People looking Up

A million people packed sardine tight
This hour of Time Square night
A crystal chandelier slides down the pole.

Quick, y'all, throw bales confetti,
hoping shredded paper don't turn to hale
for already my nuts are freezing on Broadway.

Someone please explain this rite
I might as well be from Mars
though I am Manhattan genuine.

Like It Is

Strange times, indeed!
Like a fly caught on fly paper
I' m stuck to disaster television
of bricks raining down
and steel girders melting.
Bosses and clerks,
Starbucks and computers
hurled out of windows.
Strange times, indeed,
when a jet exits an elevator
and intrudes on the innocent play
of children across the river in Hoboken
Let us pray, therefore, for the elusive peace of Jerusalem.

Two Wheels and A Missing Limb

Which paw follows which,
no worry of falling, notice the skill
squirrels negotiate power lines.

Were squirrels' living conditions my own,
 I'd be considered homeless. Fortunately,
 I live on Disability not in the trees

The sun not having shone this week,
I wheelchair to the window to draw the curtains.
First, good night to the abandoned  nest outside.

"Good night," is a standard form of farewell
to friend and stranger alike. Oh yeah
and by the way, to all a belated Merry Xmas !
.

Us Two

To my hometown's cobblestone streets, my lineage.
To the haystacks leaning inland
To the travail of gulls
To the dunes ever relocating
To altar candles and the yellowed flowers
of wall paper and sepia albums

It doesn't matter
someone knows better
It's you and me forever
even as we walk the village church yard,
even as cock vanes spin insanly
announcing impending heavy weather

It's you and me against the wind tossed brine,
the grey of sea tinting dark, let us be thankful,
thankful for summer night staring winter anguish,
thankful for insect revival
thankful for the geese returning
Yours sincerely, Newfoundland.

Pause

Between summer and winter
the pause time is fall,
pause time in which to rethink

Between winter and summer
the pause time is spring,
pause time to reconsider

Between spring and autumn,
the pause time is summer
pause time in which to throw a fling

The new song delivers
notes rearranged
Moments lived

Enter Erasure

He wanted to know where I waz from
I wanted to point to my tracks in the snow
but my arms had no lift in them.
Be sure of this:

All tracks lead back
to one we do not remember.
As memories connect,
memories collect.

One day the linkage snaps,
and bang, erasure enters.  Enters
like a bumbling burglar who has no tools
and has no need for them, either..

The intruder wanted to know my name.
I blanked for a sec, then heard him murmur
"No worry, mate, the name is Alz
I'll be your nurse for as long as you need me".

Right To Bear Arms Claws

We're stuck to a right to bear arms clause
born in part out of the need to keep Indians
from reclaiming lands stolen from them;
born also to keep Negroes enslaved;
born also to rid ourselves of British rule.

Ironically, gun control is argued abroad
on the basis of whether Iran and North Korea
have the right to self defend by procuring
their own nuclear firecrackers.
Where will the madness end?

Hopefully, on December 21st.

Reality Nearly

Reality, really
Senses poor into centrifuge

Centrifuge spins, mixes,separates,
feeds into mental manufacturing,

manufacturing blocks, shards, pottery.
Reality is poetry.

Poor Will and Kate

Always forced to smile
the stiff up lip to birf watchers

Can't we just respect the universal need to privacy

or would tourism suffer so deplorably?

Do not cry for them, United Kingdom
Will and Kate have a job to do,
and they are doing it royally.
Still, such a cage is theirs.

Colored Folk

I'll strive to verse you colorless
for you to later paint by numbers

I've learned rooms painted screaming red,
play more intense than had the same
been decorated pinkish.

I strive for you to savor my foreign tongue
in a dialect compatible to your own

I try my udder best to do you English,
what still challenges me in native Russian,
a touch of French I picked in Poland, that it may tickle,
for whereas milk's color is white, night's is considerably denser.

It's Always In December

Uncle Jose Antonio, you were right
I should have been a priest.
It's always in December
I do not suffer for the baby
I suffer for the season

Maggie Sides The House

Winter threatens
December knives landscapes
Trees not undressed
show a leaf fat and metal

Such a tree is Magnolia
As with Lilly, as with Willow,
Magnolia, too,
a proper name for woman.

Enchantment

Were leaves to fall Mars to Earth
As seasons come from beyond our reach
Can leaves fall more distant
than young hearts in love fall to pieces ?

I knew a boy who thought he knew a girl
Hand in hand they walked streets
Neither he nor she knowing the paths walked
were laid ancestral .

Ode to paths which lead back from whence we came
Put on seashell lobes to hear the undercurrent concerts
Look up to see night's magic, that the stars we think we see
may long ago have disappeared

1 Minute Galaxy

Enter light out of darkroom
Re enter into darkroom once more
Photo graph

Curtain in function of essence
Shutter in function of presence
Shutter graph

Desire made flesh
How many people the planet
7 billion minus or plus

Concert of variables all
1 minute galaxy
Bang goes the Universe

Nun Gets It

He rhymes with thyme
the posts he posts

She whops to tens
the colors of her palette

It's all good
No one gets hurt

Post Postpartum Considerations

Had it not have been better
the brothers been aborted
than birthed to commit patricide?

Their surname is Melendez.
The fate of them is sealed.
Tricky word this word,  "fate."

Einstein Moment

If roses could talk they might inform
As morning crystal sees
Morning crystal does

Morning crystal travelogues
in movements worm like twists
turns and  hunches coils

pushes uncaring
the splendor that was Rome
the glory that was Greece
the sand clocks of ancient Egypt

MC is a kind of unending tunnel
its inching probe the speed  of light
If roses could talk, they might inform
Morning Crystal is a vagina

Care In Shaving

Happy the happy
but what are three-legged elephants
suppose to be happy about?

Let them confide with their aches, mainly
No groaning, of suffering's cup drink steep
Go hills and fly kites when March winds strong

Smoke sauna in  monastic confinement
Paint  your canvasses Van Gogh or Pollack
Taking care not to offend unnecessarily

Nor make your floors blood slippery
though you be born three legged
Ladies be ladies.  Men be gentle!

No Inbetween

Hate hurts
Love heals
No inbetween

Darn Wish List

There ought to be an 11th Commandment,
Thou shalt wish for nothing -
including dying too early or too late.
Just accept the appointed hour is ripe

And don't wish for Christmases past, either,
Especially don't wish to reunite with your first fling
It didn't work then, last then.
Why would it now?

If, Sir or Madam, you desire nothing,
would nothing ever disappoint?
Neither wish to be 16 again,
a deja vu no one deserves.

Have you noticed that people who tend to sigh frequently,
frequently are cancer ridden. Damn wish lists
they don't get over.  As I said,  there ought to be
an 11th Commandment,

tattooed on everybody's forehead
in blinking circuitry, too boot!

3 Peas

Plan
Planet
Plant

There you have it

Plan wisely
plant the planet lovely
Respect the waters

The Neighborhood

Do good and do not worry
if the receivers are deserving

Be concerned for the welfare
of those who surround you

Celebrate their achievements
Lament inappropriate behavior

There was a man who preached
love your neighbor
your enemy, too

For love of him, I try
and now begin (just begin)
to understand what love's about

I Extend

I extend my hand to the child I was
Projected still onto windowless landscapes
Landscapes of murmur and drifting laments.
I refer to the ink blotter nights of my white Siberia.

I extend my soul to polar regions
and to the ends of the earth, down the Equator,
Round its girth, energies emerge transform.
I am Russian, I am Jew, I am woman born
where from snow speaks in Arctic.

Unity of Life

I'd like to know what crows tell
when over head they sqwak
I crane my neck to look at them
whose broadcast calls I'll speculate
might mark magnetic posts

\

In The Sudan Under A Tree That Is Dead

I try not to bare my heart
-What kind of poet are you, woman?

I am a poetess who bears a shield
Old that I am, all my children I've already birthed
Daily they perish by the hundreds and thousands
for want of good water and to satisfy greed

Try as I may not to bare my heart
I pave my verses with underspeak

Friends and Foes

Both need scrutiny
Foes might become allies
Friends are there any?

Wonderous

How wondrous are birds
who do not toil as we men toil
yet spreads are laid out for them

How woeful are we of human kind
all of whose problems are self made
or float in other people's minds

Diet

Think right think
Fear no bad think happening
Love unconditional

Eat healthy
Avoid re flux.
Chew 32 times per bite.

With Emotions Too

There is dust that floats
A microbe moves
A wave is born
An electron grooves

Everything's where needs to be
Particles are particular
because they are.

Cheering Audience

Successful offspring bring joy to parents
Of latter plane ladder lands Manhattan
for night on town window shop studio
American glitz and more

Then east cross Atlantic Channel
Queen sits where Big Ben meridians
the dense and narrows London fog
and Lady Torch

Mirror On The Bathroom Floor

It's not about a slippery frog turned prince
Rather it's about the princess who was turned into a toad
which made the bathroom mirror crash to the floor
Oh my gosh, Botox already!

Post Election Glee

I was not going to vote
Undecided who was the worst
Then, on Election Eve the robot calls began to fly
Two from Barbara, mother of Bush
One from Clint Dirty Harry
Two from Pat Boone, White Prince of Soul
One from Virginia's Governor McDonald
One from a guy speaking his heart in Yiddish

Then ---The Call from him, The Man,
the Story, the Investment Banker.
Said the robot call of Mitt Dear Romney,
"Hello, Rotenberg family, I appreciate your trust.
America The Beautiful, let's keep if full and just
For me winning the Presidency is personal
Anne will make us the fairest First Lady."
That did it, I was utterly convinced!

I went out in  the rain and voted for Barack O'Bama

Angels and Dementia

It is in human to be creative.
When the instinct is frustrated,
destructive urges takes over

Because we are of Creation,
we are designed to be creative.
Because Lucifer was Creation's angel,
there's a dark side in all of us.

We are checker pieces,
angels and demons play.
The Planet.

Clear Eyes, Brave Hearts

Let's face it, folks
we may not have saved too many whales
from bloody Japanese spears
Samurai will be samurai.

There is one field, though,
in which we can have a major impact.
Save our immediate environment
from drowning in noise.

Eliminate television, so that in peace in quiet
we can begin to figure out
how to save these United States
from imploding

Let us legalize not just marijuana.
Remember the Abolition of Prohibition

Between

Eye sees two possibilities post mortem;
reincarnation as a second chance;
heaven a short cut out of the mess.

Let us hope according to our beliefs.
May it be for each as each believes.
No guarantees, needless to say.

Fear not in spite
Be of quiet mind
Be of loving heart.

Stark Retelling

Lights are required for surgery.
Light is needed to see the woods
walk in February

We sea reflections
We move anong shadows
Creation's stark retelling

Winter Cover

There are people who rarely know happiness
Think of them when you do poetry
that sentiments able to wing
somehow give solace to other's sadness
like summer leaves reach earth in autumn

Thanksgiving

The suffering permitted me to taste,
to taste and to endure,
I thank Him for it.

Fire to the kiln
Love exceed my limitations
in the holocaust of thanksgiving.

The Boy Next Door

He's about 6 foot 7, skinny as a rail.
and moves in the kitchen
like a ballerina.

Before he raises to his mouth the first fork
of whatever it is he microwaves, he violently twitches
His arms kung fu in every directions.

Am I spying on my neighbors.
You bet I am.
You think I hang binoculars around my neck for nothing.

I spy on everyone; bloggers, tweeters.
and husbands fighting their wives in bedrooms.
Me calls it social anthropology.

An Admirable Departure

Her sisters, her daughters, the crippled son
who shared with her the one room house
agreed Mama wasn't looking right.

No easy feat to convince her see a doctor.
Cajoled, pushed and pulled, the Matriarch
is forced into a taxi, her impressive size.

She sheen and black in a made in a U.K.cab
rolls down the hill to Port of Spain
little houses on both sides.

Foot on brake manage the steep,
Hold the narrow towards Fisherman's Beach
Cab careens, driver rear views the passenger.

Grumble they mumble, the ride is a rumble
Matriarch insists Hussein turn around
No clinic today nor ever

I'll die here where I sit. Yep, Hussein turns around in their cab.
Word gets around.

Back in her homestead, Mama tip toes to window
where pipe in hand for decades she pondered
the flatness and shimmer of the Caribbean.

Then, grasping her chest, she heads to the four post bed
between the prints of  St. Jude Thaddeus and Archangel Gabriel
squashing the head of Dragon, pictorial representation of Satan.

And there dies she, Notable Healer Woman
Village midwife of dozens
who also could freeze snakes at 16 paces.

She smiles that last smile
few of us shall be blessed to smile
upon our dying bed.

4 Taste

The grounds wet,
night's cool prevails

Wind and birds trill
the anthem of earthly pleasures

Encoded in our senses,
the taste of heaven

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

There's a time,
a cat paw time
to walk softly
and in gait
love entirely
out of the gate

There's a time
of unbroken rhythm
when lungs blow clear
as any there-you-have-it clarinet
and all the bodies spin heavenly
like the Timer's vest pocket clock

The Country Beneath

We live in a country in decay
the neighborhoods micro products
The neighbors are still essentially honest
unless you hire them to mow your lawn
or rewire your mouth

Our politicians are honeysuckle sincere
always say what we want to hear
true of all countries and all human beings
not about ethics but of immediate survival

Call It As You Wish It

The guitar I play scores me
I the medium guitar the diva
Love this intense answers to no one
'Cause the cause of pain pleasure
Rarely soft mostly hard
Thinks with the heart

Opening notes lifts
Riffs stiffer tones to the finish
Free therefore equals no hostility
Run loose the cords Mona Lisa
Reality is merely one vision
on which the forest descends to feed

Us

This is America
who isn't a racist?
Still, we push onward
towards a better day.

A thousand years
there'll be no black and white
to fuss about.  We'll all be back
to being American Indians.

Princess Shower

Rain on my face she was and is
washed me of pie on my face
showed me strength through humility
Twice I am the man I could have only hoped
before we met and wed, a thousand years ago
now like clock work, she finds only fault
30 years an act of contrition

Base Line Blues and Sunshine

I plant discarded flower from the local garden center,
and watch them grow into queens and daughters.
This is to say, it's okay to be rich but it's far,
far better to be one in sentiment with the poor.

The Other Side of Gravity

You journey through a meadow
both luminous and shadowed
You welcome night's cloak
upon your shoulders
dressing your breasts
How scary the night
were it absolutely starless

We are always in need points of reference
The cosmos in us reflected
we as it are a array of particles and spaces
scattered wide yet compact
our thoughts are mundane
we wish we could defy gravity once and for all
That is heaven

Tricky Business

I lost my wife in the mall
I might have lost her to the mall
20 minutes before its closing
I figured I'd find her in the basement

20 minutes turned into hours
10 long tears for every anniversary
I have not found my Sue Ann yet
I fear she maybe gone forever

I dread answers not questions
Did the bride skip or was she napped
or simply spirited this I think
is not for me to reveal

Should we meet another time would we
could we fall in love again not knowing
who we were then for more than love is complex
reincarnation is tricky business

Quantum Mechanics

Since giving up letters the poetry I quarry
rock and pebble mountain side I terrace
for later wild flower profusion
I am a probability amplitude
positioned to collapse
my art, my prophesy
my property

Flasher

A high class, royal flasher,
this straight lace, Kate of Middleton,
who yet one day may queen or moon us

Sigh Britannia, even I an ancient pagan Celt,
feel your indignation. What tomfoolery was that
in all of Windsor coronations

in which the Jacks you flag like crazy
the nation handkerchiefs a fluttering
the noses running,

the tear ducts flooding.
One last bon voyage, already!
Float the boat a while longer.

A Nipple?

A nipple, for crynowloud,
all that fuss over a nipple.

The nose expresses more character
than the lowly nipple.

Even in terms of eroticism,
the nose has more functionality.

Mary Jonas

Me and Mary never had a bad trip
W,e were babes in the woods
till third parties got involved

Thus, I haven't had a joint in 30 years
The stuff they grow nowadays, I wouldn't dare,
Frankensteins are built in cellars

I'd only trust my own home grown product,
where Ra would be Ra
and not be florescent lighting.

So here I sit celibate to smoke rings
until Pink Floyd's rabbit, hopefully,
discovers the portal to Big Bang,

Still, in the three decades since I last rolled
the temple incense, I've developed
a new attachment to  classical jazz

Mary Jonas, I love you.  I really do,
I have desired you at times exceedingly,
but  one should not turn back, wife of Lot.

Forward is  to get over it!

Everybody be Strong

Did you like it, dearie?
Did you like it glad or dreary?

Both ways I liked it.

Why did you like it dearie?

It was deep, it was purple
it was rhythmic and richly textured

It swayed, it made me swagger
It was metal butterfly

Sigh Becoming

Always one more time again
your piano touch too much
the rose petal littered bedroom
the candle lit balcony, 20 stories up
silent gliding traffic, rain dense Tudor Village,
the clime of moment, the tenor sax pain of living
is it any wonder, eyes are first to well.

Isaac

Aquatic voice stirs off the coast of West Africa,
murmured across the Atlas,
met a beetle in the desert,
hugged the Leeward Islands,
chugged up the Gulf passing Tampa,
reached inland where from Katrina left us.

History is similar

Fear of Heights

I imagine myself standing on the head of a pin,
the antenna of the Empire State Building.
My heart races, the palms of my hands sweat.

If it breezes just a little,
my dress will sail, so will I.
"Oh God, send me a blimp."

I fear, God does not dispatch blimps in these New Testament times.
If one really believes in God, one should not fear any thing,
but I do.

If I really believed in God,
would I do the naughty things I do?
I'll move on .

Maybe, it's heaven that scares me, maybe it's  deportation,
It's tough living illegal in Gringolandia
where your Spanish accent flags you everywhere you go.

Back in Peru, under the comforting jungle canopy,
Rosario Rincon had no fear of heights.
I did have apprehension concerning an Amazonian creature,

called the bachaco bird ---chicken shit
compared to the complexities
of living in The Bronx.

Love Peculiar

I love the Lord with all my being
The Lord commands; Love thy neighbor as thyself
Problem is:  More often than not, I loathe me.

If I so little love myself,
what is left to love others?
Still I try. Still we try.

Angela's Gift

My eye lids droop
My nose is soup spoon-shaped
Only my lips are not distorted

I'm hunchback and have the hairiest arms
of any man and woman I've ever seen
My toe nails are claws, literally.

Born humble and raised course
I'm wanting in social graces
I dropped out of school in the third grade

Still, I am endowed with an unique gift
I can murder without so much as lifting a finger
I kill slowly but surely by thought transmission

In my defense (not that the law can arrest me
nor any court in the land indict me)
I never execute a bastard without ample justification.

Nor do I mean to boast in stating the following: From age 11 to the present
my victims could fill a medium size church cemetery.
Again, in my defense: I drink only vodka straight and  am a vegetarian.

Happy Death Day

I should like to die today
I really would
Don't think I'm kidding

The day is spectacular and to boot
(for purposes of kicking the bucket)
I've never felt more fit

By dying today,
I might be spared dying decrepit
on a grey and dismal morning.

Additionally, today's my birthday.
What then's more fitting than to celebrate
a happy birthday on a happy death day?

In Suicides

In suicides, I see one thing
someone's gonna pay for my hurt
someone's got to hurt for my leap off the bridge
which sure as hell ain't no leap of faith...

or maybe it is!

Drawings

Inspiration is a tease.
Jot it down before it gallops distant.
Saddle up the Mongolian pony.

Poetry is wishful thinking, mainly.
Its risks associated with senility,
give pause to us to reconsider.

Draw, therefore, your blanks. When before a writer's block,
sledgehammer it to pieces or dig a moat around it.
Minimum force is almost always preferable.

Friends and  fellow poets, I leave you now to find
the odds and ends of perfect timing, to wander,
the right at birth of restless souls.

Seek Ye First

A fountain might pose a greater difficulty
in explaining what a drop of water is

than the study of a drop of water to the understanding
of  the underlying principal of all fountains

In minutiae there is revelation
Seek ye first separation

Sometimes Paper

Outside of thoughts, words,
notations, speculation
reality does not exist.

There is only is
Is stands by is-self

Thoughts are tags;
words, initials
carved on trees

Punctuation
sometimes paper

Who Would Think

The swimming universe is sensed
in things centered, nailed and fixed
in e mails crazy that fly the distance
in rust, in dust that gathers on tables
in the idiot's idiocy, in genius simple
vase with flower

Emasculation

Betty Davis, Joan Crawford, Katherine Hepburn...
If you're my age,
these names might be familiar to you.

It was a glorious time in America when our women
had handsome, husky voices,
almost  manly voices.

This started to change with Elizabeth Taylor
Even as she played Cleopatra opposite Richard Burton
her voice had a distinctive harpy quality.

Richard's voice
was a tumbling highland creek.
He was Welch, as to be expected.

Taylor was the forerunner to today's typical, screechy,
overbearing TV anchor woman.  In contrast to them,
too many of our guys sound like whining wimps.

These ball-less, pathetic creatures
have I seen,
trailing their wives in supermarkets.

Yet, far worst it was for us
when we, wee brides
had to starch and iron our husbands' underwear.

The Now Underground

Water wheel, water cycle
rain and drought

Let us be real
we are not a people easily loved

Our curiosity unnerves the many
Only a few try hard to understand us

We have lizard eyes
Code word for today: Abort

Candle Lit

Imposing as it is,
Mount Everest does not monologue,
but rather dialogues with all it is.

On the ocean skins the Himalayas are tsunamis.
Every wave, every mountain is but a votive moment
in a universe candle lit.

Playing God in Wyoming

Playing God in Wyoming. my Associate Producer and I
sallied forth into the middle of nowhere
to scout locations for a film project in development.

The film would be a surreal treatment,
of the link between landscape and mindset
in the Native American trauma,

The film would also couple,
the Midwest cultural landscape
to the so-called White Supremacist Nation,

the extremists involved in the recent Sikh Temple shooting,
the so-called skinheads who are determined to rid the country
of  everything not in conformity with their ideals.

Poor bastards, they ignore that they are the hairy wart
on the country's nose.
It'ss there noses in need of surgical removal.

Be that as it may...no sooner having crossed the Great Divide
between civilization and Wyoming, my Associate Producer and I
encountered our first hurdle,

that hurdle being the County's Department of  Permits.
Its Director seemed to be playing a game of cat and mouse,
and she derived sadistic pleasure from it.

This went on for days.  I dispatched Sherman back to Hollywood
to see what force he could bring to bear from there.
The Associate Producer out of the way,

Director Lorrie Cruz expressed more interest in my film.
In fact, she got outright friendly
Clearing off her desk of clutter, she made her move,

a move I did not attempt to resist altogether. She loosened my collar,
and panted how she adored grilled cheese sandwiches.
As I hurriedly unstrapped her,  I noticed a nipple ripe for picking.

The inflamed nipple had the aspect of the eye of a dragon,
and dared me to ponder it a little longer before I dove into the vortex.
I'll let this story sit where it stands.

There is something I need to get off my chest:
I, Cosmos Scolari, Executive Producer of "Fate and The Muses"
had never intended to do pornography in Wyoming.

On The Wings of A Non Rhymer

What then is poetry in practical terms?
Can it substitute for Viagra?
Can it fix a leaky faucet?

A leaky faucet, yes it can,
if the drips report a kind of yearning,
like brooks turned to creeks,

that submerging, somehow, somewhere
a reader gets like sneaky Pete from a bottle,
bobbing, swirling in a pond

Could in Central Park,
or bone dry Australia waterhole,
or even in far out there in Ulan Bator

No easy feat, the closest large water body being,
the Yellow Sea that borders the Prohibitive Kingdom of North Korea,
where no one gets to read nor write a thing,

that doesn't stroke Beloved Leader,
Kim Ill Something or Another,
Son of Sun, Son of A Gun

Keep hope a live,
for it is said, the latest Kim
went to college in Switzerland,

a land of relatively few poets,
but definitely open to free thinkers
like Einstein and Karl Jung, to mention a few.

Colonialism Olympic Style

A black man outruns, out jumps the Aryans
in Hitler's Berlin Olympics,
he's considered an animal.

A Chinese teenager swims
her heart out and breaks records,
she's doping.

A lanky white boy from the Midwest
wins 18 gold medals,
he's super human.

So what else is new?

The Idiot

"Take time to feel the rain,"
says he to water,
walking casually to the mailbox.

Take a moment to hear the raindrops
Lighting crashes left and right
He returns wet, a letter under his shirt. 

The freighter, torpedoed out of Liverpool,
its mail bags, all, went to the bottom.
Ink is wash.  Sea is sea.

Fireplace Chat

I have a clock over my fireplace
that starts when it wants,
that stops when it's tired,
disobedient to international standards,
governed only by the mechanics
of its own irrelevance.

I tolerate the rascal,
the irrational clock
over my non functioning fireplace,
'cause I fancy eccentrics
which tempts me to think,
maybe I ought to try.

Poor Londoners

Mitt was right.
Poor Londoners, they were not ready.
Even Her Majesty, feather in head,
seemed disgruntled.

Poor Londoners, they're in their own world .
Mary Poppins?  Why not Adele or Susan Boyle?
An old man looking like an lady singing, The Beatles?
Joe Cocker would have been a smarter choice.

Poor Londoners.
They do not have a clue.
Mr. Bean?  The guy's a parody
of Adolf Hitler!

Miss Ripple

We sing the reasons
we poem the seasons
we cry, we die
we prelude
these and more
we do not know
we explore

Doors are for feet
window sills for knees
the lesson here, do not fear
do not trust
let no man outsmart you
spoke has its place,
snake has its purpose

Cherish the natural
cherish the moment
stay ahead of the crowd
you got it going
the more they tell you,
you have to have it,
the less, indeed, you need it.

What's in a Second

The hype over the speed of light aside,
we mortals know time best
bye clock's moving hands,

and in the clouds which reach for rain.
Weather feast or famine,
time's the reminder.


I am, therefore, persuaded,
the flow of sand, grain on grain,
one second per second suffices.

Find Your Center

Be certain you are the moral superior
to the opponent you face.

Find your center
Hold fast to it

It is preferable to perish
than to surrender

About The Fourth Dimension

blood mud
sneak peek
sick pick


talk balk
stalk clamor
guy's a joker


fire bomber
makes you wonder
who's his mama

Memorial to Barbwire

Across the Continent

across the ice age

across the stone age

over the haunted Stonehenge

far from where the Subway reaches Coney Island,

gathers a concentration of inhumanity,

and in it a little girl in red coat is lost.

These are they soon to be mass murdered

for the sake of the birth of a brave new world,

freed at last from innocence and tolerance.

No they didn't.  

Did the fascist think

they could murder conscience

Out of The Womb

Night flashes
and behind it hollow voices,
roar and rumble.

What is this strangeness
that precedes falling water
washes me of blood and dust?

Forbidden

A child learns to love to game,
Love taste of sweet a child learns.

Does not love exercise partnership?
A child learns to disbelieve,

Obtiuary

The projected obituary has been scrapped
in recognition it was a sham, a flawed curriculum vitae 
as if  it were possible to request by proxy 
promotions for the dead.

Don't nightmare them in the great sleep
with fiction as to who they were and what they did.
Close the book.  Let them rest in peace.
It's hoped that they'll be a final judgement, and if not -

I supposed an obituary is like a wake,
for the living not for the stiffs.

Antsy

Day blue and hot as August
Red head woodpecker shanks a tree

Feast of bugs on a bark, red head holds the vertical,
seems could care less about a gouging.

Day blue and far from autumn, meal while feast 
bugs overlooked, and no one for it is the antsy

Not the crawlers on the platter,
not at all, the banquet master.

Learn from nature
Eat only when you're hungry.

First rule in dieting.

Resist not Evil

Midnight flight New York to Moscow
Half wit on board
drives Babushka bananas

Talks loud all to hear
Language coarse
Opinions too stupid to be labeled moronic

Continuously kicks seat in front
Seat on which Babushka's back is resting.
Warrants an old fashion ass-kicking

What to expect from new rich kids
of former communist  cadre?
Remind yourself of Jesus teach

"Resist not evil." What did he mean,
suffer the stupid forever
that the Juniors eventually die?

Midnight flight New York Moscow.
If Aeroflot crashes, half wit deserves it.
But what about me, Babushka?

What Babushka deserves
 is to be entombed
Queen of  The  Bolsheviks.

Blow Heart Wine

Give me a break
The ache I bear
are horns in my head

Two o'clock on a weeping morn

I am tears married to a trombone,
gold braided woman,
her womb my spittle mouthpiece.


Two fifteen on a rainy morn

Me, the damsel's drunkard sailor,
our song, "Hold Tight Through The Jostle"
On the scale, two slides forward, one slide back.

Two thirty in street lamp dawns

I dizzy down St. Nicholas Avenue,
cavern bound, the gig's last solo
a bouncing ball over St John The Cathedral


Three sharp, I've been orphan and altar boy

You got soul, give me a break.
I'm a hole in the wall, 
no way out.


Three thirty, I look in the frig like a glance at the morgue

I play jazz on organ and in pews
I plays blues, three proofs darker 
than you could ever drink or wallow

Space and The Mystic

Space on the tongue is taste
In the mind, it is thought
In the heart it is love

Nun Abigail lives on a cliff
Below her, caravans trade in silk
Heroics of war gory are fought

Age has dimmed my lady's eyes
She walks by faith, intuition and signs
Faith is the distance, the space to God

21

As when you turned 19
and I a hearty 27
throw a leg upon my lap
Your weight of woman
again, I want to feel.

I'll do your feet until you snore
What's that you say, I missed a toe?
A little more around the heel
How old you are that you're so slick
80?  For me you're still 21

Thou Shalt Not

Thou shalt not limit neutrons
Possibilities trillions
Take a finger tip, for example.

Your cells map the Universe.
Don't you see,
you are the perfect hybrid?


Reality and illusion
Magnificent crossword puzzle
Sumptuous movable  endless feast.

Survival Mode

Almost everyone's a Jew at heart,
excepting the Vikings, the Celts,
the Britons, and of course Adolf Hitler
who might have been the last of the Hittites.

A New York Poem

The projected bridges in early New York
 borrowed a page from walk the river tall
so your feet don't slog in the wet,
and ships can traffic underneath.

Thus, ends the isolation of villages
that hungry metropolis incorporate.
It's a long story, believe me.
My name is Adam, my wife is Dawn.

Beside the Brooklyn Bridge,
a subway, buried deep under river silt,
connects the Borough of Manhattan
to the former village of Brooklyn.

Ice Age  provided the terminus.
The first wave of immigrants
crossed the Siberia Alaska. land bridge,
the wandering Hebrews of then,

In the West, Black Feet and Sioux,
In the East, Iroquois and Algonquin.
In Georgia and the Carolinas,
the Cherokee.

On the Atlantic seaboard,
the French gave us a statue of a goddess
to overlook the harbor, torch in hand.
Other immigrants came, are coming still.

We know of those who perished in 9/11.
 It's a long story.  The Bible says we all are cousins,
decedents of Adam and Eve.
The evolutionist date us back even further.

All I know is I live in Weehawken, New Jersey
and it's an expensive commute into Manhattan,
where after dark I play jazz for pennies.
I'm thinking of migrating to Atlanta.

My grandparents were from Poland.
I was born in Michigan.
My wife is Puerto Rican.
She prefers we move to Canada.

Concert Fantasy

Russian music, tonight, dear correspondents:

Tea with me awhile and let us reminisce,
for nothing recreates for me the steppes,
more in tune with absence, than painful piano keys.

We Russians, our history,
one long-suffering invasion after another.
Thus, my Slavic soul  shares the cutting wind
and vastness that is the Russian landscape.

And yes, though it be hard to prove,
I'd venture the guess, that Pyotr Ilyich did suicide,
and made it look like cholera.

Enjoyment

The sweeping, embracing depth of silence
my soul voyages, and then like a lighthouse
the crystal voice is heard:  You are mine.
I made you for my enjoyment.

Junior

Heed my advice, you hot and heavy breathing buckaroos.
Heed the counsel of an old dame who has lived the lives of  9 cats.
The pretty face in your scope can conceal unimaginable tricks.

Best that when you speak to girls endowed with fluttering eyelashes
and plumb bodies, shield your eyes that you may concentrate on their words,
lest they dispatch to the dreamland of suckers.

You don't have to follow my wisdom, but at least listen.
The wrinkles I bear are chapter headings
in the tome of life experiences.

If Pretty is a prospect for merger (marriage)
if Pretty invites you to meet her Mom, focus on mom.
Pretty, one day, like Mom will become.

If you don't like Mom, head for the exit and don't look back.
Or do you reckon  you are man enough
to fight mother and daughter on a two front war?

Paint Job

A corner of the living room - --
strange the designation"living room."
Are  not  all  rooms living rooms,
those in space as well as those in time?

A corner of a particular living room
in the Warsaw Ghetto on the eve of WWII
is bathed in table lamp low wattage.
The walls are painted  a pale shade of  yellow.

We grow comfortable in our skin and  living room.
Sunlight streams through the blinds in different slants
the different seasons of the year.
It's often referred to as aging.

Consider this, were you to paint over yellow
key lime green, would the Chopin on the record player
still have the same effect on you?  I doubt it.
Color effects mood,

That's why I insist,
be you rabble, rabbi or poet,
be you Rembrandt or Picasso,
a home is essentially a paint job.

Misty

It could be Danish
or white as Sweden,
fjord days in mist a washed.

Such  take me back to green and lush
to when it rained horrendous to dampen earth,
of six days kilned in thunderous fire.

I smelled New Zealand from afar
ever before I heard of Christ Church,
long before before I saw South Island  break horizon's seal

There's something misty and majestic,
about Maori men of war jutting out their tongues
Their tattoo ink sticks to your marrow and tomorrows.

They pirate your heart and head up-country
to where coffee color brides await
of lion manes honey comb.

On the soft cushions of their bodies
A taste, mate, of what else?
A dish of yummy.

Erosion

Erosion wilts
Erosion beats

Erosion eats you

Erosion turns mountains into cliffs
Erosion makes of boasters saints

In Lunar Soil

Ghost sibling twin
of  Planet X

still born after death
the  fetus face

of pock-marked smile
the mausoleum wish
the candle breathes

that last wish
that last kiss
that  lists to starboard

Perilous Times

I was baby sitting when a scene erupted in the neighborhood
made my heart to skip a beat and my reflexes duck for cover.
Special Forces, battalion size, swarmed the block
their engines roaring, the goons shouting.

"Double damn," I cursed, someone's tipped  them off.

Fortunately, they had not come for me nor my family,
but rather to confiscate the  helicopter illegally parked next door,
and three houses down from it an unregistered  half-track
in Mr. Ali Baba.'s living room.

The troops gone, I hid the Uzi the outhouse.

Scent

Sin's lure might just be a matter of scent,
the nose so desensitized, it does not register stench.

Sphinx

The dunes fold black
into a blue blotter backdrop
for the horn that is sword
for the sword that is crescent.

The desert mirrors heaven.
The shifting sands scribble verses,
the verses are prophetic.
Here I am in Egypt,

There you are in Atlantis.

Subtraction

A clamorous  flow
of disemboweled thoughts,
chaos and fracas.

How to conform to "Be Still 
and know that I am God?"
Stillness alludes.

Might perfect stillness
be constant subtraction
till nothing remains but Me.

Brother

I would hold you in my arms as one would a lover,
but it would not be comfy, man to man.
I did, however, kiss you before I left your bedside,
and continue to pray for you in the imagining
of pressing you to my bosom as I would a hurting spouse.

What does it mean to pray, anyhow?
It means to plead to God, I be heard.and acknowledged.
My brother agonizes.  What else can I do but pray,
which is to petition You, Good Shepherd and Great Physician.

Dig, then, where from I come, You of whom I am.
Dig out and cast away the ill which cannibalizes my him from within.
In You I place my beliefs, Lord of my ancestors.

Post Script:  He is my twin, Great Unknown.
He means something special to us both.

Atmosphere

A late night flyer just has taken off.
I hear its turbos talk to the clouds.
They rumble, they grumble.
They suck in the currents and blow them out hot.

Jet planes are fearsome machines.
One, tonight,  flies the polar route.

We recognize that flying tin cans have a limited life expectancy.
Long after they are scrapped, the clouds they flew through remain.
Does this not stand as a metaphor for the presence of God
in our flighty existence; God the sky, we the aeroplanes?

Regarding atmosphere (in general)
to quote William the Shaker of Spears:
"The quality of mercy is not strained,
it droppeth from heaven like the gentle rain."

Oh let it rain, dear God .
There's a drought down in Africa..

Myrtle's Search

Strolling in the wee dark hours, Myrtle went to find the beach
to search for shells where shells hardly ever wash ashore.
You want exotic, go to the waters of the balmy Caribbean
where legend has it, a tunnel 600 miles
connects Venezuela to Puerto Rico

Strolling Myrtle met the sun float in from Europe,
a subtle sun on a day, the forecast overcast.
We write from Cape Henrico, named for Henry VIII.
Here, first English to North America dropped anchor.
Here, Navy School of Seals trains in counter terrorism.

Strolling Myrtle as in dreams, comes upon a mother up to ankles in lace
blown inland from abroad.   Caring mother towels boy who sees in strand
timbers of  wreck, Giovanni Baptiste, drowned in 1904.  So far, no shells
but Myrtle takes another snapshot, and I by her side like lance bearer
to a knight, carry her basket for shells,just in case.

Down a ways, Myrtle captures three sitting maidens like pears in still life,
staring at the horizon as if  it were the outstretched arms of Big Ben at a quarter to 3.
In the postal runs of  tides the sea leaves behind,  jellyfish,
horse shoe crabs with rear sharp statements,
sometimes ocean mammals.

Behold, reality:  Starfish gaze at heaven's ocean above the water.
Behold reality: Pelicans ready plunge into the membrane.
Behold reality: Wherever collectible, wherever photographic,
tidal, co-existing.
Always ebbing.

The 7 Plagues of Brooklyn

Know, you who are young,
that if you dishonor your parents,
the 7 Plagues of Egypt will visit you,
though you call them the 7 plagues of Brooklyn.

Deaf or Dead

She's no Buddha,
but on a plane
between The Gobi and Siberia
has the following epiphany:

If you feel the wind,
but do not see it,
you're deaf.

If you hear the wind,
but do not feel it,k
you probably died a time before.

Radar and Headlights

He was outrageously delinquent,
but is at present a wannabe follower of Jesus.
She's straight as an arrow,
never meandered from the strait and narrow.

As luck or fate should have it, Billy and Marigold are married.

He, at times in the midst of believers,
upon the close of a Sunday service,
takes to his feet and critically comments
on Pastor Calvin Atwell's morning preaching.

Needless to say, this has raised some eyebrows.

Straight-as- an-arrow, advises:
Fly under the radar. Billy.
Billy replies, Jesus says;
Let your light shine before you.

There's more to this exercise than meets the eye.

The rub,
the scrub
is always
in the details.

Bat

What gives the bat such energy,
to fly erratic the night
on the chance
to catch a random insect?

Me thinks its secret is,
it sleeps the day away
to use the cover of darkness
to pursue its mischief.

I love you even drunk

My favorite television program tonight is poetry,
the events I observe in the course of the day,
synthesized I run forward and backward in prime time.

Mr. and Mrs. Bat at sunset,
the perfume of gardenia in my nose,
the scent of the lawn just hosed.

When I was young,
I was an unbelievable girl.
Aged, I'm a bit more credible.

Second Chances

How gracious is the Sovereign who has provided me
with pen, paper and a tower from which to observe the distance,
and tears for magnifier.

How gracious is the Sovereign who provides robins with wisdom,
and who provides survivors
with space and  pause.

Knot

A vision sea of many, many dots
by ones vanish till one alone remains.
Were this last dot to vanish too,
what art is that with out form?

Same Sex

Can one have two mothers and no father?
Can one have two fathers and no mother?

"Yes, we can!"

Was that not the electoral slogan
of the last campaign?

Mona pregnant, Lisa braless

They, the editors, full covered page featured a pot belly actress,
Demi Moore, looking like Mother Nature Goddess,
24 months pregnant before Planet Earth was born.
The full cover page ad was a sensation,
particularly among boys 50 to 84,
who would gladly have sacrificed their left testicle
for a chance to crawl back into a womb.

Years later, the editors mused - Guys we can better!
Thus, was conceived a new full cover page
featuring a peroxide blond, dressed in black, in spike heals,
bra half open, breast protruding, into the mouth of her three year old son,
on a step ladder sucking timidly the nipple,
and,looking sheepishly at us by way of the camera.

The latest full cover page has been controversial to say the least,
a wow sensation and a lolly pop treat for thumb sucking boys of every inclination,
who now must rethink saline tits.

Glowing Pearl

In the deep of everyone
lies a pearl God-given
in likeness of the Giver,

A soul is not destroyed
though it be buried
under mounds of grime and crime,
but recovered shines once more,
pulsates and glows for all of time

Inspired by Teresa of Avila's "The Interior Castle"

Corridor of Statues

I walked a garden of African statues,
statues of considerable weigh,
weight of stone, mother lode statues
sculptures of mothers and babes,
babes of brawn, elephants and rhinos,
crocodiles also in wait for wildebeest

I weigh and way to photo them,
who now majestic march through me.

Immaculate Tablets

The intrigue over gravestones is;

the whiteness of their structures;
citizens' names, dates of arrival,
dates of departure.

Nothing unsavory in between,
not wished for happy endings,
but neat and groomed burials.

Rhino Horn

The half dressed nude you stretched
the prude deems porn,
you judge if not merely popcorn.

I Am A Chameleon

I have a whining bagpipe in my gut,
the feverish dancing of the frenzied, too.
the hand clapping of negro spirituals,
even the jack boot marches of the fascists,
these tie me to tribal memory
and the solar energy of which we're integral.

It is not so much that I am an internationalist,
I am a chameleon.

It;s not easy learning something new

You talk trumpet and alto sax
You talk blues soul attack

The soles of your shoes
have steel taps

You rap on my door
You rap on the windows

I would bid you enter
were you not already dancing

upside down dancing
on my the ceiling

Jack, Jill and The Hill

Jack and Jill went up the hill to scan the horizon below.
Up there, Jill was inspired to spew esoteric.
You see, she  has a doctorate from Harvard in divinity,
and is currently engaged as an Episcopalian minister.

This (in part) is what Jill consecrated
as she and Jack fetched a pale of water
on a windy day in late September.

If seconds from minutes could be deducted
and minutes from hours, likewise, could be deducted,
would it matter absent space and matter?
For none to witness, wouldn't time also be missing?

Jill's ideas often flies over her hubby's head.
He's more down to earth than she.
I reckon, opposites do attract, after all.

You see,Jack's an Aggie degreed in accounting,
who currently owns two Pizza Huts  in Midland.,
the figurative dead center of Texas.

What's this poem about really?  Beats me!
I suppose marriage can be likened to a hill,
a tricky hike top and bottom

Verse Curse and Blessed

Verse comes to her,
or maybe it is she
spirited to verse.

Verse is like rain
that wets the brow
and drips under umbrellas.

What's bugging you?

Compared to us of two legs,
an insect's life is simple;  no good, no evil,
no gods to whom we should plead innocence,
no heaven to imagine nor to wish for

no hell to dread or damn, only eat or be sandwiched.

No couch of Freud, no church on Sundays.

It's human bean's pursuit of happiness which muddles hope
...and then of course, there are bosses, spouses and taxes.
What really then is two legged happiness?  Seems to me,
 happiness - like prune juice - is an extraction.

Seems to me, happiness is an abstract,
but much less essence than it is filler.
Therefore, an insect's life is by far the simpler.
Still, I would not exchange conscience, (good or bad)
for extra legs and stronger jaws to kill with.

Is He?

Is God a mathematician, an author has asked?
I reckon He is in volumes of verse
no one quiet gets,
some have even gone mad.

We stand in awe stricken
before the numbers.
doubt which is science,
faith which is art.

Yesterday's Day Before

She grooms the woods vigorously,
gives the leaves tongues more audible.
She has bounded over the ridge with imprudence,
her petticoats flying, a broom of blue northerner in hand
she smashes the clouds riffs east of Appalachia.

Sometimes, you have the sensation
the world is spinning out of control.
Stiff winds are welcomed, doldrums are not.
On a day such as today, the world must have been created,
though probably not with air conditioned from heaven.

Kurasawa's Ikiru

Fear not death nor long for it.
Let kindness and generosity
be your sole ambition.

To live selflessly is to live.
The snow lands soft.
The swing arcs smoothly.

Step Sprightly

You have but one life to piano
a soul's extension is in the fingers
some might think the penis
a horse of a different issue

Music America

The rail road
the aeroplane
the Hoover Dam
the Mississippi goddamn
the Delta paddle boats
the whiplash
the Brown Bomber
the billy club
The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
up on the cliffs
The street lamps like trumpets
The flats of Harlem like iron
The bus depots
the cross country jaunts.

All that Jazz.

On Being A Cat

Cats are nature's marvelous gift,
the perfect balance between art and science.

Being a cat wears the heart on padded claws,
our eyes are no sharper than our fangs,
our claws form the feline trinity.

If stars were mice,
if stars could be reached,
they'd have more to worry about
than little black holes.

The Weather Outside

Lawns need wet, roses sun.
Assortment of weather serves them both
like solace soothes hurting souls,
like liberation is experienced in the gales of autumn.

Acute situations are sorted in weather's variables
like sea spray accents ones kinship to salt,
like first blood drawn from an exchange of fists
kinda reminds of the taste of olives.

The sky's lower boundary is lodged at our feet.
On all sides the sky abounds and surrounds us.
The weather's fills these puny lungs.
The other half awaits inhaling.

Good Friday

How many angles in a cross?
Rotated left or right,
how many angles in an "X?"

The measurement of angles,
names them.

From the extension of X's arms and legs,
in dotted lines of the peripheral,
an outer circle is configured.

The total angles of X
360 equals.

Home

How deep the soul which echoes the steppes of Central Asia.
Borodin the melody that does not leave us.

When I contemplate the expanse of night,
I think horse, and I am home again.

Home is what mind echoes and mind reflects.
The earth I walk is itself a nomad.

The seasons are its treks.

One World, One Origin

Before the keys of piano
of Robert Schumann
were,

icicle meltdown
dropped by drop
into a pool symphonic

that gathers
of every race
and of every nook.

The White Flowered Dogwood Tree

There are conditions for poetry, no doubt, notably surrender,
as when a poem waylays you and your knees buckle,
and for a moment you forget you have arms.

There are circumstances to scribble verses maybe no one should read,
as when the veiled lady you are, haunts the wood and nobody sees,
except the poem that stalks you through the tangle.

There are reasons to sing the night
'cause the bird in your bonnet is squeezing your lights,
and the breath on your neck has you up tight.

Bully Me!

Thirteen unlucky 13 -
13 millions kids in America are bullied daily.
Thirteen million? You gotta be kidding!
Say, how many are doing the bullying?

Parents of the weak and sissies, time to organize right now,
if you haven't already done so. More and more support groups are needed
from the Jersey swamps lands to the Hawaiian beaches.

However, sociologists and the well intended (in general)
keep in mind, that the average bully is readily persuaded to desist
from his or her delinquent ways by a bloody nose or a poke in the eye
with the aim of the poker to blind them for good.

I Broke The Oath

This one was different,
not like the others.

I was not initially of the mind to break the pact,
of death do us part, which at last I did not take serial.

It didn't work!
Sign here, you bastard!

Dice in The Sand

Noise erupts out of no good argument.
The day is ruined, war is declared.
Peace, like a leper, has been banished.
Calamity hangs over the village of Auschwitz.
Fainting hearts, alas, submit to fate that villain.

The sky is cleansed of smoke.
Gloom will stay though flowers bloom.
Again, Israel manages to survive,
the cost - blood and ash against the odds
like yet another tax from Babylon.

And there, the Window

It looks like a door. It's an open hand.
It looks like a gate. It's a heart on hinges;
me at the threshold, U on the inside,
fullness and emptiness, sound and no sound.
Art and no art thou art.

U are the grand stand. I am a split
divided by a million, again divided by a billion
and then a trillion into operations infinite,
up the spiral staircase where "out" is a tower
and there the window.

Blessed Land Rite U Play

Simple design of highly complex plan;
of trees hanging over ledges, of bees in mid air copulation,
of perfumed breezes that seed the stiffer winds,
of spring rising into summer, of fall come down
in storms and buckets.

I am delighted, I am excited.
The freezes in my homeland make me ecstatic.
Cape May thrills me when thaws the Jersey coast.
Friend am I to every wing and paw, be they prey or predator.
Global am I with the monarchs in their migrations.

Hermes and Map

I catch a glimpse of his winged heels, escapade to escapade,
scurrying, skipping the mind scape phantoms.
Hermes knows where I reside.
He has layovers in his wizardry circuit.

By the manner of how I'm tortured,
I could be one of his least favorite pit stops.

Since I was little, I've hung on window sills,
wandering the weather, wondering
if before my presence fleshed in mother,
might rain drops have been my occupational hazard.

Will of The Scheme

Configure a plan pure and simple,
mind will tend to the myriad of details,
heart will direct you to the finish.

Contrive a plan, one convoluted-
not wll thought out,
quick sand is the first recipient.

Walker Coffee

When I television, it's like looking in on an insane asylum.
The radio's reception is shoddy maybe due to recent solar activity.

Laptop is acting up,
maybe resulting from abruptly closing it down.

I don't have a cell phone.
I have no need for instantaneous connections.

Tenuously I survive in continuity of a caveman ancestor
who couldn't care less if I live or not.

We Begin to Suspect

Like lighthouses do passing ships,
at night, sky blinks to the earth below.
Sky is an eye, we begin to suspect.

In the sky works, seasons are wrought,
bought, sold and transferred.
Sky is where children first invent.

Sky is the metaphorical womb of every woman,
the ports of call of the near and distant.
Beneath it, even the death of a beetle is precious.

As subtle as thunder isn't, the aim of rivers
is to reach an ocean. And so, the rivers above us
await release as measured and timed as calm follows storm.

Queen of March

While she's still in breathing,
she'll keep the bird-feeds full,
to curry favor with the flutes and troubadours.

Japanese black pine is a monster growing by the hour,
its index fingers declaring the things wild things dare declare:
We are here, regardless of your preferences.

Jasmine bush vines to the lamp post top,
flowery heavy from toe to heaven -
Jasmine Bush the Queen of March .

Cardinal lands on my shoulder, communes a message;
May the garden be your place of worship,
and suffer no tyrant to tell you what hymns to chant.

A Mat Springs Up

Once lived a woman in a cabin
positioned between wood and river
Once the woman was girlish in apron
Now she's shriveled.

From cabin's chimney, ash spirals skyward
Over the fireplace bubbles a pot of lentils
Once stood a village, its remnants scattered.
Once there was synagogue, sabbath and kaddish.

Once chickens were raised behind nearby fences
Once kindling was gathered and bound for fire
Once crow's call was heard in fleeting formation,
behind it the roar of black cross fighters.

Once upon another age,
you and I, were lovers
before the center of world
suddenly shifted.

Blues in The Lantern

Blow talks a tale
dense as river's bottom

Keyboard walks the comet's tail
while hoarse induces slink

Slink blows riffs
Riffs is reef

Blues is smoke
Blues is water

Stage and Actors

Diva is she,
the reason, the purpose,
the high note of choir!

Diva's the Miss wrapped up in purple
like altars in purple are wrapped up for Lent,
Diva's the stage and the stage she is set.

The stage is bejeweled, entombed in a box.
The box is slid into a chariot hearse,
the actors so scripted, the actors rehearsed.

No further delay, let us commence.
First, there was Grammy, then baptismal submergence,
baptismal submergence unto her death.

As for the eulogies delivered this mourn,
they were the best, the best of the worst;
the tears and the sobbing, the actors rehearsed.

Who shall remember
a hundred years hence?
I'll love you forever,in peace may you rest.

Hermetic

While I awaited my Blue Knight's arrival, I surrendered to the urge
to explore what valleys lay beyond the nearest hill and while at it,
to try to uncover what might be there to eat.

These were the wanderings of a Jewess raised not in Sinai wilderness
but in Siberia. Ice, summer and tundra desolation was the table
on which I scrutinized the heart's desires.

I still await the Blue Knight yet no more footloose as I once had been.
Stay put girl, hair combed, face washed, watch the seasons transpire
and how your garden grows when you're not looking.

Comfy me in my toy land setting,
magnifying glass in ready,
joy, all mine and hermetic.

On The Other Hand

For every option there are equals in the range of opposites.
For generosity there is cruelty. For corruption there is purity.

Generosity gives back thankfully.
Cruelty lusts hurt.

Corruption is simply an add on. Purity is generally subtraction,
that marks the distance between essence and zero.

Hear The Jingle

See change.
See change change.
Affect post change.
Change speak in order to speak change.

To heal hurt
or serve the goal of destruction,
believe change advances agendas.

Hearken, then, little children to the jingle.
Be we all the agents of change Cosmos promised,
so that promises kept
are promises proven.

With Hurt

Drugs to deal with what you're losing,
to forget what you're becoming,
to accept what you've become.
to end it all, at least for the moment.

Hats of Sorts of Course

Bonnets fashion fabric
on heads designed to roost.

Owl wings a minute past the midnight hour,
on Roman Chomsky's head prepared to groom.

On Roman's head nests awhile,
Roman Chomsky stoned in far out Colorado,

piano ripples in wakes of lake
Roman, owl and the moon.

To The Hurt

Of nothing are we certain,
even of how prayer works when it does.

But this have I witnessed for myself,
that faith is never powerful and more persistent
than when encircled by humility.

Pink Bows and Ribbons

She's a living doll straight out of a fairytale book ,
The hues in her eyes are that of fractured prism,
The sheen of them is like marbles.
Her lips are sherry, the allurement of intoxication.

She is all pink bows and ribbons,
polka dot dressed, sugarcane in hand,
her cheeks are delicious; her smile
completely white the texture of Ben and Jerry.

And, then, oh wretched day! A plate stacked high with waffles
is put before the girl. Oh cursed! What might be her allergens?
For in a voice and in a tongue quite foreign --- one I'd swear ---
to scare the jeepers out of exorcists, the doll growls demonic:

"These waffles are not crispy!" Bows and ribbons hurled upside down,
the doll's hair stands on frizzled ends, and her head rotates 360.
Battle of the Bulge by wizards!
The buttons of the polka dot pop like Roman candles.

What makes the child's eyes bulge hideous?
In truth, we cannot say what causes this kind of revulsion,
or why living dolls from fairytale books
should suddenly go ballistic.

Suddenly

I sound crazy to you, do I?
Crazy is stupidity to the extreme.
I should act demure like a lady should?
A lady like that I wouldn't wanna to be.

I should behave like a blushing bride?
Another word for weak is shy. Be it known,
by my own sweat and with my own shovel,
three times I've been wedded, 3 times widowed.

Too romantic is a pit. Love yourself first.
Everyone else second. Embrace solitude.
Live in peace. The end of libido
is the beginning of happiness.

Show-me-ship

It's not about folding hands piously
or rolling eyes in swoons mystic.

Holiness is wholeness.

More than simple wholeness is showmanship.
Less than simple wholeness frames me a hypocrite.

In Search of Patterns

By careful observation puzzles are decoded.
Inspiration stimulates imagination.
Discernment distinguishes reality from fiction.

In fatiguing investigations, the near and simple explanations
can be easily overlooked. Study, study, study, study.
May the quest for knowledge keep us from becoming weary.

Thy will be done on Earth

Everything I eat, the clothes I wear,
the shelter over my head, of earth.
Therefore, when I pray, "Thy will be done on earth,"
I speak of these hands, of this my breath,
indeed, amen, even my soul I do not exclude.

Under The Crescent Moon

Crimson stars in deep hue night.
Parrot lip petals my delight.
Oh to the garden of the elusive,
Sage as a babe, blades of Yucca,
Rosemary not just a maiden,
but the Queen of Perfumes.

Consummate Consumer

Don't leave the table feeling full.
A sense of lingering hunger aids digestion.

Desire neither wealth nor luxuries,
nor be self glorified in your display of modesty.

Wish not for death nor seek to live one breath beyond
what might well be pre-appointed.

Seek to understand nature
and appreciate your place in her.

Be compassionate to all flesh
and forgiving of all souls.

The above is the consumer's prayer,
the way of the pacifist.

The Finale of Desire

Every thrust eventually downgrades,
and the acceleration behind them lags.
Slow slows to slower, and slower slows to halt.
This too is what Big Bang is about.

Every expansion eventually peaks,
and peaks downhill slope.
Avalanches and glaciers slow down to grind.
There's gonna be terminal points,

From terminal, perhaps, then reversal.
Logic seems to indicate, there's gotta be end to desire,
because the progression is order to disorder,
and then, perhaps, nothingness.
next comes nothingness.

Lady Fein

Mine mind's eye traces the contours
of your high born cheeks
invitingly glowing they are,
they do, they make me wanna wince.

Think me not rude, I pray forgive me.
Your high born cheeks remind me
of that other stately canvas,
I am in the mist of painting.

Your high born cheeks,
are like your global buttocks,
firm and round. Your neck, my dear,
is the neck of Samson's barber.

Again, do not think me fast.
Yep, I'm a monk, I am, I am.
At least, I think I am. More over,
I'm a painter first!

Long Drag on a Short Haul

Where eye focuses, there eye climbs.
Eye buzzes with bees, I am not shy.
My nose is pollen smitten,
'cause mouth has tasted the rip of honey.

Eye sees clouds. Eye sees birds.
Eye flocks with them.
Flight of weeks makes no difference to us princesses.
Flight of years shows little reverence to us witches.

Only moment matters to us and caterpillar.
We Sisterhood dream Life while Life dreams us.
Life and us, we play a duet. We of double wide feet
fit for walking the sole migrations of soul retreats.

Left foot first, right foot follow.

Mother Naughty

Day in, day out in garden spaces;
between columns set by Italian cypresses,
through ivy gates into darker garden rooms,
I observe that nature is indeed a woman .

In ferns thirsting morning dew, in hot house blooms,
in sprigs, coils, thorns and Spanish moss hung low,
nature is unceasing incantation and sudden evocation,
Mother Nature is a witch for sure.

From spiraled arm sun; spring, summer, autumnal,
wind-driven weather and mayhem pollination
even upon parched and frozen ground,
botany thrives, botany sex abounds.

P=H

When birds sing excitingly
is it out of happiness or satisfaction?

What is the difference?

If happiness is satisfaction,
then unhappiness must be dissatisfaction.

When babies coo, they express satisfaction,
When they fuss we know they are discomforted.

Therefore, the state of happiness in infants
represents a zone of comfort.

Expectations fulfilled, usually, bring happiness.
Expectations frustrated, usually, result in depression.

The pursuit of happiness --- now there's a good one.

Can one be happy if one lacks privacy. It seems to me
that privacy is fundamental to the attainment of happiness.

But how to pursue happiness and capture it?
Devise a plan that is simple.

Generally speaking,
simpletons are happy campers.

This Year

Mark should spend a year in hell for every week
Gwendolyn lived a miserable marriage two months long to date.

If Mark had any manhood left, he'd suicide, an honorable, thing to do
for one who committed adultery on honeymoon .

On the other hand, is not suicide a cowardly out.
You turned the virgin a shrew, now bear her till death do you part.

To suicide or not has little to do with courage, Mark, but rather the desire
to not inconvenience others to have to dispose of your cadaver.

And yet does not society in general deserve the inconvenience?
And is not Mark Furstman not deserving of the melodrama he'd be spared to witness?

These are valid and ethical questions, Mark, but what the hell,
you might as well keep on living.

Somewhere, someday, somehow,
punishment, repentance redemption awaits us.

You bet

January lies on manscape as on the landscape
skeletal and bare, yet bee neath the warmth of mulch piled high,
worm does not fret that earth is colder than when Eve was tricked
by tape long stranger, and Adam broke fruit dropping into waiting earth,
evil seed that would root forever.

January is like a barren womb, yet still
coils of would be green dream of belfry awakenings,
Sun to ring new heat, old heat that makes the continents
and oceans, too, spin kaleidoscopic, silver shekels to the bride,
her bonnet she let flies, she unbridled relieved of garter and of girdle.