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