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

Partners In Fiction (How We Met)

Back then, I was a day trader.
At night, I drove a cab. On a wet November night,
there she stood on the corner of 58th and Park.
With a wave of her hand she brought me to a halt,
and hurriedly I reversed, that the cabbie behind me,
not steal my fare.

She was tall and blond as a broom, and entered the cab
with her nose in the air. "Where to?" said I.
Said she, "118th and Third Avenue, La Marketa."
Anyone familiar with East Harlem, knows that La Marketa,
is a squalid market under the trestles of the trains
running from Grand Central Station to the suburbs.

Why would a dame like this be headed for Spanish Harlem?
Maybe drugs. Through the mirror, I saw her cross her legs,
The slit in her gown exposed a thunderous thigh,
beyond which no gentleman should wanna look further.
A long brimmed hat, slightly slanted, sat ruffed on her head.
"You're dripping wet," says I.
"I beg your pardon," says she.


To be continued

No Problem, No Worry

Black and gold stripped bandanna
tied to the nape of her fragrant neck
over her hair's frizzly forest,
portly her majesty is my Sapphire,
who has more adventures she could tell
than poems I could ever write of her and hers,
of times when riding city buses was by reserve
the sitting arrangement from white to back,
and veranda privileges was for mint julep sippers,
and fountain waters were white and black to the very last bloody drop.

Black and gold stripped bandanna tied to a bun in a bow.
My fingers tips know their textures. My soul has heard their sing.
From Sapphire's ear of perfect seashell shape an earring swings,
a massive ring to mock earth's orbit --- orbit of witch
hang ball and chain that sways to the stop and go
of the New Orleans transit authority.
Between ball and chain shine 48 silver stars.
Add 2 more to mark the sites of those who would exploit
my Sapphire, but neither understood nor fully possessed her;
uneasy their wait in these uneasy times.

Rocking chair times, unpredictably asteroid

Where Else?

In the clickety clack of rails and tracks
through entrails
to the upper reaches of Manhattan
east to the Bronx,
into the languid sunsets of Queens
to the other end of Brighton Beach...

Where else but on a New York Subway
will you find a Watusi
sitting alongside a throw-back Etruscan,
next to a Sikh
shoulder to shoulder with an Israelite
of Talmud locks and flowing beard.

Ever since, I arrived from Bremenhaven,
I've spent my life exploring faces.
Never found one, I did not find intriguing.
Same goes for the ladies --- never found one,
who could not be a goddess for the night,
if treated special nice by me ---

the Prince of Clubs.

Sounds familiar, poet?

Pebbles, pebbles

Control erosion
The garden hears and hires me
We together work

Poetry Police

You adore Zarathustra,
fine, say no more.
You fancy Dolly Parton,
go visit Dolly Park.
You wanna commit suicide,
do it by yourself.

Let us remind you,
this is a Poetry Forum,
not for the debating astrophysics,
sex, or stock market ups and downs.
Let's keep it honest.
Let's not play with loaded dice.

Cherokee Revenge

Like snows ago,
winter's fragmented crystal sank to bottom brooks,
the watery crypts of seasons long but short of memories.

And now from glacial blue, the sky rains pollen down on me
in blizzard gales of ancient dames, who snap their bonnet heads
and greening arms to spring salute.

Who are these Appalachian witches?
They are as follows: Sycamore, Birch and Elm,
Cottonwood, Dogwood Flowering,

Hawthorn, Hemlock, Hickory,
Oak and Holly. I'd recite the 250 woods of them
but for my suffering sinus and sorry matter

blowing hard from out my snozzle nozzle

Two 4 Three

Hold center in the poem.
Let it surround you like a forest refuge.
Let it, also, the open field in which to stretch.
Its singing springs will soothe your nerves.
In its denseness, you will know security.

Recite its verses in first light.
At night, the poem will cradle you.
It is the 13 Promises given David,
in Psalm 23 --- David and me,
and G. makes 3.

Fool on The Table

My most important battles I won on April Fools' Day,
the fool who fooled her adversaries and was vindicated

Every First of April, I celebrate victories and defeat,
light a Monte Cristo, drink from a bottle of vodka,
strip naked and dance on a table a song from my youth,

Kalinka

Spicy Hot

Horn of rhino? Second rate!
Monkey hormone tonic? Hokum hype!

The most potent aphrodisiac known to civilized people
is money in the pocket, the heat of which radiates
through underpants, and peppers greed with lust.

Question to Liberal Theologians

How do churches justify holding Easter egg hunts

Gather the young while you can
The eggs justify the end.

Bandaged

The distorted face is such a scream
in the mirror looking forward,
ear bandaged in wind of day,
crows scatter black on blue.

Flanders' golden fields to live for,
on fiber canvas resonate.
In Flanders' golden hues,
the painter culminates.

Toot for C.

A girl child lives in Pacific earth zone
named for a place in Dutch Land,
In a flight from there to Auckland
a goose would fly pass India on the starboard,
China on the left side.

The girl child corresponds with a stranger in La La Land,
who guards his/her gender identity for reasons private.
So many crazies on the internet ...you find them sniffing.
Who, anyhow, should be interested as to our flesh and blood persona?
The Poetry Gestapo? Let's hope not! They are an owl's hoot.

Hear ye, all ye who have keyboards and monitors:
What we post on poetry forums
is our truest selves in Halloween outfit.
Therefore, be not shy nor fearful
over adverse criticism of our public exhibits.

Freedom rules, fellow idiots.
Let anarchy be our Pledge of Allegiance.
Let the Web Master be our nation and titular priesthood.
If we can not be celibates, let us at least try to be
virtual eunauchs.

Floaters

It was English, albeit American,
to which I would awake
from fetus slumber to be shook,
that from my mother's pool of monthly eggs,
I'd be took to sojourn long and distant
to divers cities pilgrimage, to meet up close
other voyagers uterus.

Truly, no male is "an island unto himself."
And as for we females, we are floaters continents.

If You're Terminal

Don't look at yourself as a victim,
rather view yourself as
the patient's primary physician.

Keep mind and body flexible.
When body and mind are not in deep rest,
they should be stretching like a cat with the mind of an Einstein.

Drink water in large quantities,
that your urine run like an unpolluted spring.
Sound health and imagination are attainable,

It's only when you can't any longer laugh at yourself,
that it's time you throw in the towel.
Live pure. Welcome death joyously.

Pen Pal

Every pen is a potential vaulting pole.
Why shy away from touching certain subjects with a 10 foot pole,
when you can vault right over them.

A pen can be your pogo stick
for jumping around multiple opponents simultaneously.

Forget the pen being mightier than a sword.
Slashing is so Sir Galahad. With a poison tip,
all you need is a pin hole puncture.

They who have ears, let them hear.

Andrew Small knew darn well he had no skills for the plastic arts.
That would not deter him from dabbling. Be curious, Andrew Small.
Paint your world upside down. Screw them who can't look at your etchings.

Creativity is to test the limits. Challenge the limits, Andrew Small.
Small followed his own advise, and cultivated his own pigments.
He tried media others might shun, including his urine and blood.

What if Andrew Small can't draw anatomically?
So what if whatever he paints, lands lopsided.
Just watch, you don't go "Vincent," Andrew.

Give a chimp, brushes and canvas,
and betcha it will produce something at the very least interesting.
Consequently, any homo sapian should do better, we who evoluted with thumbs.

If a guy has the sensitivity to admire a Van Gogh,
somewhere in that guy may lie the makings of a genius.
Release the genie, Andrew, trump the simian.

Whatever you do, Andrew, better you sacrifice your tongue than an ear.

April in Pair of Dice

I am blessed to hear these same birds as thee
in my small lot of deepest green,
the small sea of grass which swallows me

Long life to write short poems
of blazing light in noon day bright

Passover

Release the horny goat on loco weed,
the self centered petite ego

Be absorbed into cosmic fullness.
which is Christ Jesus resurrected.

Every day is some form of passover.