Cereal

Reach deep into your art.
There must be something there worth saving.
You have not lived for nothing.
After all, you are not a serial murderer,
only a serial liar.

Candle Power

A one eye beast of pale luminosity,
an alien spaceship look-a-like,
the street light at my window
connected to worms of electricity
allows me a bit of clarity after dark.

Last Friday, for want of payment,
Georgia Power turned the lights.
Thus, I have been forced me into the class conflict
of what I could not have imagined, me a princess,
now another schlemiel on the welfare rolls.

Damn the three branches of government,
damn outsourcing. Damn the haves of capitalism.
Damn even the Poetry Forum!
I will be pampered
or will endorse anarchy.

Mother

Bound to her because of gravity,
consumed by her because of mortality,
of the same stresses we are fashioned.

She is a funky and pockmarked adolescent;
me --- I'm her not at all her immaculate child,
and in no death shall we be separated,

Me and Earth,
damned
and blessable.

Hawk

What put it in his head
to fly for hours from the coast,
lengths of flotsam in his beak,
with which to build a padded nest
high above the Dismal Swamp?

People Lesson

Walking down Memorial,
a cell phone on his ear,
Trudging to catch the Downtown bus,
pants falling off his waist.

Jesus taught:
"The poor will always be amongst you.
This is just not a teaching.
This is a warning.

Dragon Times

Following World War II and the awakening
as to what constitutes a nuclear nightmare,
a portion of the Japanese film industry
dedicated its resources to Godzilla movies,
a reptilian creature which rises out of the sea,
threatening Japan and by extension civilization.

Decades later, reality has caught up with camp fiction.

Samantha O'Clock

What isn't a clock?
If it breathes, it has pulse.
It it has pulse, it's a clock.
Time is pause. Time, also, is weathering.

When I worked New York,
I'd stare the night long the tower in Lower Manhattan,
the one which flashed its beacons to the 4 points of the compass.
By a week, I missed the fire works on the Hudson.

I was playing a club in Morocco when 911 changed the world.
Through tinkling glasses and nicotine veils,
an expat regular would mumble; "Play it again, Samantha,"
to which I'd reply; "I just did, Mr. Bogart."

From Weehawken to Casablanca;
from Casablanca to Port Everglades,
from Sam to Samantha.
What isn't a clock?
You tell me, Nostradamus.