A Writer's Guide to Instants Perfection

He sought perfection, and being one of a kind,
sought to fill the void within by addition to his person
of kindred spirit... or so he thought with all his heart and groin.

One plus one equals two, and what eggs may hatch,
during idle summers and churchless Sundays,
and liquid friction when tortured flesh cries out.

The urge to propagate spurs us to greater heights.
Thus, sought perfection is similar.
Ups are swallowed by depressions.

So, here we are, two years later, Daniel divorced,
hops a bus to Minnesota for purposes of retracing
his first hay romp as material for an intended novella.

And putting to mouth a straw from the family's barn,
as one would cigarettes lit to loin groan memories,
he draws a thousand year writer's block.

Our Kind

Rarely do I meet a likable missionary knocking at my door.
Atheists are more my kind of people. They do not press
nor intrude to evangelize.

Atheists say they do not believe in God (take or leave it.)
I believe them, that the God they do not see,
is the very One I seek.

But who should care what they or I believe,
and what they do not see or who I seek?
To love is what is crucible...

And not to love out of let's-pretend,
as bombers are showered with affection
before they suicide, nor to love as Hitler loved his dog,

nor to love as Goebbels loved his dark knight Hitler,
but to love the human family in its complexity, entirely -
regardless of its condition, no man in my sight an alien;

every woman to me my mother, my sister, my daughter
except the crucifix to which I'm wed.


Love is what is crucible,
and not as Hitler loved his German Shepherd Blondi,
or as Goebbels loved his dark knight Hitler.

Love's flame is lamp not holocaust.
Love profoundly loves the human family,
includes all, excludes no one regardless of condition

Let no man ever be to me an alien;
all women be to me mothers, sisters and daughters,
except the crucifix I married.

A Night in Seville, 1974

Be a man, stew in your misery quietly!
If you must, sauce your lips with strong drink
Unrequited love and/or executions pending,
give license to this.

Because we were adequate in bed?
Or because of our delightful head games,
is why you think I married you?
Because you showered me with finery?

We did wed because once in a romantic interlude,
we mistakenly thought it could last forever.
Why then did we divorce? Because you knew
how to request it politely.

I'm not one to wrestle rings off fingers.
I may be primitive, but I am decidedly non violent.
We did it our way. You purchased the divorce.
I left you the furniture and lap dog.

So here in Andalusia once more amongst my fellow Gypsies,
I strum the instrument of hips like a woman,
strumming achingly this borrowed guitar,
akin, I like to think, like Miles Davis blows his trumpet,

he in a dive in Harlem; me in a den of thieves and flamenco.
To set the record straight, I'm not Spanish but a Russian Gypsy.
To witness, our tribe has virtually no boundaries.
It's what keeps both woe and cheer but fleeting conditions.

The Hole in Space

Parents will take secrets to the grave,
and well we should. Why trouble progeny
with incidentals?

Even if we could recall the groove, should we tell the kids
what on earth we were thinking at that moment, moment of moments
when we shot them body and soul through the hole in space?

Rub

"If's" spelling is strange,
its tone is alarming
Up stairwells it creaks
under the steps of the unknown.

If is always present,
It always feigns,
and in every situation,
obscures the final solution.

"If you're gonna love me..."
Stop in the name of love!
Why so much trauma
just to propagate the unholy species?

Sir, there is no magic,
there is no science
there is no futile hope
comparable to marriage

Twain in Golden Years

I don't recall my hands looking so delicate.
They used to be brawn-built for heavy groping,
the reaching of the aims of man in heat.

My hands look even of a different hue
as if of burnished copper. Maybe so long
having worked the red Georgia dirt.

These hands begin to resemble yours.
Is this what the years have wrought? Your face
a little blacker; my neck a whole lot redder,

our skulls molded to the nuptial pillow,
fixed to the off and on vow of death do us part,
our chats, nothing out of the ordinary.

Badges and Huggers

He was buckling his gun belt when I entered the kitchen
to brew a cup of Sumatra. From coffee to Air Tran, we spoke nada
(which everyone even those who don't speak Castillian know means nothing.)
And that's what we spoke none pause to the airport --- Nada!

At the dividing line between village and cornfields,
dumb-in-law put the car in park to let a freight train go by.
It's metallic rumble would have been symphonic except it wasn't.
A radio a commentator was ranting.

Commentator furiously rants on Wisconsin government striking workers
putting in jeopardy our Western Way of Life, part of a communist conspiracy, stretching from Obama to Cairo. What is this Western Way of Life?
Is there an eastern, northern, southern equivalent?

Dumb-in-law thinks Sarah Palin is America's Joan of Arc.
I think Sarah's cute but a media whore, an all too typical politician.
At the fare ye well, I would have embraced son-in-law,
but he sticks out his hand as if to say, keep your embrace to yourself.

Officer Rod drives back to his backyard grill in Southern Illinois,
to the swigging of patriotic beers with buddies, to the wall memorial
in his basement bar to fallen fellow heroes. I fly on to Hatteras
to my liberal, leftist-leaning, tree hugging agenda.