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