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)