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.