Confession (draft)

Let it be the given, the acceptable and the private
that my greatest success with expelling demons
was keeping restrained those within me

Holy Snakes

Be advised; my spit is anti venom.
My lips drop blessings like rose petals.
Fear not, I will not grab you by the waist,
and bend you backwoods with a pastoral kiss.
I will not jeopardize the pulpit and the plate

In principal I am celebrate.

Johnny Two Bows

He's fishing trout in icy waters
he's watching snow flakes fall through the ceiling
has the Milky Way for a pillow,
but from his back, he's sweating peanuts
in a ward for seasoned veterans
for the loud and silent screaming
for the terminally burned to a crisp

Tomorrow morning,
he's headed to Las Cruces
where he'll run the marathon
the marathon he should have won last yeat
into the arms of his Dolores
pledged to marry when returns from war
which he shall, but more like toast

He's headed home on an Amtrak
chugging southward to Colorado
to the love of the high plains desert
to sights he's known when he was young
but now the bitch returns with vengeance
it's not Dolores who he's cursing
but the smashed ankle up to his groin

the searing pain of wounded knee
the very leg in action missing,
the one he swore they sewed back on,
but truer is a stump than all a world of wishing.
Thus, Johnny Two Bow insanely tortured
hallucinates to distract himself,
and visits Frost in A-Wishing Well

"A poet would a wishing go..."
but then falls back to shitty combat,
the smell of napalm
in the linings of his nose,
and a philosophical expletive explodes like shrapnel,
for every sorry Dick to hear and feel
"What the fuck is poetry?"

With that, sounds a gong epiphany
like that of feathered ancestors
hooping round him with beating drums,
like a rainbow trout netted on last gulps,
like one more marathon to run before departing
the voice could be of Frost himself ---
It's not so much what you're saying, Sonny

as how you turn a chosen phrase,
and that is poetry, now and forever
as snow flakes darken one by one
and lids sink deeper than any night,
and winds whip out of nowhere,
across the high desert country
of Johnny Two Bows, RIP

The Hunt for The Fox (draft)

Ten thousand hounds without a backup
could not in a dog's age have ever trapped me.
It took the Queen of Hearts' blooming baboons
in high hats, trumpets blaring, fully armed
on the snorting chargers of The Light Brigade
troopers of dandified britches
of godawful effeminate ways,
their ladyships in tow,
the whole of England it took to hunt me.

Here will I be bloodied
here will I be murdered,
and butchers of the world get this ---
not even will they fillet me

We're Running Out of Land Fills (draft)

The world's biggest problem
is in us and surrounds us
is indelible like sin itself
stubbornly resists solution.

How can we hope ever to resolve it
when state and commerce willfully conspire
to update and to keep current
that which has no real purpose
but to self perpetuate ?

We peoples are sardines in the nets of power brokers
who switch and bait us as they please
thus conned, we're canned and finally stuffed in coffins
we who clutter ourselves are clutter,
in or out of mausoleums.

Fairy Women and The Gangster (draft)

She's a fairy woman whose name of fiction is Oregano
a class act is she, of picky intelligence like chop sticks
who else would name herself for a herb
it's why I guess I'm so taken by her.
I like rare more than the weird.

Call themselves after lowly plants?
Ladies of the night would not.
Those heavy on makeup
prefer standard trade names
like Brandy Lilly or the like.

Transvestites call themselves
Cumin, Clove or Garlic?
Don't see it. Maybe Cleo
maybe Nefertiti
maybe Catherine The Great of Reno.

Nuns call themselves, Nutmeg
Cilantro or Cracked Pepper?
No way, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Their predilection is virtue
like Faith, Hope and Charity
which reminds me of my fourth grade teacher
Sister Chastity --- a 6' 4" lumberjack
who tried to cut me down to size
when I was already dwarf enough.

And the nightmare would've succeeded
had Chastity's authority extended much deeper
than Convent Avenue and its parish.

But there in the mean streets of Vinegar Hill
where its gutters are hardly ever dry
I found comfort and redemption
in the underbelly of petty larceny
By 15, I had murdered any vestige of law-abiding.

Have no fear, I've been retired for almost a year.
Spend my free time in the garden
and around noon I post my musings online
where I have acquaintances throughout,
and that's how I met Oregano, the Fairy Woman

We live in opposite time zones.
When I'm dreaming, she's composing
when she's sleeping, I'm hard at work
fixing to bomb her neurons
by the time she gets up and opens her eyes
and peeks into her e mail account -
She in South East Cape, Tasmania
Me in Chicago, Al Capone's old stomping grounds
Obama's, too, before he moved to Washington

Recrimination DRAFT

If I had a battle ax
right here, right now
I would not wield it
At core, believe me,
I am no Amazon

If I had a joint
right here, right now
so help me, I would smoke it
and as much as I detest
the wicked cartels of narcotics

No man is perfect
and man of womb?
(or be it woman)
we try to be,
but you males spoil us