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.