Karmic Crunch

Celan’s always there with
“ the style of your silence”-
of this our quirked-up Chuck
is quite full aware, and, thus,
overthrowing wholly himself
to passion’s wide whim,
proceeds he, with gusto, from there-

“Of such styles speaking,
mine’s done caught
a taint of violence-
all clenched-cramped-crimped-
just to think of that
WonderBread simp offends
my auto—oversestimated sense of style,
get me me all worked-up.

Let them proclaim from Bangor, Maine
to Bangladesh that Senor Tesh
is an accomplished pianist,
a smart, kind man-
his cotton-pickin’ radio show
drives me outta my gourd,
sicks me to my quiv’ring quick
makes my necks-back hairs stand up.

That vile, soft cock shit
(or flaccid hits for those urbane)
sets my teeth agnash, unsheathes my sword
boils my bile, arrythmias my heart’s hot flame-

and for love of Lords and Ladies all,
for the sum of all my silver, gold and cash
I’ll say it loud and NOT shut up!”

To punctuate this little rant
does our ever-chastiseable Charlie
absent-mindedly as always
deposit his briefcase in the boot and
close his car’s trunk – CLUNK- upon
his most innocent pinky fingers.

And while nerve-endings
scream with stinking pain and
he emits a low spittle spraying howl,
his incessant thinking stopped,
little lingers from his snobby plaint-

he lifts his brutish head
and prays for rain.

Sun Slapped

On the sleepy unwound watch
of the pale risen moon
at the blue-green sea’s edge,
in plain sight of any knave,
pelican pairs keen
wingtip to tip-
a simple scene
of timeless time
outrunning the onrush
of shore-bound breakers.

The subtle return-wave chorus
rose and rhythmically receded
over heart-sized stones
to the womb of all waves.

There where every/any-thing
might be said, be seeded,
might be, be saved, become
all angles (irreproachably acute)
Are one-
approach, converge
and connive toward connection.

An influx songful to the blood
made its peculiar appearance
about the corners of Charlie’s
now mopeless, now mirthful
mouth and eyes.

Deluxely felt he then
some hope-sewn confection,
that weaked his worthless knees,
unstuck, uncursed
his sore throat’s throttle-
it swiftly wide opening-
an action accentuated
by the fletched glances
he wine- less dreams he sees
dancing in a Siren’s
guileless eyes-

which like greenblue seas
do shift and shine.

Foolish,
unscrupulously swooning,
his thick-lips pursed round
mostly major melodies
loped this lack-logic lunk
of an over-gnarled Charles
well into the star shot,
cool-clear night which followed.

And
believe it or not
our sorry subject’s
longing heart –knot slipped
itself undone without
his fearful interference.

It left him ‘most full-up
with resuscitated song
all loud and strong and true

and to merely keep from
singing
shouting
wailing

(the terrible doubt
of appearances)

was all our Chuck could do.

Jawbone Beats

Always bleeding to believe,
kneeling creakily, Charlie,
after too dilute solutions
of spirit based ablutions,
mumbles many marble mouthed thanks
for small miracles ...

Then gives way quick
to sick'ning inner agitation,
an over-pouring
of situations interpersonal
unevenly handled-
wherein his unspoke,
unwritten behavioral requisites
went woefully unmet.

Upstanding
he stretches his
too fat flanks,
tries to reign in
his vagrant mind-

"Manipulate's" got a bad rap.
Same as "handle" from hand
La mano, la main...

Which is to say...
tho' I'm assured
-by others-
I'm full of something
more kind than crap,
I'd prefer to lose
this bloody clumsy,
ham-handedness,
this moribund mismangement...

some suavity would do.

My handling ends up
mostly mangling.

A fallen baby bird
by a toddler's hand
is "handled" lovingly,
cupped as would be
any fragrant flower
though it's life expectancy
might not (tho' protest we "should")
exceed an hour- or maybe two.

Thus, there
before the Novembering sea
near the tony cove-town
Charlie's closes his drear
and much deranged eyes,
recites en sotto vocce Crane's
" God lay dead in Heaven...

-very non-verbatim-
til the final unchanged lines-

"But of all sadness this was sad --
A woman's arms tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast."

Imperfectly,
the poor dope imagines
there at the tidleine detritus
the weeping woman's
fruitless, majestical gesture
'midst the chilling clarity
of her complete grief-

Thusly Charles recovers
the coronary/corrolary
location of the good steel nail
'pon which he'd always
hung his hat 'longside
his possibilities of Hope.

The Unknown Fop

In the passage o’er of years
our Charles a certain style’s acquired-
remarks to same in him produce
a poignant shame,
a shuffle-stepped bashfulness
and mope where once was ease,
a long-legged lope.

For Charlie
(seeming) hours spent,
snug in a wobbly rack
of second-hand coats,
(his mum a-near, a-shopping)
where he a simplest child-comfort sought
and found in a wool wove shroud -
(an aromatic anti-moth
cloud emitting)-
a pseudo-womb with him,
on the wild, wide wing
of naphthelene dreams, within.

A workless Friday eve
four decades since,
in lieu of the over-ordinary
brown-bagged bottle response to
iniquities and inner inquietude,
caffeine crazed Charlie
seeks hot chocolate
cafe-terrace haven-

on his unobtrusive entrance
some sassy gal exeunt stage right quips,
" It's been ages since we've seen
someone nattily attired 'round here."

His unprepared innards cringe,
a knit-browed frown
consumes his smile,
a rush of aged echoes ensues-

(those with which he must
nightly come to grips)

brotherly injunctions
against conspicous consumption,
his fathers gnawing accusation that
he'd oft and unthinkingly sacrificed
the substantial for the soft, egoic
inclination toward superficiality and
the miserly macro-economics of style.

Charlies hefts his eyes from off
his beat-down wing tip shoes,
and
"Naught to win
or lose with echoes"

thinks-

then, still a bit abashed,
gingerly grins and winks,
says " Why, thank you, Dear."

A Certain Suggestion

Chubby Charlie
( who’d like to lank
Don Quixote be)
winces, chews,
chews and winces,
sips and blinks,
lets drop to pub’s floor
peanut shells-

“ Once betroth’d,
abus’d or loved unwell
twice terrified, methinks.

Some of late suggest I buy a bride.
From Thailand, P.I., Timbuktu?
The method, true, s’been ages tried,
that simple much can’t be denied.

Hell, it’s to kneel
at Dulcinea’s foot,
to nuzzle her naive nape
I’ve fought these countless weeks,
these years of moons
(though flailed and failed)-
as such, the thought above
offends me much,
to such miserly ends
I’ll not be brought!”

Thus, our Charles-
or more precise,
the wound agape
in 'is distraught
and pole-axed pride
awakes and rends
and snarls and speaks.

It's Coming On Christmas

Attempting always to address
some keen unnerving need
Charlie kneels
knowing his luckless lunges
over awkward interior obstacles
must continue come waters high
or devilish delays,
genuflects ingenously
and t’rows dem bones.

May as well attempt
to indemnify the dust or
legislate immunity for all
who bend to clownish lusts
each winter spring summer fall
thinks Charlie
while wildly wishing
for naturals and losing lousy wages
to shady street-sages
among the alley-blight
behind the 7-11
come Friday night.

Once was precocious courage fluid
where now a clotted porridge
of bad gambling and easy excuses
clogs the artless arteries of
an also-ran on a bender,
nor king nor prince nor true contender.

For all that feeble failure
sighing Charlie,
weathered but unwithered,
bangs down a few beers
in the weak light
of his cramped quarters,
forgets his lonely loins long enough
to summon the elusive Muse
to his over-waxy ears,
press the gnawed nub of a #2
to a ripped and wrinkled scrap
from his linty pockets salvaged
and in a crabbed cursive scrawl,
almost youthfully bold,

“ Please, God,
spare this sinner
who cannot bear to see
but one good, gentle girl
beneath your clean
baptismal snow go cold.”

Naturaleza Muerta

" Insisto.
Ahora.
No resistes.
Persisto, persisto."

Así la voz de adentro
de Charlie Chimuelo.

Casi no duerme,
así no descansa
lamiendo/probando
la fuente de todas canciones
de to' milagritos en
to' los rincones oscuros.

Su lengua- así­ lo pertuba,
así­ lo tortura
ni anastesia ni amnesia
bendicen a nuestro
pobre chingado payaso.

Tras de sus ojos - palabras rebotando-
cánticos frenéticos,
románticos, patéticos...

Charlie contempla
la Luna creciente,
un momento/instante
silen/deli-cioso-
mas un suspiro
y ya ella menguante.

Susurra ahora Don Charlie Chimuelo...

"¿Puede ser una lengua
de to' los colores pa' pintar
un versito de risas/bellezas,
to' los sabores/amores/dolores?"

A Kingdom for a Kilt

Wobbling stinking

'long the lane

coughing

Charlie felt his glib heart go lank.

Pubs were fun enough-
decent grub,
a snug and amber whiskey warm,
something to do
with throat and eyes,
well worn wood and,
most nights, music,
folk in fettle fine

(and otherwise)-

in that,
of course,
was much to thank.

'Twas the thought throng
on the road home alone
that jigged and droned
through Charlie's pickled noodle.

An echo
of those so strange waves
which washed 'round him
whilst sidled sat he
on elbow perched,
wiped cleanly
anything approaching smug
from his unshaven asymmetric mug,
as over cool-wet cobbles
he scuffed and lurched.

Women had kept him,
always,
chiefly crazed,
a state of too constant titillation
while remained he
mournfully
without a steady muse,
a condition of amazed frustration
not without comedic hues.

Often he'd silently recite
a wimpish, waking-dream flirt-

" Come closer, sassy lass.

Come, be a goodly wench,
offer me a dram to drink-

and give those lovely jugs a jiggle!

Swing that simple skirt
and from that thrilling throat
let loose a girlish giggle!

Lash me, lash me, love,
with waggish winks til
my poor, parboiled brain can't think..."

Such mordant,
dismal internal drivel
oft ended with an abrupt,
dismissive snort or belch
that hadn't properties of squelch.

For clownish Charlie
could not rightly play
the self-righteous rogue.
Such bawdy boldness
seemed false as hell,
a crock, a scam,
a mountebank's wordly shell,
a sham 'round a long held
peasant-pious, pleasant dream
that his simple bed
could really blessed be.

See,
the bigger part
of our chum's heart-

(a vault of yen
with mandarin runes etched)

though almost
atheistic brung up
remained quite hung-up
on the near-fetched
dear idea of sanctity

in union.

Masticator

Has to everyone
once simple synthesis
come unpure,
udone?

Singing oversung?

Its kernel containing
some irksome taint?

A gnostic mosh-pit
in the gray matter's mound,
a senseless addiction
to the confounding
and potent arrangement
of syllabic sounds?

On such stuff chewing
Charlie crippled the civil citizens
of his mumbly mouth
(long predisposed to rot)
and having quick forgotten
where his unshy smile fell out
he flashes an unwinning,
oddly closed-mouth grin
to the decrepit pilings
of the perished pier
near the abandoned beach he trods.

Slyly eyeing the moon
above the churlish surf
achieves our Charles
a much relieving
unsudden access,
an untapped resevoir of mirth,
decides right then and there
to an ode compose-

to the summ'ry 'membrance
of an ex's round, tanned calf,

declares he'd give
all his meagre gold
(or half)
to do it passing well.

Thinking thus
claims he achieved
the breaking day
and ope-throated,
all pagan pious,
a good ol' ruckus raises-

an ancient practice-

madness kept,
with healthy howls,
at bay.

Drink and Dial Charlie Style*

Many things are good to pray to!
A temple's built with what you've got!
(sweat,cum, menses, grit and snot)

Pray to what is there and true,
to passing oe'r, beyond and through,
to muscles, tendons, hair and bone,
to flower shadows on a stone,
to thunder, clods, milkstool and bier,
to oak, pine, maple, ash and spruce,
to fresh cut fruits that bleed their juice,
to tremors exigent of the flesh,
to kiss, caress, entwine, ensmesh.

Enough of rhyme, this much is clear,
I bleed my heart to touch your ear.

*Wrong number - 3:37 A.M.)

Urinal Thoughts

Wearily watching dream dregs
from puked up guts clog the shithouse chutes
a jaded giggling grabs his flabby frame
and, chuckling, Charlie smokily croaks
"O! but these fat cloaked abs
and mushy glutes want work!”

Such the silly quips of this quixotic gent
who, certainly unbowed, but- yeah, sure- bent
decides he’s seen way worse...
with a subtle thud leans his hamm’ring head
against the cool white graffittoed tiles
imagining Flanders fields, that woeful waste-
life running away in steaming red runnels,
the dead and blasted bodies in the mud.

A myoclonic jerk yanks him thankfully
from such a bunch of moribund imageries
and his guitar neck neglecting too soft paw
rises to his unsinging throat,
a lame mock in the cracked mirror,
a too noire note to pretend-apply the noose...

Exiting disgruntled with his decrepitude
Charlie resolves himself to an ambitious dose
of sculpting calisthenics and yoga poses,
his oer’stressed joints and cockeyed chakras to loose.

Prioridades

Charlie Chimuelo sentado a la mesa
tragando cervezas, tequila, gazpacho,
con palabras sonando de sangre,
guitarras, vaqueros, mujeres,
al ritmo de ritos y de musas cantando.

Había olvidado sus pocos deberes
se levantaba el Charlie (borracho) Chimuelo
con sus huesos quejosos pa' irse al baño
escribir ahí mismo unos versos perversos
perturbando su poquita paz inestable-

de repente notaba el cielo finito,
el  vecino jardín verde bien bonito,
así de rápida cambiaba la mente de Charlie
decidía mejor pagarse la cuenta
y en el día que viene
honrar a su diente perdido,
comprándose un papalote
en vez de pagar la renta.

Looks Like Wane

Looking a jot jaundiced
obvious, old and orotund
this young October eve
Mistress Moon in silken cirrus
regally robed lordly listens
to stumble tongued Charlie's
piteous "Forgive me!" pleas.

Some slim and earthbound angel
has recent weaked his knobbly knees,
spurred the harrowed horses
of his mischievous romantic motor.

Takes but a whiff of a hint,
a half-chance of a glance
and Charlie's chugging up
improbable inclines,
" I think I can, I think I can."

His guilt-gripped gut
rightly recognizes
the banal betrayal
of her very Venusian
sun-slung calm caress.

Chickenshit

Ol’ Charlie chants
something prayer-like,
all coiled and encrypted,
a personal canticle
having something to do
with the weight
of his escapists foot
on the slightly squeaking
beautiful bare-wood stair,
abandoner of that plush sight-
her hair upon the pillow spread
in rare and spooky pre-dawn light.

Charlie-boy has cheek enough to seek
a colder comfort in the overhang
of snowdrifts at culvert crossings,
the mountains peaceful lee,
the pines that flank and rise above
the grim granite chaos of the scree.

Birdbath- Not.

"You'd wish them
watch me wanting you?
My tell-tale slavish,
shirt-sleeve heart,
in public,
loud-pounding perversely?”

Chewing some such cud
Charlie crossed the Med-School quad
distracted by an a-musing oncologist,
pulled from sour sinuses down
some foul-flavored green-gray phlegm,
impishly aimed toward a scruffed-up crow
grass-seed pecking some eight ten yards away.

Their collected cacophony'd
kept him, crazed, from needed sleep
oft enough to earn this small ignominy
thought chortling Charlie while
along his broad back still subltly felt
the well scrubbed folks
happ’ly munching healthful lunches
might diagnose him dastardly
for such spitful sportsmanship-

so much so
that he pitifully missed the mark,
whispered wicked curdling curses
damning assanine apprehension.

Ludwig Van It Ain't

Clumsy,
to ocular enticements
openly being,
lacking proper polish
or cool obliquity.

(pomes to express
this laying
well outside
the current canon)

That and a quick
timidity that overtakes.

These betwixt
does chumply Charlie
swing an ample arc,
a common, artless amplitude,
an errant strife-
whistling 'long the way
a troubador tune
once anchored in obscurity
into which Respighi, bless him,
breathed new life.

Grape Grope Gripe

Charlie's apish arms unbidden
confirm the everpresent absence
which is his morning bed.

'Gainst this most maddening,
helpless habit he rashly chafes-
for it gives his much-wrenched guts
a sickly twist and this
before the sun's burnt
the sea-mist off the Mount.

His winey brain abed, aghast,
begins the painful game
of oughts and shoulds
while his tripped-up tongue
licks at the sick-tooth's stub
where, but two timid weeks gone by,
his crooked smile did dare to flash.

Rising rickety to greet the fogs,
drink coffee, smoke and
walk the 'maginary dog,
blinking half-blindly
does his auto-flagellance awake-

" Defy the whirled
uncertainty of sought approval,
muster up the stones,
allow yourself to be agog,
abide the original,
unrestrained intensity-
set off, leap, unlooking
to where the rusted
compass needles points,
offer up the very gristle
of those jacked-up joints,
the content of your
dream-drunk eyes, once pearls..."

Of love unchecked,
or lust or magnetism,
a lame and over-rhymey litany
does Charlie, in review, decide,
running an exploratory finger
over scars which decorate
his oft overextended neck.

Trans Pacific

A tornadic swirl
of karaoke enthusiasts
wasted on plum wine and whiskey
did Charlie disgorge
upon a Tokyo sidewalk.

The über-urban world
appeared a neon neoplasm
on his jet lagged brain
which began a smoggy contemplation
on the positive predictive probability
of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.

Among the taxi throng
he thought he heard
the slow suck
his aimless globtrot
exerted on the liquidity
of his waning accounts.

Exhaling Dunhill smoke
and a gust of resignation
Charlie grinned to think
of others who gazing on
the batting of false lashes and
the pout of lush red painted lips
reached between a Thai's svelte thighs
to find and unexpected appendage
at his fingers' tips.

15 minutos y una Vuelta

14 años anteriormente
nuestro náufrago había sido rescatado
en un Martes, espectacularmente,
el único sobreviviente
en un barco de 30 marineros,
después de 3 noches y dos días
de búsqueda intensiva.

Apareció su rostro en los diarios
era entrevistado en la televisión
contestando las preguntas
mas obvias con gruñidos.

Vivir en tierra nunca
le agrado para nada,
nunca hubo, nunca habrá.

Cada día iba al malecón
levantando su sentido de olor
a los puntos cardinales
suplicando a los cuatros vientos
por el día indicado.

Quedó cuasisordomudo
hablando lo mas poco posible.
Sus vecinos no eran metiches
y supusieron que era el luto.

Era la nostalgia,
los olores y ruidos del barco,
el capitán taciturno,
sus compañeros locos,
las gaviotas, la lluvia
soplada de los pulmones
de alta mar.

El huracán puso a el pueblo
muy nervioso, algunos huyendo
a tierras mas altas,
mientras nuestro náufrago,
ya preparado,
levantó su vela
a la reunión esperada.

Regreso a cavar
su propia tumba húmeda...

a pertenecerse por fin.

Goodnite Sweet Dunce

forces acted upon him and through,
a fresh-cut twig
toward the Pierian spring bent.

his sickening quickened
just past Labor Day
as the moon rose faithfully
in cloud robes ochre,
so pleasant plump.

alone again, Charlie choked
at the lunatic orbit
about an irksome Earth.

his familiar throat-ache gurgled
through a knight-errant night elongated,
Charlie being all song-stuck,
his freakish faith aquiver.

we cannot know
if a moth envies
a Monarch's Mexican pilgrimage
but we can watch them
flutter foolishly
about the lit candle
while the high tide recedes
and Charlie churns out dreams.

Die Dreaming

a voluntary crawl
across a goodly length
of superheated stones and coals
terminated in blissful
and blisterless arrival
to sit, a stunned supplicant,
at her embroidered hem.

she not so much stood
but there was rooted,
while seeming to float.

a nakedness about her hung,
(though richly robed)
while sang she strongly
of sacred and ancient achings.

a wholeness of surrender
pulsed and swole
the melliflous musculature
of her song-supple throat,
the melody's passage through
possessing her thoroughly.

the world entirely then became
a songful, palatial place.

thus the fevered effervescence
of a dehydrated brain
just before the death-gasp came
and left him cadaver-

a faceful of desert sand
and a hand outstretched
towards an unachieved oasis.

Postprandial Politics

Somewhere after lasagne
and several bottles
of deep red wine
the old restlessness arrived
with spicey overtones of frustration.

My mind impinged upon
by the faint rustlings
of an archetypical
politcal conversation.

Years of fidgeting
have taught me one thing
and perhaps no more,
action, movement, work
defeat those devilish desperations-

so I got up and
washed the dishes.

The men eventually
left the women
to themselves
and sought me out.

The conversation slowly rolled
along the familiar themes.
The word dialectic was
mentioned disproportionately and
my guts began to contract.
I attempted to breathe normally.

I was professing my ignorance,
a nod to Socrates perhaps,
when someone raised his voice
to speak over me.
He had the balls
to say he knew it all,
literally all,
regarding some conflict,
centuries old and
half a world away.

I didn't let that bullshit pass.

I imagined a movie,
the well lit kitchen,
from inside, zoom out,
zoom out through the window,
the shot hovering there above,
revealing 4 men in a kitchen,
gesticulating, drinking wine.
The voices can be heard
as a vague series of sounds,
altering waves of volume
but not as intelligible conversation.

4 men in a kitchen,
no spades turning the earth,
a shoulder to no grindstone.

We could have been
discussing who was
the best heavyweight
of all time-
same difference.

(Cassius Clay)

En Mi: Lugar

Fíjate-

no elegí ser el valle
por donde
los cuatros vientos
han soplado,

por donde
las cancioncitas
han volado
como pajaritos asustados,

ser un esclavo de una pobre mente:
un terreno, un lugar bien frio
(el opuesto de un vientre)

aquí huele a juguetes desechables
que pertenecían a nadie
que pertenecían a la nada
que no se quedaron mas
de un ratoncito en la boca
de una leona hambrienta.

Love Child: Conceive It If You Can

an absence of acquisition
of calculation and of conquest
smattered with surrender
( a being cannot a trophy be)

an offering

an immaculate ejaculate
(please be not offended)

This is the way your world began
This is the way your world began
This is the way your world began

your very cellular Self, my Child

A Bang
(with a Whimper ended)

Spanish Castle Magic

the pauper prince
of paper flowers
remains unwed

his nimble fingers fashion
impoverished overtures
to little effect
beyond his own anxiety
upon their presentation
( a roughly semi-annual spasm)

his sunstroked wire thin arms
are not unstrong
oft embrace an old guitar
wring a longing
minor melodic line
that slips and quivers
along the fretful neck

sad sweet guy
of dark dartful eyes
expressive brows
i doubt you know
the Boricua princess
places playfully
your handiwork
between her fragrant breasts
throws her head back laughing
adoring your dearness
oh so platonically

Fantasy

my fantasies remain

and almost entirely
lack extravagance

no superpowers
wish i for myself
or any else

they're more
storybook imaginings

for instance-

a moon
a body of water
(the moon therein reflected)
a woman
our sunbaked limbs
the drape of rumpled linen
a bottle of ouzo
a tongueless kiss
the aftertaste of anis

and in the morning
eggs and cheese
strong coffee
and a good guitar

Majestuosa

la princesa
tiró su cigarillo
(medio-fumado)
en el callejón

llamó al general
para quejarse del
progreso de la guerra

ya que sus atenciones
habían disminuido
durante el conflicto

se colgó,
interrumpiendo
la respuesta patética

se ajustó su diadema
se baño
en agua con pétalos de rosas

se acostaba
(después de dar
su mejor cariño
a sus gatos)

soño con tigres

At the Automat

the act
of writing a poem
to a woman
i do not know
is ridiculous

to many
poetry
in and of itself
is ridiculous

that population
often includes me

especially
when i am in the act
of writing a poem

i cannot concentrate
sitting here
wanting to talk
to this woman
as she lunches peacefully
with her companions
three feet away from me

her beauty will not allow it

in a museum i could
circumambulate a sculpture
move close up
back off
hold my chin in my hand
cross my arms
contemplate peacefully

there would be no guilt
and i would not wonder
if someone looking at me
looking at a sculpture
thought i was lascivious

the sculpture would
not be uncomfortable
thinking I was lascivious

of course
my reaction to women
is lascivious

from time to time

it happens

in this instance
it's not the case

it's more like wonder

this whole line of thought
is ridiculous

so i write a poem

Lunática

Bailando bajo la Luna
se ve, pues,
fuera de control,
media insana.

O plenamente insana.

No es decir
que bailar
con entusiasmo
es algo extraño a mi.

Lo he visto, lo he hecho.

Pero en este caso,
no sé, no sé...
era un tipo de frenesí-
no sé, era diferente,
algo en los ojos oscuros,
me dió escalofríos...por diez.

Digo " no sé" ,
supongo que
me gustaría saber.

Contemplándola,
levanto mi botella de ron,
trago, exhalo
y pienso que quizas
es solo la envidia.

De Sombras, Musas y Llovizna

Un hombre despertó
contempló a la llovizna
acariciando el hombro
de su Soledad.

Sus entrañas temblaron.
Se puso a explicar y dijo,
en voz alta, a la nada-

Perfecto.
Es un hecho y es,
igualmente, metafórico.

Mi Soledad es una llama,
la llovizna siempre me ha
sanado mis quemaduras,
me ha dado consuelo,
suavizándome extrañamente,
besándome el rostro
calmando sin apagar
esa llama misma
que me ha dado su calor
en momentos de una paz
silenciosa y profundísima,
que me ha quemado con sus
temporales enfurecidos y transitorios.

Y vivo aquí ahora,
tomando mi café,
sentado en la terraza
ubicada en la sombra
de Monte Soledad,
en La Jolla, California.

Por las tardes me siento aquí
disfrutando
el atardecer pintando
el mundo enteramente
con luces sutiles,
esperando la primera estrella,
el acercamiento
de la oscuridad y lo celestial.

Aquí, sentado solito,
soñando del escritor escribiendo,
escribiendo del soñador soñando
en los temas esenciales,
los de que La Vida es compuesta,
como canciones y poemas flotando
sobre los cañones interiores,
mares inquietos y salvajes...

Las Musas, Las Sirenas,
El Capitán, su viuda,
El Amor, La Muerte
La Soledad, La Lucha,
El Olvido...

Pues... levanto mi canto a
la Reina de Los Montes,
esperando la madrugada sempiterna.

It Dawns on a Lesbian Son

Darkness, woven gently, is lightness, Lover.
Orange sunbursts dazzle us, killing subtly
senses rightly made for the slightest changes-
Philistine sunrise!

My Vanished Friend

After another season
of Thurdays
composed of nine-ball
and mere drinking,
of a sudden,
Rory became blunt vernacular
wielded weird and wild as
a road rage tire iron
appropos of whatshisname’s
or suchawho’s mere existence.

The pool hall population
Dwindled and the owner
Asked questions to
which I’d no answers.

Even beforehand
what might have
naively passed for charm
was ‘bout as sweet
as an oily puddle.
A deceptive bit of rainbow
on the surface-

immediately underneath
was ultimately unctuous,
terrifically toxic.

Something'd come unglued in him,
and what was once merely unsusual,
occasionally interesting observation
careened through mania
toward the paranoic.

" I tell you
I’m singled out,
surveilled by hawks
along the highway!

My sleep’s a harbor for
the clash of talons,
the screech and clatter
of screaming eagles.

In the end,
practicality’s merely ballast, buddy.

I can feel
what I once referred to
as my Self
receding-

and it ain’t coming back.”

I must have looked worried,
for he reassured me
as he clambered
onto his woefully maintained,
once exquisite, Colnago-

“ Don’t worry,
Dulcinea’s drawing near.
My compass points
to hypoxic heights.”

Said the Monkey to the Monk

The sickly symptoms of the sensual
too long sublimated will up and bite
one direct upon the proverbial
buttocks. Respectful wonder at the might
of certain hiply amplitudes is but
the fate of forces quite sub-atomic.
Attempt if you will but you cannot shut
the fine fount down, that's just tragicomic.

The most sublime still undergo a change
of state when the ripe fruit bends down the bow.
The blood's swoon indicates you're well in range
of the incessant sun's burning prayer- "now."
He whose hunger is humming is his hands
walks sweet beaches on Venusian sands.

As it was...

Start with five favorite poems.

The rest ?

Extemporize.

Spice all seasons
with the simmery saveur
of uncurried favors.

Watch the rough wind rake
white caps on the bay
beneath the Golden Gate.

Sit on an sunny bench
in a shady part of town,
eyes blown full
of city street grit,
fall asleep and wake with
pigeons fluttering about
your dream-draped head.

When later comes
(and it will)
relish the long look back
to days that seemed
to seethe and dazzle.

They were thrown at you
in ripe, clustered bunches,
and you devoured them.

In the dog-eared fotographs from then,
you can practically see
the sweet juice gleam
from grinning, wine-swilling chins.

Men, through history,
very generally speaking,
have too oft wrung
their work-thick hands,
love lush afternoons forgotten
in the avoidance of provincial notoriety.

In the instant of return
of simple surrender
there the essential is relinquished-
like fragrance sent in the flicker
of a scented candle's flame-
it approaches the absolute.

Anymore
there are no wrong songs sung,
none too naive-
this you'll realize
(effortlessly)
when pulling a cork
or blowing out a guttering taper
some nondescript nostalgic night
of twice read autumnal tomes.

Conversation in a Nutshell

Someone was enumerating
my relative advantages,
tossing peanut shells on the pub floor.
Besides being comely/flirty/friendly
she was, mostly, right;
pointing out that a wealth
of possibilities awaited always,
almost eager, at my very fingers' tips.

And while I could sorta see it
I answered that I was more likely
bound to pawn my birthday Bulova
than make the nutty claim as
King to some handy infinitude.

More poignantly,

I put it to her

that I often answer,
flinching, slave-like,
to the five-tined prod
of nickel and dime desires,
and find myself sadly slightly,
if at all, graced by goodness
for it's own sublime sake.

Of Iris, Forsythia and the Big Four-Oh

Who was once a child enamored
of the names of flowers
turns booze brutal on the cusp of 40
in the full foul fire
of a life's long frustration
during the pre-sleep hygiene routine;
leaves a sprinkling
of silver-backed shards,
a bloody trail of Rorschach blots
leading toward a king size bachelor's bed
with it's unilateral depression
favoring the reading light side
and the disordered pile of
Neruda, Rumi, Eliot and cummings.

A bloody wondering
between whiskey-rich
exhausted exhalations

what happened?

to the moments
of mellifluous mindfulness,

the coffee-shop calm
unperturbed by over-energetic
jangly, piped-in harpsichord music,

the delightful unconcern
with coventional conceptions
of pyschological security,

the body-calm,
clean and calibrated,
it's exercised genetic template
largely realized,

a cultivated awareness
in each major plexus
beyond mere appeasal
of gurgling, ganglial urges,

all an energy aligned,
a bow undrawn from which
flew arrows ardent, aspiring,
a forward moving force,
a heart-strong instrument
of life and prayerful thanks.

Abed, the unfiltered cigarette
snuffed with a disgusted twist,
a quick cataloguing ensues:
the pitiably predictable paunch,
stained fingertips and teeth,
a humbling and ridiculous array
of sport injuries and scars.

A final deep wheeze
before the sometimes startling
very vertiginous fall into
an oft bizarre dreamstage when
something torqued and tensed
came most wondrous easily undone
by simply repeating
the old lady dry cleaner's
answer to the question
about what that fragrant sprig
in a water glass on the counter
that smelled, to him at least,
of bergamot was-

A spray of freesia,
a spray of freesia,
a spray of freesia...

Mealtime (Lisboa)

It was like coming to abruptly.

There I was on foreign soil
stung awake among the sun-blasted
stones of the local architecture,
beneath the washed out blues
of a scorched summer sky.

I’d been shuffling sickly along
inwardly trying to translate
a line born between
cups of porto and cachaca
the night before...
“ the real world worth of
single things done lovingly.”

A stinking, semi-toxic hangover sweat
was beginning to claim me
when two thickly shod women
in black cardigans passed
hauling heavy mesh bags
containing (presumably)
that evenings uncooked meal.

They stood starkly out against
the radiating bleached whiteness
of the sunlit stone structures
that insistent Iberian mid-morning.

The language of the
dominant immigrant populace
of my hometown tickled
my baked and pickled brains,
aroused my dulled awareness.

I managed to shyly mumble
“ Bom dia Senhoras”
bashfully bowing my hammered head.

It was a modest gesture.

They responded
with a gleeful stream
of partially understood
questions and comments
to which I semi-stuttered
“de vera, eu nao falo Portuguese.”

I smiled to recall a former lover who’d
chided me laughingly some years ago:
“You dig flirting with septagenarians!”

When the apparently inevitable invitation
to dine with their family arrived
I accepted and blushed to recall
how my very first crush
was for one Christina De Sousa,
my heart fluttering over a
Fisher-Price kindergarten
breakfast of plastic bacon and eggs.

Returning from the horrible habit
of daydreaming in company
I took a few healthy gulps
of fizzy bottled water,
relieved the women
of their burdening bags
and wondered whether
peixe-espada was on the menu.

Minaret or Muezzin

The illuminated eye atop the tetrahedron
is where the whim-driven eye alights.

From the minaret calls the muezzin,
There is no god but God,
the masses kneel to pray.
The authority of years
in his great gray beard
and in the tea-tongued
timbre of his voice.

Children love a human pyramid.

One boy,
smart and strong and shy,
secretly relishes
his accustomed spot
on the bottom,
dirtying his pantlegs,
his arms and shoulders
trembling with effort,
his back dug into
by adolescent knees.

He is listening
to the laughter
of the prettiest girls
as they scramble
toward heaven.

DMV: A Shadow Dance

The line in which I wait
exudes a late summer stagnance,
a stinking immobility.

Yet, here, where California
boldly dips its greedy paws into
the lint-lined pockets of the people,
amid a whirl of named and numbered
forms which would titillate
the most dispassionate
and ennervated bureaucrat,
some unsought stimulus,
a waft of body odour or perfume,
the cut of some strangers jib,
some delicious deja vu sends me
( a dutiful donkey ambling
after the dangled carrot)
toward the recollection  finer
of a (probably post-Bergman) dream.

Someone was, calmly,
some Norse tongue speaking
and I could, crazily, comprehend.

The voice was tremulous
with bewitched resignation...

" Your language, I must admit,
remained intact throughout.
It never veered. Not once.
You remain wonderfully wrought,
free from any encompassing,
defining or predictable positions.
It's truly artful."




The dream heroine's
reactive mouth revealed little,
something delicious, perhaps painful
played and lingered at the corners,
having escaped or successfully seduced.

Returning to the tedium
of State levied fines and fees
I shuffle forward a foot
and wonder whether
I'll ever leave my Platonic cave,
the carefully guarded,
shadow-throwing fire that
keeps the sickly rime at bay
and simply walk out
into the blinding sun?

Ode to a Whitefish Leaking Peckersnot*

She wakes with guts aspazz,
her abdomen a cacophonous cavity
of envenomed wrenchings,
dreaming of worms and vermin.

Her head a hapless knotted net
of last night's details, nastily nettled.

Nothing which is foul escapes the
webbed pentamers of her savaged senses;

an overflowing ashtray; a dirty pane;
a garbage truck's hydraulic heavings;
a glass pipe; three dead lighters;
a drained Jim Beam bottle on it's side.

A thick sex-musk is in
the air and on the sheets.

Horking up a gray-green goober
from deep within her smoke-scorched throat
she spits into a weary wastebacket
next to which a torn and leaking
condom mockingly lays.

* copywrite Willie Smith

Good German Steel

Odd, the way truth comes
round undbidden,
seeming acontextual
in the instant-
it's revelatory, cool clarity
appearing in the later
luxury of reflection.

The point in this case
was my unabashed nudity
in the morn-lit kitchens
of my last two lovers.

There, in the buff,
making coffee, doing dishes,
or admiring Solingen cutlery
I was laughed at for being brazen.

Peculiar, I think,
that women in their
late 30's, divorced,
of a certain professed
sophisticated romantacism
should spread there legs summarily
yet be astonished and abashed.

So that, long left,
the months already quickly leapt
between the then and now,
Spring acome so green, naive,
I cannot help but wonder
about the sharpness
of the knives they wield,
to what it is they cleave,
myself having been
so cleanly cleft.

A Wisdom Owns Our All

Moments escaped
from the grubby clutches
of the fear-fucked mind,
it's silly, bilious projections
of a false inner insufficiency.

Instantaneous instinctual linguistic refusal
of the arcane and of the exclusive.

Flashes, single notes sung out
among a rush of shifting echoes.

Green shoots of the possible-
for you, for me, for all
who paint without the lines,
can not stay straight,
stay safe, stay quaint.

Skinny Dipping

As if potential of right combinations,
(at worst maudlin, pathetic)
an inexplicable fire to fashion
(at best) merely clever,
aesthetic turns of phrase,
were a thing natural
as the wheel and bank
of arctic terns above ice-packs
afloat in a shit-strewn sea-
not the exhibitionist urge to sing,
stand wholly shorn and tremble-kneed,
an uninsulated, raw-nerved thing
surrendering to impulsive electric deliverance.

Alembic

Sometimes I get a great notion
to jump in the river and drown.
-Led Belly

The fish longs for the ocean in which it swims.
-Jelalladin Rumi

Exhibiting an exaggeratedly imbalanced gait
so commonly encountered
in those who’ve suffered a great and recent loss
(or are simply schnockered)
our phlegmatic anti-hero scuffles
along overly romantacized
(and outright slippery) cobbled streets,
muttering mongrel French curses
as a festering fear wobbles upward
from multiply dislocated ankles.

A lupine keening shines
in his moon-mad eyes,
drives the passersby to
children’s games with sidewalk cracks.

The oceanic impulse arrives
with quasi-tidal regularity,
an insistance, a turbulence,
a current of fragmented phrases.

Tortured and tensive
flees he toward the occasional,
sensical stream best explained by
fluid dynamics or the theoretically possible
statistical outliers stumbled on by simian typists.

All unsettled by the erratic energy,
the sediment suspended in his mind’s mouth,
partially repulsed and wholly hypnotized,
he lopes and lurches knight-errantly,
resigned to amateurish alchemical conjurations
and deliriously half-baked hopes
that some any thing from his peasant pen
might tear away an hereditary shame,
coalesce into a honeyed fluency,
drop a delicious, concentrated dollop
beneath his fevered, waggish tongue
and quell the quixotic, sicksweet ache
of soul-sap rising through a lonely gorge.

Lulla-Bile

Bye, baby bunting,
Daddy's gone a-cunting,
He brought with him a lamby skin,
To wrap Priap-parat-us in.

Sayonara, my erstwhile Sky Bride

You entered the corner cafe
smiling idly;
cradling lazily
an armful of
fresh-cut flowers;
an effortless,
feline, ambly ease
all about you.

Among my (somewhat)
funky days of then
did heaven's very own hands
plunk you designedly down
in the radius of my
modest meanderings;
fortune ladled crazily
into my peasant bowl.

That I would eventually wed
my wimbled heart to yours
was a tone dumb-luckily struck,
a fifth of the finest sort,
leading toward untold tonics;
it sent me skipping
through this unlocked life
of doors and days
to the universal key of song.

You were
love’s slimsweet instrument,
a concise and pretty
prose-piece of non-friction
that efficiently jimmied
all my internal tumblers.

You were,to this heliotrope head,
(so sunswarmth seeking)
to these blood-rooted,hydrophile feet
(so long/lone following
the waters way)
a blessing undisguised.

Now this.

Subpoenaed.

Fucking divorce papers.

There's no snazzy, brushed-steel
year-reeling-in device,
no jazzy, dapper Dan
who can witchily recreate
the wide/wet-eyed ceremony,
the ephemeral physics
of your bashfully batted lashes,
who can intimate
the knowing I now possess,
rewrite the score which was
the moving music of your hands
with sacramental art adorned.

Hands which I held and
trembly kissed betwixt my own
when I bowed and knelt and vowed.

Ever-present and gone
is the honey-headed,moon-drunk,
years-long afterward
during which I allowed
(or watched)
the precious pigment fade,
your bride's-bloom go
scentless, withered, bowed.

I shall miss the hands
which have lain my restlessness abed
(as if by palm fronds balmed)
so very many a night;
which have punctuated
many a restive retort,
chopped and cajoled untold foods
into love-laden dishes,
hands which have,
(more to the point)
of late,
signed our loves
death sentence.

For what its worth,
I assure you I’ve not
(though I’d know HOW)
lost all my mirth.
I’ll return to the bosom
of The Book of Changes,
my wintry, bachelor days and ways.

PS and/or
Perfunctory Punctuation

No accusatory demonization
(in legalese)
can, like a rogue scirocco,
blow the mandala
from my minds memory;
taint the forever fixed,
solemn symbols for
god’s unions, by priestess
designed and painted.

No Cartoon

Forge
A
Million
Intricate
Links
Yet
Maintain
A
Newness

Cracked Earth

When I let my hand climb,
in each place I find a dove
that was looking for me,
as if my love,
they had made you out of clay
for my very own potter's hands.

A habit of mind,
a cerebral confluency,
a found form,
an uncovered order,
dots connected,
a song of spokes
whirring radiant
round an unseen hub;
a blasted intersection
of seeming unrelated themes
perhaps akin to the naming of constellations.


Face among faces, arm among arms,
fingers among a phalanx of foreigners
and the flux of young employees
at the neighborhood cafe
performing the rote manipulations
at the hissing espresso bar.


A flash of abused cuticles
centered my unfocused eye,
a tattoo (somewhat subtle),
the boho jewelry and my
immediate imagination is
artist, artisan, painter, potter.
Potter; yes, potter.


And I could see it,
the long leg pumping
the potter's wheel about,
caked fingers into the water bowl dipped,
the spinning surface slickly shaped
beneath the deft, earth-knowledge
of her dedicated digits.


That same week I found myself
prowling 'mongst Neruda translations,
audibly gnashing my teeth
at the persistent presence
of some so bewilderingly bad
yet extant 'mid their better brethren.


I presented Los Versos del Capitan
to a lady but just familiar
with the name behind the
now interred Chileans tectonic talent.


Completely unpredicted,
a fortnight aftreward,
the way she moved,
seemed to turn and grow,
flushflowerflutterform,
beneath my dumb-struck,
love-numbed hands...


so shockingly so that
reaching into my pocket,
ponying up for a cappuccino
some shattered weeks later,
wincing then waggling
my own ragged fingers,
that same barrista
expressed her sympathy,
noted nonchanlantly that,
as a maker of jewelry,
she suffered similarly,
which tripped my wierd-wired mind,
sent a tremor through my marrows.


The merest, remotest reminders
(much less direct recollections)
of that sosculptedsmooth mocha hip,
that fine, scared, wide-eyed,
fertile daughter from twixt
whose supple lips my name
will slip no more and
beneath this breastbone(sudden)
shifts that eccentric
four-vaulted fault.


Not potter but artisan.


Nice, I guess,
that the instincts are
still somewhat intact.

Hieroglyphic Grovel in Driveway Gravel Found

Sleep not, sweet-supple sylph.
We know by heart by now
these supplicant stabs and scratches,
which are my best hand,
cannot rewrite the wrongs
in seconds quickly sewn
and by the clock compounded.


And though my heart to you belongs
neither will the keen edged lilt of songs
unwound beneath Orion's bright-brave belt
jolt the heart's asynchrony aright.

Let me yet conspire to cajole,
from your broad repertoire of joy,
a single, winsome grin again.

For old Time's unslaked march
might somewhat abate
if I should fling a fearless,
Spring-swollen river
of ink stained paper-poem planes
into the dew-damped,
sullen nights moonspilled cup.

Unskein that oft invoked thread,
your precious patience, dearest;
let grow a silken smile
about your gen'rous mouth,
forget the syncopes
which afflict this brain,
and 'scape these slack lips.

See? The night, she skitters,
falls and trips into the day...
So let me feel, once more,
forgiveness play angelic
through your fingers’ tips
while a well attended
sun wakes brightly up.

Candymen, Cufflinks and Cards

A 1993 New Yorker mag ad for khakis,
Sammy Davis in the Nevada desert,
an acrobat dancer's heel-clackin leap,
arms extended, all lines aligned,
alive, communicating, correct-
a perfect instant of unmitigated dash.



Ahh, sweet Sammy.
Candy Man. Sportin' Life.
Mixed it all with love,
made the world taste good.



This I think by way of an ad
for the unseen Barton/Depp version
of Dahl's Willie Wonka.
It inspired me to revisit the '71
Wilder incarnation of the candy-man
in a world of pure imagination;
the origin of that sun-drenched song
I've just learned to play and sing.

The nineties;
I'd been promoted, then-
serially invited to
a slew of weddings
as a dear friend's escort.
The combination led to an era
where I regularly wore
a collared shirt and tie,
often a sportcoat.

A co-worker commented,
" You look good in clothes."
Reminded me of an Updike octatagenarian
who'd reminisced to her rapt granddaughter
'bout her evaporated success with men,
" I'd a good figure, could dance
and I looked good in clothes."

It was about allowing
the idea of clothes
to fall more entirely from me.
Allow/express essential self,
beyond sartorial habitudes,
outgrow an adolescent
anti-establishment
phobia to "dressing up"-
come unbundled of
an immature, reactionary
perhaps fascist fashion sense.

It worked; I think.

I don't think much now,
nor stress, 'bout how I dress;
more than less a good Laertes-

"Costly (my) habit as (my) purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy."

In 2006 San Francisco,
'bout a block from City Lights Books,
I'm having a beer and
thinking bout the Beats;
swarthy Jack in that
same khakis campaign,
BAR in neon spelled behind;
smart, a bit too arrogant,
probably somewhat drunk.

Been standing next
to this dour faced Brit
fifteen minutes and
haven't met his eyes
much less uttered a word
his silence seeming quite closed.

I lift my glass, say,
" Cheers, mate."

"Cheers.
What YOU dressed up for?"

"Nothing, mate. Nothing."

Unthinkingly dressed in
black blazer,white oxford and khakis,
I listen as young musicians
(mostly otherwise ignored)
produce competent,
pleasant music: Jazz.

The TV's on,
several men are seated,
hunched and huddled
about a felt-topped table,
playing high stakes poker
on the sports channel.
Professional flicker of eyes,
forcefully flattened aspects,
close cupped hands guarding cards.

Sport?

Polonius was pompous,
comical, tragical, tragi-comical,
bound, doomed and destined
for an early date with dust-
but his fatherly advice was sound.

"Rich not gaudy"
"Tender yourself more dearly"

I've naught to do with cufflinks.
The Ratpack likely did;
The Beats? Likely not.

I don't want to win
the million dollar pot,
calculate the odds,
compete, make the bluffs,
take the pains.

I don't play it close to the vest,
(sure, call me chump)
nothing up these sleeves
save arms replete
with blood-plump veins.

Every time
I lead with hearts,
my one,
my only,
always, trump.

BART ( Embarcadero to MacArthur)

Though there are vacant seats I stand.
Must be the nostalgic straphanger in me.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

No "Poetry in Motion" here,
but I do spy
an eye grabbing poster.
A warning.
(Think Madrid)
A pair of alert, roving eyes
against a plain white backdrop,
nary a lip nor a nose.
In bold above- Bomb Detectors.

A young man sporting
a balaclava and a hoodie
'neath his coat boards.
(It’s 48 degrees: God Bless these Californians.)
He seats himself to the rear of the poster.
I watch his eyes dart about.

I glance at the poster,
then back at Boy Balaclava,
then back again...
a second man sits between he and the poster,
this guy with a facial pigment anomaly-
not sure if I’ve seen the like before;
like an inverted raccoon;
he's light chocolate with a
pinkish melanin absence about
the eyes, nose, mouth and hands.

Poor guy.

My camera is in my bag,
the three together
is interesting, arresting almost-
but I don’t have the stones for it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Since I'm in a good mood,
(having played guitar
and sung the day's middle away
in a Cannery Row plaza
with Dash, a guy with an eye-patch,
a good booming voice, a friendly dog
and a talent for wry songwriting)
when I see the button and speaker
which allows one to communicate
with the conductor
I am oh-so tempted
to press it and say...
" I just wanted to thank you-
the ride is smooth,
everyone appears to be
content and secure.
No terror here, Captain!
No sir, we're a chipper crew!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

On the el section now
(West Oakland)
a tube of lip moisturizer’s
been left behind,
it's rolling around
in a vacant seat
near the door.

Almost dapper,
a trench-coated black man enters
singing Willie Nelson sotto voce,
“ To all the girls I’ve loved before…”
spots the lolling, left-behind object,
leans over to investigate,
is fingering the tube
when I elevate my eyebrows
and say in a hyperbole of disbelief,
“Used Chapstick? Daaay-um!”

We both smile.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I am looking now
at the container cranes
which line the East Bay shore.

Stark, strange, white girders
startling against the grayblue setting sky.

Ingenuity unleashed.

The machinations of man
gird the world.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Nearly twenty years ago
I was on a Manhattan bound LIRR,
hurtling through the borough of Queens
with my brother and nephew.
The tyke's brilliant locks
were something to behold.
Pull a ringlet, let it go
and it would recoil
into it's most perfect
corkscrew pig-tail, anew.

Out the window,
whizzing by in a sprawling
cacaphony of color are-
junkyards, alleys, avenues,
women, kids, buildings,
streetlights, men, storefronts,
garbage, graffitti, cars, flags,
trucks, lamposts, fire hydrants...

Desiring he should,
in a Whitman-like list,
name what he saw
I innocently asked-

" What do you see?"

He seemed puzzled,

" I see all things."

* * * * * * * * * * *

I've kept her waiting,
my friend's curbside,
listening to Cesaria Evora
in her warm Honda.

I hasten guiltily toward it
wanting to jot a note or three.

As I fussily extract pen and paper,
some aged detritus from my
heavy coat's deep pockets
is liberated...

it flutters earthward,
resembling,
oddly enough,
uncooked oatmeal.

Heirloom

Reared without kindness,
poured out into the warped world,
some write while most wrong.

Timepiece: An Exorcise In Clockwatching

The clock don't tic nor toc no more.
Those days are long gone by.

Thus, this puddle of liquid crystal
encased in plastic,
precisely bedside placed,
atomically attuned.

Your head,
replete with raw-red orbs
in their worry-wrung sockets,
stuffed with another stultifying
insomniac night of jangled nerves
watched the seven segment readouts
go six-zero-zero- ante meridian.

It, so to speak, struck.

It's alarming hour arrived while you,
stricken and recently relapsed
into a chicken hearted addiction
to self-indulgent wound licking
decide, on the instant,
with a resolve resembling pluck,
to a boot-strap yanking exit from
the slack-souled, sickening suck
of that stagnant, cognitive swamp
of meandering mind-muck.

The instantaneity of eternity
was most poignantly present there,
(most unlike something like luck)
while you got your sorry ass
from out your bed and French Pressed
some good, strong coffee,
hummed a modest meditation
on rubber-tree moving ants,
saw the morning light lazily bathe
the unwitting world yet again.

Said light
seeming to reveal
the least of things to be
abundantly abuzz within-
all aglow, agleam,
and you (so real),
and me and
other/every
human too.

Insipid Inseams

The tailor seemed to be on the make,
he licked his damned,
thin-lipped chops
far too demonstratively;
it bordered on lascivious.

The fact the he was a lispy flame
didn't so much bother me as the
duration with the tape measure
tucked into my groin
making his inseam measure.
That and the stupid-ass,
flappy-eyelid eye contact
which accompanied it.

Sheesh.

The post procedure
vasectomy tenderness
was none of his business.
It would have been doubly
awkward in the explaining
considering I was being
fitted for a wedding tux
and have always wanted children.

Besides, I have always over explained
and am trying to wean myself of this habit.
I'm failing, as you can see.

Point is-
I think I've made up
my mind not to marry.

That whole tailor scene
being so seamlessly insipid.

Candy Colored

The dream, replete with queenly grace, awakes
to find it's foremost face opposed to dawn's
indifferent, brilliant bright tucked behind lake
mists all thick and bold. The Sandman's done drawn
a mandala, refined for all it's sleep
depravity; deliciousness itself
considering the risen winds (from deep
within the sea's throat sore) which blast and pelt
(with bitter rains) the intricate figure
toward oblivion's salty, farthest
shore. Sunlight isn't requisite; insures
the easy (only) elements are fast
devoured by the agitated eyes
of the luckless- blind to the shadow's prize.

Geometry

Til God, (so-called, conveniently mostly) quits
His most delicious sweet singing lung songs
And takes up golf or some dumb-such bullshit,
Will my uncouth hammering heart, unwronged
Fulfill it’s blood-thrum duties without plaint.
The muscle bound by none but it’s unseen
Purpose neck-breakingly accelerates
On some along-for-the-ride fare who keens
Toward vicarious misadventures
And rolls the windows down and breathes it in-
The urban air fouled, the sidewalk cracks, life
(Up through metalled gratings) flowers and wins.
Hear the diastole, feel pressure there,
The rooted spring, the source of circles squared.

Pottery

two containers: clay.
mix the spirits borne within
- name her Shalunay.