The Purgatory of Minor Geniuses

Come on, get over it.
You were a lousy lover,
that's why the muse left you.

What do you think?
It was about making a masterpiece?
It was not. It was about finding yourself
in the stroke of a pen, in the stroke of a clock.

Like Brother Richard used to say:
it's never too late to get it together ---
Maybe.

However, most boys get smart too late
some even die old fools. It's too sad,
that when hormones are raging,
you will, inescapably, live your mistakes.

Smart as a whip
has a price tag,
the kick of a mule.

Correspondence with A Face in A Painting

She's a full moon, big face, watermelon woman
of avocado green complexion, alligator neath the skin.
Her nostrils are flared in permanent defiance.
Her mouth is the size of mail box, and runs red
as if she ate something that was slightly delayed.
It's what happens when you lose your concentration.

Watermelon woman wears on her head a copper-lined drain pipe,
which I reckon, qualifies her a cop. If you doubt, read the inscription
on her badge, "Taste me, I am ready!" Believe me, Mapovia is of a mind
to scrap this painting and start another. "Don't you dare," she warns.
"I'm the beginning what you could be, were you not such a drag
on let's have an orgy!"

"Wake up, you flat breasted, excuse for a hippie.
Do as I order, dip lustily your pork bristles into the minerals.
Let's go it together from here to the Bowery.
It won't be pretty and it won't be a painting by the numbers,
for I am you face in the nitty gritty, I am you face in the swamp.
So, roll down the canvas, Big Honey, and bring out the ladder.

I'm feeling for a mural."

Pains and Pane

Night and day, there's a roar outside my window;
from the far side of the lake, the traffic on I-65;
the whirl of choppers returned from Coast Guard jaunts;
the navy's jet fighters rehearing the next Iraq;
Harley Davidson, my neighbor next door --- rebel with a clue;
and the fisherman who when he hauls in his yacht from the Sound
envelopes the neighborhood in smoke, clearing the pipes of the outboard motor.

Where there's progress there has to be some noise.
There's no getting around it!
Fortunately, I have double paned windows with gas in between,
and this reduces the commotion to a tolerable rumble.
If you can afford a cloaked existence, as I can,
you can enjoy relative quiet within your four walls.
Just keep the Brahms playing fairly loud.

Joan The Electric Arc

Can woman partner with God?
I think she can. I know I can.
Were not my womb and woman talents
gifts from a higher power?
Friends tell me it's evolution.
Call it what they will,
I will partner.

Stairwell to Happiness

Reduce;
reduce girth,
reduce daily contacts,
reduce occasions for anxiety.

In the midst of wealth, be austere,
What's that you say, you're poor already?
Be poor then, and keep your home free of dirt.

Time in A Picture Frame

It seems to me unreal that once we lived in this abode
before we migrated westward seeking to save the house
from foreclosure swift and hard.

And now, we're back from where we started,
where I used to grow my stash in a corn patch behind the clothes line.
I can still smell and see the laundry snap in the gusts of March.

How many times, you asked me to give up the foul addiction,
which for me was soul deep inhalations.
A bad habit ain't no flimsy character.

In desperation, I felt at times I had to do something, even theater,
and so I faked several suicides to keep you guessing.
Our marriage was an icky situation.

If only our descendents knew the trials you suffered and those I, too, endured.
It's true I loved you from day one, though that it took decades
to reconcile our differences.

Hear the crow sonatas on the power line.
Listen to the geese travelogue in flight over the Elizabeth River.
Taste the salt wind blow across the Chesapeake.

Probe, if you will, the yellowing, fading album.
I am there, you are there...the uncles, the aunts, the kids.
All a family history smiles for the camera.

Bound to go Crazy

Crows walk on roofs.
Haven't seen the geese that do.

The artist who attempts to paint the Mona Lisa,
instead of following his inclination
to paint the intricacies of his nipple
is bound to go crazy.

There and Here

I am where I am
because I am who I am,
and as to you out there
do you hear me?
If you do,
how quick you moved
from there to here.

We Poets and Poetesses

Poems are terms of surrender, ladies and gents.
Poems are for gain when they help you remember.
Poems are for loss if they won't let you forget.

Poems, present duality of purpose
We poets and we poetesses are doomed forever
to carry over our heads weighty question marks,

But this is where we give as we get,
our goals may be murky, but our erections
are exclamation points!

I tell myself

I am a child of God,
I will not sin,
over and over I tell myself
before I fall asleep.

Conservative Prone

I don't mind seeing the clock go back.
Back is the known. Forward is scary.

Lil Miss Willowwip

Our encounter was a near collision . We were both to blame,
I begged her pardon, she begged mine."Miss, what enormous eyes you have,
shades of bedroom."Your lips are sherry stained.
Have you been sipping Ripple?

She of autumn apples for cheeks called me "sir."
I smirked. Were we not both dressed proletariat?
She said she knew me from my films, films she really, really liked,
films that took her back to premenstrual innocence.

Well, said I, such a compliment, is deserving of an autograph.
Thus I give, so appreciate. Be tickled with my signature mustache twitch.
And here for thee and for posterity a fleeting blush of my chalked countenance.
Make merry, see my tricks of schtick and walking cane.

I herewith perform my funny walk which has made me Chaplin in every continent.
And now, please refrain from blinking, for you may not see me in these parts again.
One last time, I flutter these eyelashes of mine with melancholy overbearing.
The key of success is to live life as in the flicks of slap stick humor. Be the star!

I bequeath to all thespians to the core, my last will and testament:
Cherish the craft, treasure the characters we play
more than the actors we are. Worship each and every performance.
Most importantly, love one another as you have loved the audience.

The Ghost of Charlie Chaplin

I sit on a stoop on 135th street when what to my surprise,
I see hang a corner neath a street light,
come from Convent Avenue in the direction of the City College Campus,
no other than the one and only Charlie Chaplin.
I exclaim, "Sir"! He blushes, perhaps, embarrassed by the "sir,"
he being a person proud of his humble origins..

The neighborhood is deserted of auto and pedestrian traffic,
just me on the stoop and the little tramp leaning on the street light.
"Sir," I continue, " I have seen great movies - films I really, really liked,
but none like yours in them taking me back to innocence."
Again, Mr. Chaplin blushes before he marches off in his funny walk
of bowl-legged landless, English gentry rocking the deck of a make-believe Pinafore.

One more time Charlie Chaplin's ghost blushes,
twitching his signature toothbrush mustache,
and this last time just for me, fluttering his eyelashes
as only my bestest little tramp can do.
This I dreamed, this I lived
in the far out Constellation of Hue.

Shak-shak

That lesser men disdain the path
crooked, narrow, dark
leading to the luminous gate
which houses the mother of all hearts.

The gate once reached, compresses softly,
its charity of forgetfulness releasing pristine dreams,
like butterflies which alight on stars,
like fireflies that ignite the night,

that lesser men disdain and scorn
we demigods and perky queens
who live the life
beyond the dream.

Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire

The Christmas cheer, the carols ,the peace on earth ad nausea.
It's not yet the 14th of October, and they're already making joyous.
It kinda makes you wanna puke.

I step out onto the Target's parking lot, and am promptly am asked
by an enterprising soul in a van marked "Kids 'R Wee" -
Sir, might you be interested. doing a gig as Santa Clause?

I don't know whether to curse the season or my enriched testosterone -
me the bearded lady of Christmas special, side show, circus freak show.
Blessed are they whose holiday is not from the North Pole.

Secrets

A little ambrosia, an incense stick
and incantations from Kama Sutra book,
we don't need no stinking Victoria's Secrets.

Cute

Made in China,
home of the brave,
land of the busy bees.

Playerr

Michael played Murray
Murray played Michael
Law firms the gaming;
jackals the bloody,
bankers the bloodless winners