuns, who when I was an orphan,
I thought to be God's damned in crew cut and habit,
today I hold in high esteem,
thankful for their strong will and discipline.

If you think you have enemies,
wait a bit to see how your friends turn out.

Partners In Literature (Stones)

After that first bumpy encounter as passenger and cabbie,
Fenwick Cooper, the silver cigarette holder socialite,
began to hire me on a regular basis to drive her to sundry places.
The trip following La Marketa was to the Cloisters.

We spent several hours in a Middle Age setting
of European monasteries and masonry, imported and reassembled
in the northern tip of Manhattan, thanks to the generosity of capitalism
and the Rockefellers.

Ms Cooper's treks to the city's antiquities
were usually conducted in silence. She'd hit a flask,
and me a joint. Back in her pad or mine, we'd discuss for hours
what we had seen together.

Those were the days, those were the trips.
I recorded my impressions in a diary of 300 pages.
Not much else to say. Love takes different forms,
Ours was purely and strictly a platonic relationship.

It goes to prove that such is possible between a man and a woman
mutually attracted, both spiritually and physically.
Oh by way, did I forget to mention,
that Klondike Ramirez is a eunuch.

The End

Partners In Fiction (All That Cleavage)

My passenger wore about her neck the ghastly remains of a fox.
"Mind if I smoke," she inquired, and not giving me a chance to reply,
she affixed to a cigarette of unusual length,
a cigarette of equal size.

A bullet proof window separates a taxi driver from the passenger behind.
The density of the pane did not isolate me
from the scent of the lady's liquored breath
nor of the smoke she belched like an East German factory.

I brusquely told the lady, to roll down the windows. She asked me my name.
I told her to read it on the permit. "Klondike Ramirez? An interesting name,"
and with that the passenger broke into New Yorican,
New Yorican is a dialect of Puerto Rican and Bronx,

New Yorkrican, believe me, is a pain in the ear to one who grew up
speaking cultured Spanish before learning gutter English.
She talked a mile a minute as we headed to La Marketa
through Third Avenue's water logged streets.

We arrive in one piece, and the broad bids me to wait on her.
I says, "You'll have to pay me what the meter's reading.
Says she in an Upper Manhattan accent,
"What, you think I'm gonna scam you?"

I was really in a doubt if this passenger might return
from her jaunt to La Marketa, seeing the way she was dressed,
all that cleavage showing and derriere a rumbling,
I informs her, she'll have to advance me the wait time.


To be continued