A Voice for Vows

Cassius squinted squarely
Into the sun-glarey sea.

Scuffing with his boot
and idly reviewing was he
the patch of grass
upon which he’d soon be wed.

It seemed a goodly enough piece of earth,
where one might bleed for love,
Honor and glory;
make oaths that one could easily keep
owing to their proximity to ultimate truths.

These things did simple seem
and always had for our disheveled lad
as he stood there listing notably to port,
cogitating on statistics quoted
in some bloody divorce-rate report.

Swigged he then from a flask deftly
slipped from his ragged coat pocket
and whispered he into the wind…

composing with his mind and breath and art
a line or three to offer to his maiden’s heart.

Game. Set. Match.

Cassius bent and spat.

He yawned widely.

His his mouth was thick with anise
and cigarette smoke.

He looked at the horizon,
squinting through the heat-distorted light
wavering over the bleak landscape.

Morrocco.

He was spending his life savings.

Travelling.
Walking.
Looking.
Writing.
Smoking.
Drinking.

Drinking very heavily.

Very ocasionally fucking.

He ordered another round,
bent to the table and his
leather-bound notebook,
eking out a poem.

Love's pursuit had done this to him.

Or rather, it's achievement had.

Now?
A cuckold careening
into full scale alcoholism,
debauchery and womanizing.

He had it, then it blew up in his face.

And it was this potential,
this latent gluttony and debasement,
that he had always known was there,
that took over when love failed him
for the very last and truest time.

Broker

Mr. Conard, looking on
from death’s healthy distance,
waggled his grizzly head,
and harrumphed.

( though not too emphatically)

The point being that Charlie-boy,
his sometime protégé,
might just be headed into
unfriendly and undoubtedly
unctuous territory.

For there sat Charles,
amid the non-descript
office furnishings,
across a flimsy desk,
his brow all a-knit,
squirming mightily
in a seat too contrictive,
his head a-swim in
a numbing swarm of
legalese phraseology.

Out of his ken was he
seeking financial information
before a manically smiling,
over-cologned, salesman sort
in an questionable suit.

Charles,though plainly baffled,
still took time to note that
his thinnish lips seemed fixed,
unmoving around the terrible tooth-gleam
emmitted from his unprecedented dentistry.

Speaksong Start

Certain things there were
to which our Charlie
clung with ferocity unrefined.

Coaxed and coached
was he in the ways
of discernment and disdain.

To deeper truths swore he himself
and forsook the middler path wherein
the making of friends might more
prominently have figured.

Having cast himself an outcast
in the plastic environ
which was his adolescent imagination,
enjoyed he (somewhat)
swimming against the tide,
a picnic at the cliffs
where lemmings ran to die.

It amused him, but comfort little gave.

A long, slow while was it,
during the which was much read
in fields spiritual mystical,
awakening the primitive intuition
gone for so long ignored, unheard,
drowned out with ratiocinations
most vigorously exercised.

Something unschooled in him,
tightly strung, began to make
almost musical sounds-

sometimes a bagpipe like drone,

a Bill Evans ostenato

a sitar, a zither, a hurdy gurdy...

over which
the first timid words
were spoken,

spoken again,

rearranged,

then written.

Property

The early evening
reaped him easily.

The moon, a waxing,
blood-tinged sickle,
sharpened with sun-born,
reflected glory, cleft him cleanly
from the mundane cogitations
clotting his brain's hypoxic byways;
left him leaning, heaving anemically
toward night's darkly clenched thighs,
challenged in his amateurish ascetic attitudes
by a strong, submarine, tidal insistence.

A recent divestiture of electronics,
finances and furniture dizzied him
drastically then with unaccustomed lightness,
encouraged him toward high praise-

and the first thing that caught his
darting mind's agitated eye was
the slender-sweet scimitar of a moon;
her borrowed brightness.

Current Event

Raised he then the rent rag.

White it was with the
resignation of one
whose peace is won
by a distaste for killing conflicts.

Piped with hopeful green
it flapped, forlorn and fine
in a tired, tumid wind.

His face, a map of desolation
lined without laughter,
of peurile pride deflated,
was weatherbeaten,
though undefeated.

Charles rowed and rowed,
with the current now,
whistled low and wanly,
verily unvanquished,
yet not merrily, merrily.

Balcon Babble

The room,
cooled against
the high desert heat,
could conceivably have been,
in other, ancient times,
a place where princely progeny
were handsomely hatched,
an event triumphant
to be met by approving
and most churchly chimes-

or so fantasized our chum Charles,
stepping dreamily out into the gloaming.

Draped in and dragging was he
an oversized bedcover behind-
which masqueraded as a regal robe-
while he surveyed, roamed and reigned
the mountains distant
so swathed in post-sunset,
salmon pinks that impressed
his fantastic mind no end.

He and she, a nudely two
( more chaste than lewdly, true)
swayed and ambled on the porch,
wrapped in the weird warp
of time outside of Time,
that sated State which weaves itself,
by divine starts and turns,
with deftest touch,
through a well-lived life.

The buzz of Bugsy's
wet-dream, sinly city was
but a mumbly murmur
next to the sweet and
serendipitous presence
of his petite true love's
pretty, satisfied sighs...

the heat was like some
liquid, amniotic déjà vu
surrounding and supporting them,
their little blissed-out
musings and mewlings
spinning miraculous imageries
before their dream-drunk,
easily believing eyes...

at which point,
in the broader view,
within the large arc of all events,
it seemed not too silly a thing
to see her, so womanly fair,
so comely, as naught but Queen,
and he one humbled,
enamored aspirant of a King.

FlameFlower

The blue-white heart
of a cleanly burning flame
birthed a spirited flower of a girl.


The details are fuzzy,
come from a deja-vu
waking dream only
(perhaps) half-remembered.

A kalim rug beneath a tree,
tea poured into small glasses
with an elegant and ritual flair,
a well-used hookah,
the tinkling laughter of children.

Some old-world there
was where a foreign flame,
small yet purely pulsing,
clean and brightly burning,
danced and licked its tongue
toward God's singing throat,
turning a strong heart's fuel
into a simple, single spiral,
a nimble wisp of smoke
writhing/whirling toward
eternities nearer shore
in the shape of a woman dancing.

It somehow seemed to Charles
much like a flowers birth,
splendor and perfume
from a tightened bud uncurling.

Surviving Time

We find our Charles
contemplating the texture
of uncultured pearls and
bristlecone pine root gnarls.

Something about whorled beauty,
the ephemeral effect
of elemental forces
strewn lib'rally throughout
the wide, weird world was,
for him, a preferred theme
for his minor meditations;

the everyday epic of
a natural world's
fine fragments
yet unperverted;

every woman
and every man;

the sometimes miraculous
result of life's sparked spirit;

(he who thought himself
always a defender thereof)

a river it's own bed making,
slicing toward the sea;

all these eventually
nestling nicely,
their true course finding,
in a feared but finally
unforced surrender.

The Annulus

The light is singing.

Singing strongly in shadow.

Yes, I said the light
is in the shadow singing.

In that varied obscurity,
cleanly, with clarity
of darkness not absolute,
to you, to me, to us
( yes, I say always too)
is light's suave sister
brightly bringing truths.

Such things
which do not
always,

( nor, in all ways-
winging on the other side
or brave brightness
as they often are)

soothe us.

Crawling creaturely
in our cool corner
of this Universe,
at such distance
from a modest star's
burning, gaseous heart
it's plain we ought not
doubt the primal importance
of a darker parts power to inspire
and inform some small verse-

Such as one might dedicate
to the hauling hearse that
blackly, Cadlillac-ly clarifies
how death shines
a lovely light on
every wife who brings
Life's brightness to fruition
at every human's
moist, warm start.

Blue Moon

May whisked by,
amazed at itself,
a blithe puff of jasmine
and honeysuckle,
our Charles wandering,
wondering, blundering,
inebriated, grinning goofily,
and altogether unabashed.

June followed, gentler,
voluptous violet
jacaranda blooms
dropping slowly everywhere,
against misaligned odds
on the months last night,
beneath a blue moon most blue
washed over him cooly
a tide-strong assurance,
an unearthly knowledge,
a magnetic shift that
lifted long dark clouds,
effortless, quiet,
left all daemons near
wholly, irrevocably thrashed.

Ambidexterity

Was lava once,
this obsidian blade,
fine-honed now to perhaps
a molecule's meagre width,
sharper than surgeon's steel,
hanging here from a sacrificial hand,
dripping thick, thick ruby drops
now puddling, congealing
on the cool tile floor;

while in the other,
the offering opposite,
beating beautifully still,
in separate, coordinated halves,
Charles's excised heart-

and he,

it's borrower,

(not it's owner,
life and it being
for all intents a loaner)

observing, half unbelieving-

he no sorrower, nor groaner,

wondering whether it really works-

might this make the sun,
with love, come up,
drop delightfully down
from Night's parted thighs

before his corpse,
his lifeless eyes
are laid within his tomb?

Relative Worth

Strategems he'll leave
for those with motives
all seamy/seedy.

The unrefined yet finer
(somehow) fabrics
undeviously crude
and seamless sewn
he'll wrap around
an urgent stone
polished previously
with the small oils
from strong and hairy hands-

it's miraculous
mineral veins
feelingly revealed

and by him kept,
quiet, in his pocket.

Silly boy was Charles,
who once was studying
the greedy, over-valuation
of what the wrong-headed world
still calls the most precious gems.

Give him just one Andalusian girl,
brass locket from her neck depending,
frayed linen hem swinging, swaying,
dancing beneath a maddening moon-

as he enchantedly observes,
dreams and sings but does not swoon.

To the simplest go the fundamental spoils.

Dance Partner

In these close quarters,
the altered rhythms
of our breath,
the strong mix of sweat
and saliva smells like-

the sick-sweet ache
of thorough thrill;

an uncaged thing
its new, fuller range
delightfully discovering.

The cry that quakes
and quenches our
thirsty throats
sounds like-

old pain exorcised;

wrongs and wounds annealed;

new joy tapped
while time writhes,
warping, bending-

union.

Lilly of the Valley

"Mutant Mosquito?",
thought still sluggishly
sleeping Charles,
as to a whir and buzz
most unaccustomed
was he, with amazement,
roused up.

A hummingbird,
chupaflor, huitzil,
hovered at his exposed
and hair-covered chest,
and with extended beak
and flicking tongue did
upon his best nectar sup.

After the disorienting
dart and dash,
when realized he
the benign nature
of that most delicate,
thirsty, wingly thing,
was he to bemusement shifted,
the initial annoyance
of being tickled
from his fickle dreams
evaporated, lifted.

While a deep-soft laugh
in his whiskey'd throat
rolled and bubbled
did he decide
(most untroubled)
that should his fist-sized,
blood-red flower
nourish this sweet-seeking,
blithe and beautiful bird
for even only an hour,
then was he as finely Fated
as any man of whom
he'd ever heard.

Toward the Cemetery/ Hasta el Cementario

I’ve come
to bury your ghosts.

Which is to say
I’d like to vanquish them-

completely.

And completely without violence.

Let them go
and fly out
your haunted heart.

I’ll let them live
in the oceanic spaces
of which my dreams
are composed.

There will they die-

of freedom.

And when they exhale
their last breaths,
in my own mouth
will the most
blessed canticles be-

ready to send them
heavenward.

Incense will be burned-

solemnly.

In the depths
of my own chest,
in luxurious coffins,
will they rest
until they convert
themselves into flowers-

so I can offer them
to you every day.



He venido
para interrar
tus fantasmas.

Que es decir
esperaría vencerlas-

completamente.

Y completamente sin violencia.

Suéltelas volar fuera de
tu corazón embrujado.

Las permitiré habitar en
los espacios oceánicos
de que mis suenos
son compuestos.

Ahí las van a morir-

de libertad.

Y cuando exhalan
los últimos suspiros,
en mi boca propria,
estarán los canticos
más bendigos-

listos para mandarlas hacia cielo.

El incenso sera quemado-

con solemnidad.

En los fondos
de mi pecho proprio,
en sarcaphagos lujosos,
descansarán hasta que
se convierten a flores-

para que yo podría
ofrecértelas cada día.

On Night's Wing

I dreamed

her hair

poured, draping drunkenly,
through my foundling fingers;

ran, a stunned silk,
beneath my quenched lips;

spoke an elegant Farsi-
of great Priestess
conquerings told,
entwined the tale with
Kingly, honorable
surrenderings most masculine.

And I understood.

I dreamed

dark storms of song
danced delirious
in her great-dark eyes;
ghostly pasts hurtled wildly by
smelling of lost, black-red roses.

I dreamed

her strong, small hands
bled light in great, sweet swaths
drew mercurial tears from
my much amazed eyes
and coaxed light laughter
from my howl-torched throat aloft.

I dreamed

a jasmine scented
amulet dangled from her
lithe and lovely neck.


Then she said my name,
soft,
beneath her breath,
as it,
strong and simple,
sang its prayed,
protective note.

Wag: Response

Once was Charles,
by Queenly chiding,
given to know that
shy was he to gift his tongue.

An now that he's hung a while
upon that quiply comment
does he oathe without equivocating-

My sweet, my tongue I give,
to you, most freely,
replete with it's limited ability
to frame such sounds
designed to touch
your dearest hearing.

These bellows too, my lungs,
give you easily I,
to resonate the chords
where my throat's heart thrums.

And if you'll bear my nearness
these cardiac sounds ,
these pounds of rhythm mine
outside the poor constraints
of a wronging, rectilinear toy of time.

These I can and will and do
most natur'lly give,
if only you might deign
return them then to me,
leave me room that I might employ
my fearless songs and whispers
toward some intimation of eternity,
blow soft upon your dear heart's
wondrous, sometime wavering flame
while flowers fragrant
now bend and bow
and bud and bloom-

the efflorescence
of your one true name.

Both Ends Burnt

Sister me most wondrously
and I'll brazen brother you
into many a mild mischief.

Accept this green silk kerchief
with only perhaps a surprised sigh
and as these drooped lids quiver
will I read you Rumi
til slip you sweet beneath
slumbers dream-riddled river
companioned by my glowing glance.

We'll make a mockery of chance,
choosing 'stead to set a world
gone much awry aright again,
our heads lifted heavenward
when the dawn o'ertakes the night.

The Lay of the Loam

Passing by the new-churned
eucalyptus mulch exuding
much strange perfume,
the next, from mnemonic ooze
of two-score years,
does Charlie, yeoman-like, exhume.

Upon the sharpened stake
each time (questionably, but)
without fail does Chuck
himself most naturally impale.

The pain comes, somehow still,
as half-surprise and
we can easily surmise
that, as life flows from him freely,
then whimpers he, but barely audible,
as if he half-suspected
the summed up scars of years
(though himself conquers
each/every time his deepy fears)
might allay the initial, unconfected spike
of pure-white pain
which never assumes
the fickle form of pleasure,
as splashes out his truest treasure. (love)

And though the evidence lay
like a seeping war-glove incarnadine
on drifty dreams of snow
(a pristine white most renewable)
Charles can fathom no other course
than the hapless expenditure
(in molten dribbles from the crucible)
of his little well-sprung wealth
that ever over-bloats
his human heart's account-
a direct deposited line
long established from the
supra-abundant fount,
the one Good, True, Beauteous Source.

Bagatelle: Sophia's Symphony

The tune of you
wrings things of me
which, ever unbidden,
only mean the most
an untethered hawk heart's
untrained voice through bill/beak
can freely, not merely speak,
but say songsingingly.

Tis not a consummation
cooked-up by whisk-whirring wrists
through the lank lists
of retrograde recipes,
but the full wrought score
of star-struck symphonies.

Conversation/Communion

Both beyond and above
the thin scrim
( their speech)
which hung between
and begged removal-

as eagles might
soar and screech
toward the resolved
achievement harmonic
of long dreamt themes-

played the swelling scene itself.

An aspiring entwining
dance of quick expired -

fruitful
as a pregnant woman
'neath an efflorescent coral tree,
her great belly bared
to the Spring sun's
first fine carresses.

The nearby, calmed Pacific's
sussurus an obvious approval.

Recollections Toward a Teller of Tales

Charlie’s heart,
that impulsive pump,
stuttered now (and often)
its more explosive forces
long since spent.

His lumbago’d back
saw him stumble
over-plump and bent
along his vague
peregrinations.

The poor guy’s mind,
subject to its own
limited imaginations,
oft rested upon the
the snippets of conversation
found floating in foreign tongues
at unsophisticated cafes;
the soar of gulls angling into
the prevailing onshore winds;
his un-tragic list of lost loves.

These last sailed as sloops might
toward a gathering horizon;
a sight he sighed at;
it being of no small beauty.

Having turned his back,
as was his wont
though not his duty,
for as long as his constitutional took,
on the agility of man-made machinations;
those sleek, shorefront architectures,
darting, geometric renderings
of steel, wood, space and light;
a library swole with the wordly
work of well-commanded syllabaries;
still felt he fall upon him the fine,
great, ghost and magics
of what Woman, weirdly, was to him-

somehow mortar and pestle both,
a pattern un-emerged in Wonder’s weft,
an animated alter
for earnest surrenderings,
the collarbone hollow
a sacred place
designed for dappling
by lazy leaf-shadows
on late, late Autumn afternoons.

Laughing to breathlessness,
finally, at the inadequacy
of his unskilled word-sketches
he noted two modest ketches
as they tacked in tandem
at some distance.

Then stood Charlie still and silent,
his ankles in wraith-mist wrapped,
‘tween his toes an easy ooze of mud,
the gentle jostle of neap-tide waves
the gentlest rhythm did provide;
over which he found himself
whispering, with some insistence,

“Sharhzad”

and thought he ought
an ode compose
that it might taste
of chocolate, honey
milk and blood.

The Eyes Have It

Before a yellow-eyed Jesus,
a blue-eyed, crying Quixote
curious Charlie stood mute.
The large, informal compositions
seemed fairly formulaic stylizations
which he could not quite disregard;
so stood he there bombarded
by symbolic associations-

bearded, broken men who railed,
wrung-out and wronged
on the warped-wrack
of the wide world.

Felt he wonderfully manipulated,
evoked emotion tickled
in his untrimmed nostrils,
his eye-wells swelled
with sick-sweet melancholy
for these heart-sick two,
so-mythologized, blue,
trialled and tribulated.

And though the math was fuzzy,
the solution struck him squarely
in his earth-wet roots-

everything equilibrating,
seeming to indicate
the good, rare-trodden path.

Grace: One's Not Half Two*

Her to him:
sister-spirit
both serious and silly.

He to her:
the brother-bold,
both brave and blithe.

And over both
a mutual feeling
falling toward
solemn/sacred ceremony
accompanied by happy hammers
on dulcimers dancing-
the small scene flame-flecked
by a wee, warm, well-tended fire,
a few tallows and torches hard by.

And though the search
forlorn be now ended
Charlie's dreams still
were not with gold appended;
adored he less inert
more modest ores,
the untold beauty and balm
of Grace untrained
did silently astound
and by light-quick pulse
quietly compel him
toward gift-giving-

(supplements to
the caramel caress
-his kiss-
which sweetened
ev'ry raven tress)

bright-shined bronzes,
mirrored skirts,
copper goblets,
ancient bracelets
and jangly anklets,
polished stones
to lace about
her languorous neck,
antique talismans and
amulets to protect.

*- ones' not half two. it's two are halves of one:
a poem by e.e. cummings

La Historia de Polvo

Por el hueco adelante
Charlie está pitando
el partido (la Vida) entre Dioses
que se caen encima aplastando
sus entrañas temblorosas,
pulverizando sus dientes y huesos quejones,
fertilizando un mundo de cabrones.

Charlie Chimuelo no tiene que imaginar
la caída hacia el jardín del Infierno;
el humo impenetrable y cenizas de muertos.

Pobre jardinero, dispersando el guano
con sus herramientas metálicas,
no ves que la huella que ha dejado el amor
es un moretón en forma de mano?

El jardín de rosas infiernas
es un dolor de olores
un olor de dolores,
un temblor de oro,
cuyo perfume exhala espinas y pétalos,
un poquitín de polvo
de cruzados amores.

So Unjust

Ragged keloids punctuate
her arms and back
and no tack nor method mine,
thinks Charles,
though Hippocratically designed
(from heart),
is Art and craft enough
to heal what wounds
Time and Sun and body-bright
cannot quite anneal.

For little more
than luckless shattering
are mirrors good,
declaims she detestably
as about her scarified lip
a smattering of what once could
be a smile called does play;
a decrepit frame
for a nic-stained,
truly tortured tangle
of fucked-up teeth.

In the cramped,
un-fanned quarters
they poorly populate,
no relief's around,
the relentless wave
of hellish heat
( a Void of cool)
reigns as Charlie-fool
takes the pains
and shares and sheds
what little light
his marred heart/mind's
managed to keep,
ain't yet lost, or's found.

Sees he little result
his demonstrative cares,
which kiss/caress
along the length of scars,
have upon the mirthless girl-
or none at all.

She mutters, smokes and paces,
lives through drug-dreams daily,
weaves the nightmare-dare
a switchblade twirling at,
extracting from the celebrity faces
she's torn from faded tabloids
and slapped upon the humid wall.

Of One Stone I Sing

Thus begins Doctor-playing Charlie

"Here's the thing...

for those who read not
and wonder less,
lack discern/refine-ment
intellect, finesse;

boredom

a symptom is-
of an atrophied imagination.

Whose definitive diagnosis
confirmed can be,
when an excess
of tube-glued hours
couple to a deep desire
to shed ten pounds
without expenditures
of sweat/effort/time
is observed and noted.

Consulted have I with
the powers that be,
and the solution-hook
they would not me let off-
til the answer came so
laughingly simple...

Conserve both effort and time,
no more trouble than a pimple,
and in one swift, smart stroke,
just up and cut your head off."

(M)Alchemy

Simply and inscrutably,
in Charles' churning skull,
come Sunday morning,
a Little League ball-game
glibly reported as a
" glorious Orioles victory "
becomes a
" laborious glory-hole victory..."

the adults laugh
the kids furrow up brows quizzically;
the bought bagels are summarily sliced,
slathered with cream cheese thickly
and devoured while Chuck shrugs
and smirkily admits his quirks,
holds himself accountable for
his word-whirled brain and how it works.

Moment of Silence ( Pyreside Thoughts for Tim)

Battle-brother mine,
how many times beside me,
our war-song sung,
with beast's-blood painted,
heaved you what might Gods gave you
against fiends and foes alike?

Well remembered your last glance
will be, has been and is-
your fine, wild-blue eye ablaze
with Life's-light leaving,
shield-shattered and shoulder-broke,
there amid the muddy hoof-suck,
adrift in hate-smoke and blood mulch,
the war-reek's tang so sick and strong-
still hums the vision of that last afternoon
when the bell rang backward through the throng
and Gods'-thirst reclaimed you unashamed.

No more deep clunk of mead tankard,
no more gift-giving in great-halls,
no warm, thick pelts,
goose-greased hand clasping
and proud victor shouts.

Now me, reluctant warrior always,
who thought to travel hence first,
tasked to touch the torch
to the pyre that appalls-
who would weep to see some day
a city without, rampart, fence or walls.

Nocturne for Celestial Bodies

Charlie descends
the hill homeward,
pores over the possibilities-
at remote odds, there's epiphany,
then, a knowing nod
gives he to nightmare;
so obviously inherent in the
splat, mix and smear of
Night's titillated palate...

then

Close
eyes,
let
everything
scintillate,
thrill
eerily,
sinously.
Obviate
deranged
expectations;
re-invent
Being;
Ego
receding,
yielding.

The Percibo Effect

While kind-of comprehending those
whose neural networks remain
unresponsive to the dubious charms
of words in such short lines writ-

yes, poetry;

there's seems to Charlie's
supple sensiblities
something wrong as well
to posit that craft
little more than the deft
distribution of aphoristic placebos
to soothe those silly
and susceptible enough
to lean toward the enthusiastic
consumption of such stuff.

While a poem never
will a war-wound stanch,
a wind-fed fire quench,
neither will a prose,
a marble-carved bust
or a painted portrait
fit those bloody,
firestormed bills.

It ( yes, poetry)
could serve to warm
engines inner one wee bit...
like the recollection,
while observing snowfall
at the frosted window's sill,
of glancing back to catch
a wife quite unawares,
her fine-turned foot
a slipper dangling
near the pot-belly
burning fragrant, self-cut wood.

Verbawhores

Cut, snipped, parsed,
mercilessly pounded out of round,
a language abrupted, unadorned
a blunted force-

which can, true enough,
convey a cleansed idea or image
neatly shorn of fat
but often rendered fleshless too,
severed of spice and complex flavors.

Aligned are they in assanine,
anti-adjectival stance which often
Charlie cannot stomach, savor-

for given stage
and audience and music,
a choreographers cornucopia
of language lithe and readied,
choose they to reduce it
to a few brute moves
and clumsify the dance.

But humble Chuck wishes
not to deride or flout,
let's hope they all at least
had choice enough
to don dress or pants
and don't at wit's end end up
like poor Hem: a suicide
with all their brains blown out.

Enter Satchmo

The doors of pearl swung
soundless, wide-open,
seven silver cornets
through angelic embouchure
blew high, bright grief;
four portly cherubim stately
did counterpoint the melodious mourn
on four lugubrious, gold French horns-

Charlie's old, obsidian soul
found, at all, no relief.

No Doe

From Charlies arms hung
too soft hands that yearned
for harder ways of work-
occupied as they'd so long been
with the minute manipulations,
the quite tiny concentrations
that comprised a humanistic
kind of care which was his bloody job.

His hairy paws had suffered several
sport-related mashings, dislocations,
drunken bedroom trashings and,
for the wear, were not much worse-
nimble still enough to worry fretfully
over quirky samba-jazz chords
and scribble illegible, little read verse;
though cursed too were they
with remembrances
of wondrous, womanly geographies,
that so slow, roaming over joy of
loverly exploration now and anon.

"Those times," the sigh-stained
corny calendar remarked,
"Be long, long gone-
Despite burnt incense,
prayers and invocations."

This left him reeling;
starved and stark
his hunger felt he
on him like a rut-musk;
and, thus perfumed,
caused the roll of shoulders,
the cower, shuffle and slink,
infected his think-speak,
seemed to salt the very
brook at which he stooped to drink.

2nd Amendment Blues

It were a thing
to think about- and well;
though fully far
from easy grasp.

And all on irate elbows
leaning bewildered at the bar
murmured, opinionized and gasped
" Jesus, Mary and Joseph!! Hell!!... "

An armed, imploded ingrate
laid waste a couple/few dozen
still sprouting, yet flowered lives;
a fitful shyness alchemically altered
into premeditated murd'rous rage,
placed before us bleeding
as if on a fucking stage.

So, over shamrocks left
in the fine, thick foam
in his several stouts
unquiet Charlie chewed on if
in life and death danger clear,
(mind you, not mere doubt)
amid all the Fear-frantic noise,
he'd still have the stones, retain the poise
to strike a shark upon the snout.

A natural progression-
easy as I, IV V...

and Charlie, miffed,
obliterated yet still alive,
flattened by an amber fifth,
howls the blue note long and low...

then uncoordinated of muscle,
almost completely limp,
offers through his grizzled muzzle-

" Some pissed off wimp, I know,
could not have done it with a cudgel."

The Ninth Degree

Came she serpentine,
salacious something’s murmuring
through wine-purpled lips
into the echoing conch-whorls
which were his fearless ears.

Too soon, near-full swooned again
perceived he the sharp-edged
omnipresence of life's best jewels
pulsing in the improvised melody
whistling through his pursed and impish lips.

A gifting impulse bold and undeniable
appeared in his opened mind/heart/hands;
as history’d have it, this was deeply unreliable.

For hard she was
in all the wrong places,
best Mysteries kept occult
in the fierce facets
of the faces she thought
went unobserved.

Unnerved of this
new-cautious Charles
attempted, wincingly,
a gently wrought extrication
from this fast, false intimacy;
relentless lashed himself of nights;
prayed and fasted;
whispered weird-wrung,
apoplectic apologias and
sleep depraved ditties;
to sing or dance refused
the Muses being most unamused.

The Prayer of the Romantical Chump

Sun-sprig, light-stalk,
love's own lithe limb;

Fire-keeper and fury-quell,
milk-river purl,
curve-song complete;

Flower-font mellifluous, repository,
seed-bed waked and willing;

Wonder-guide, slaking freshet,
Grace's fine first taste
for every babe that was ever got;

Beacon in confused fogs,
in Winter sleet, sweet warmth
more marrow and less cloying
than all nutmegged, rummy nogs.

Fever-calm and spasm-stop
rests in your very fingers' tips
which pluck melodious that iron string,
smooth all knurls, unwind each knot.

Kiss Me K... Cathy?

Can catch-as-catch-can Charlie
communicate to Catherine
the efflorescent fact that,
bamboozled as any bee
among the blooms nodding
in sagacious silence
of dusk-born breezes,
wanders dreamily he,
steered ( though no lowing ruminant)
toward infinity and the sole,
un-lonely,Cause of Be?

Toward where the cup's unbranded,
more crude than crystal
and lifted, four handed,
by some two celebrants,
some unknown Us:
Anima and Animus.

Burblings in a Vacuum

Implosive, frictive forces left
unchanged, rough-tongued Charlie's
overcooked noodle molten,
strange with mad musics that burst forth
in a loose logorrhea that breached
'is skull's tectonics to hiss and fizzle
in it's surrounding sea's cold, dark depths.

Still so submarine that it amounted to
little more than a noisome narration
that accompanied his five live senses
and sometimes quietly crescendoed
into a muttered, involuted invocation
toward that sly and persistently elusive Sixth.

Monkey Do

'Mong the dream-tree's leaves
young'un Chuck sat fancying himself
the man who manned the fire-tower,
custodian of forests primordial-

Or better yet, a-sea,
the undaunted occupant
of a noble crow's-nest
'mid catastrophic North Sea gale.

Such chivalrous precocity
cordially clasped Charlie's
gasped-out, hardly hammered heart-
still crude-formed and un-flame-refined.

His blood-muscle unpedigreed,
unadorned, ungilt by filagree,
by battle-mail never draped,
was prone to sweetest Night
plunging sharply therein to the hilt.

The global velocity of two-score years behind
left him shy-scarred by multiple puncturings,
(his bilious humours mostly bled)
a head with Grail-fueled failings filled,
periodically gloomy, bone-tired rheumy,
most modestly skilled and quite undead.

Aging, silliest Charlie'd
seen the adult result
of rein-roped glee:
original equine energy
gone snuffed and strange,
a thing gripped and twitchy
with fear-sick constriction.

And though a sick litany
of countless rejections
sometimes gunked-up
his dream-driven agile eyes
and left him dumbly squinting,
still sought He some She
who would not "Why?"
the wisdom of donning
synergistic wings when they
came home a-hinting.

As Sweet a Smell as Change

Charlie deigned
to change his name...
"Or stooped!" thinks he guiltily,
being over-analytic in the extreme.

The old started seeming a hanging-on,
a worm-riddled, worn idea
that had somewhat duped him
for a couple still-productive years.

Sought he something to convey
the howl below his stewed silence,
the wind-shriek blown through
his bone-house ribs over
an unapologetic blood-drum's beat.

After a too-demanding
eve of detailed work,
the dirt-path home
(Spring being sprung)
become a heady boulevard
of jasmine and woodsmoke,
it settled upon him.
(more so then he who chose)

From somewhere unfound beyond
the incantatory rythyms
of his own beleaugred breathing,
the piteous plaint of his
road-broke, work-swole feet,
his titillated, negroid nose,
something sharp but not a shard
spoke to his moon-maddened mind-
an itch and a catch undone,
and ache and a note unwound,
throbbing in his Godson throat.

Happy Hour

Unruly, beer-bloated Charlie
noted duly the post-dusk sky,
mothered, as it was,
in whorled-pearl patterns,
shimm’ry with salmon-scale pink’s painted,
inhaled abrupt a double rye,
feinted at the men’s room door
and rudely left his coworkers
shoveling over-rich,
franchise restaurant food
into their mindless maws,
sucking sugary sours
through cocktail stirrer/straws forevermore-
and made for the unpeopled,
disheveled hovel he called home.

A radio sound bite
from the nightly news
the night before’d
taken restless root
in the fecund loam
betwixt his ears.

Desired he the privacy
to explore his funked-up mood
a-haunted by the ridiculous
epaulettes and epithets
of a glutted General just returned,
still high and haughty, from the slaughter.

Wherein certain merely moral mortals
went down in dismal blood-soaked droves;
social disobedients who’d populated
the low end of the learning gradient
non-martyrs, radiant nevermore,
murdered sans ceremony,
somehow more vicious,
with something akin
to officious sanctimony.

An absence of cable coverage,
precious little media drone,
no celebrity, well-coiffed wanker
of an internationally acclaimed anchor
expressing mid-left rancor,
no scrambly cameraman,
cigarette a-dangle,
to record the wild wail,
fresh tear-whet cheeks,
of an aghast family-
grisly death met, alas, alone-
sans spin or angle.

From such gloomy ruminations
by a gull perched and screechy
atop a parking lot lamp-post
was disgust-weak Chuck
brought most quick and timely to.

Certainly somewhere lovers lay
sated, spooned and snug,
while jade-sick Charlie chugs down
moonshine by the earthen jug.

Tis The Season

Cellos, eviscerated,
lay everywhere.
Startled theologians
elected someone
overwhelmingly dull.

Every Rubicon
brazenly exceeded.

Recaclitrants yawp.

Belfry: A Sketch In Quasimodal Tones

The clapper is
a crippling capacity
for sundry instants
to sail, breeze-easily,
through enchanted Charlie’s
fruitless filters.
This being only recently
recognized and reconciled,
sits he ignominiously fatigued
upon the lonely,clammy crapper.

His crude and curdling curse
having, harmless, fallen
at heavens fine, high,
always open gate,
gives he way to
a most melancholic trait
and sighs to the mildew
on the tireless tiles unintrigued.

“ To simply wear my wonder well,
transmit true the regal ring
of that strangeling-forged inward thing,
the noble clang of that bright bell,
is, I think, what I must task myself to do.”

Nocturne

Sometime pluck-poor Chuck’s
slit wide-open
each sun-stormed day
by earth-turning,
stellar machinations;
sports awe-split stitches
nightly sewn sans passion
to somewhat stanch a furied flow
of blood-bright dreams
and lurid light
that unseemly pours
from out his oft-burst seams.

The Imaginary News at 10am

Crazy elfin lutenists
entertained stunned troops
enmired shittily overseas.

Dumbstruck ensigns
report babbling Evil
running yellow.

Terror Alert: Level Magenta

The mist-gift that was morn
came replete with impractical
compunction to make song
before the sun-pulse
on the pave-stones beat.

Charlie’s gummed-up chakras
made the getting out of bed
an unfun game of crusty decrepitude;
so he pressed fresh the coffee,
assumed certain sure-fire asanas,
dialed up international news
on the radio,
and made his paltry parry-thrusts
at the sublime just the same.

So long was the misfit mired
in intentional obliquity
(by root-deep timidity engendered)
the he sighed in straight-forward fear
to raise his bender-rattled voice
and actually speak.

So, stepped he through the door,
shut, per habit, locklessly
the loveless, luckless night before,
looked up and out direct into
a cerulean sky-wrapped sun,
closed his moonshined eyes,
recited some warmed-over lists
of so-well-thought-out,
well-wrought wrongs
by power-drunk,
non-Herculean,
pseudo-humans
geared to gurgitate
and sew great dread
into the hewn hearts
of impoverished persons,
send them over hill and dale
and sea to get their young,
glory-hungry guts/brains/bones
all split/blown/torn
on this self-same earth
(distant, tis true)
where other hymns are sung,
prayers intoned, rites enacted,
where other clothes and cloths
are woven and worn-
the self-same earth which
contracted his mothers worthy womb
til he was humbly born,
the self-same earth
which grows the very food
he chews each damned
and blessed day/month/week.

He writes this down then,
‘stead of saving, shreds it
for Carnival confetti,
heaves a sigh and sits
and meditates naively.

He will not lock his door,
can’t exactly pin the point
at which this habit happened;
can’t much feel the fear for loss of things,
can’t quite conceive the why.

Attempts he to discern
if this is deeply true,
if this idyll bird-idea
has Pheonix-wings enough to fly
or is simply daffy, dodo.

He dreams himself a butcher,
malapropos and blundering on
with dumb-dull, rusty blade,
feels, sharply, rue,
all dopey unredeemed.

Elsewhere, it so seems,
handsome couples of
re-tread revolutionaries zealous,
clear a future’s pathless path
with tried and trusty machetes.

The well-honed blades,
on cutting tender jungle tendrils,
emit the sweetest “ting.”

He ope’s his eyes
to curse the day
his Ego bade him
wag his too-rough,
wrong-sounding tongue
in unmelodic attempt so sing.

About Every 2.5 Years

Twas a bluely lunar
confluence of paths.
Not crossed,
but by bodies stellar
delightfully directed.

On that fine February day
just the thing,
the very what
some -celestial- one’s
weariest ear was
distantly wanting,
maybe mildly aching to hear
was what, all over-earnest,
itched in the scurrilous tip
of charmless Charlie’s
poor pen’s nib;
what, of late,
he basfhully burned
to chant/write/sing.

Tabula Non Rasa

A steadfast one was who
he dared himself to dream to be,
with flame-kept strength
unobscured by some sad, sick shadow;

And should he grow and live to see
the war-blood overboil'd,
spilt and steaming,
a one who'd not,
despite the quaked-quick,
sit still and timorous,
but would calm
and stir by turns
his curdled courage-
rise and fight and die
if might and cunning
had he not enough...

So did our child-Charlie's
Teutonic roots grab his
immature imagination;
so much and enough
for the over-trite
3rd grade composition of
the dreary dirge his widowed wife
would sobbingly sing while
his battle-broke bones were
inspiringly interred in
his Burgs best bulwark.

Sentence For A Once Met Friend

Cold evening langour- Every subtle thing eventually slows; outside delicious eternities roll by, effortlessly returning young.

Ode to a Cherry (Busted)

Who, draped in grace,
might deign to drop,
from eyes that see past
the barbs and wires
which in interiors do lurk,
a couplet of sun’s rays
redirected, a sinuous smile,
that wordless wings beyond
both sex and sensuality,
that dashes illusions of duality,
upon our tired Charlie,
thrice derelicted ?
Yet skips he whistling
after days of much rough work
burning ‘way the wastes,
inspired by a goodly, ancient
recollected vision of
an undefiled Way
that once was called,
without derision, chaste.

Fly Right

A so-small space,
but barely there,
downed Charlie saw-
an infinitesimal interval
twixt hem and haw,
where a hummingbird
hummed and hovered,
brief-fixed in space,
about a pear blossom.

An admonition adequate enough
to redirect clowny Chuck's
old-hat, centripetal stuff,
a drone most noisome 'bout
how many sons he'd seen
grow gray and old alone.

Breakfast

By brute, dray-horse force
(turned earth and dust-devils
in their wide wake left)
did Sleep’s sweat-sleek dream steeds
draw dishevelled Charlie
from bundled/bereft bed
into the wracked,
foul-winded world-
eloped eternally, verily wed
to high/holy Dreamsong visions
still miraculously intact.

With plow-horse power,
raucous, rampant,
with full-flared nostrils
did they froth-mouthed haul
our once-wastrel, tough-tyke,
half-wit, half-waked, hope-doped bloke
into the blown-out blue and
dew-draped frissons of magic morn
while sunrays rent the sea-mists
and the world’s warped width
welcomed seers and saps alike.

To be, again, this way born,
(from Sleep-depths thrust up)
into such a morn,
now stumbled-bummed
into the dingy diner,
by the day’s start still
silly, startled/shocked a little,
grateful Chuck ordered Belgian waffles
almost ashed into his coffee cup,
and built an igloo facsimile
with sugar-cubes and spittle.

Bookends

Charlie in greatcoat and hobnails,
returns ambly/scuffily from a movie,
whistling Simon and Garfunkel tunes,
feeling, despite, arthritic hips
and hangnails (kind of) funky/groovy.

His arrival home,
(a place quite shambly
though not in ruins)
lands him in favorite chair
with favorite book,
a feeling a bit too self-satisfied
his whiskey-warmed wattles assails
as he runs a meaty paw through thinning hair
and round him takes a blear-eyed look
at the books which mark his life.

The merely meagre library gives him pause,
though it’s keeled evenly enough,
draws honied strife from varied straws-
Tao, Wilber, Williams, Whitman,
Emerson, Neruda, cummings, Marquez...
all sweet and dusty, not too neat,
nor too musty, available for the odd peruse,
not evidencing too grave neglect/abuse-
(though begging for the featherduster)
and holding them all together,
clustered, upright, compiled-

on the left;

a firm, fascia-wielding fist,

on the right;

an open hand,
palm up,
love and life lines
long and longing-

so that one get’s the gist-

for all past and, alike,
all future days and nights
our Charles a sucker stays
(whose eyes do easily overmist)
for opposites reconciled,
the way that tense and
restive melody rolls and sways.

Write On

Wrongs cannot into rightfulness be writ,
nor can even earnest attempts be wrought
without much stale stench of self-righteousness
left where it’s author did recent sit.

Such a trepidated train
of thought leaves soot and such
upon the jacked-up tracks
in Charlie’s rail-yard heart.

Still, he thinks and jots,
caring not not a bit for
right, righteous, wrong,
earnest, stench and all that shit-

“To sing like certain birds
in alert, ascending major thirds
might a happier, healthy habit be
for a measly man of
too-damned-many words-
a simpler self oft lost
in labyrinths tripwired
for boobs like me
who make byzantine pacts
with their(inner)selves
and ennervate the birth
of more plucky, natural acts
at the cost of ad-lib opportunities-
things unsaid for shyness
stay on proverbial shelves
and Time goes down the fuckin’ tubes.”

“Better he whose deep-dredged heart
(an excavation executed for
the pseudo-scientific sake of
exhuming that oft-rumoured, sacred part)
will a happenstance harbor be
for trav’lers bold and meek,
of sleek and leaky, world-worn hulls
with vims and vigors old and young,
either mere adrift or those who
‘neath purposed sail do active seek
some shelter from the lonely rigors
of the sun-scorched, storm-tossed sea.”

Cirque Du Lit

While waking
Charlie's chuckling easily
being, ( yes, rare) as he is,
cozily companioned-
though not well rested.

His nerves already half bested
as a garbage truck prowls
the back alley wheezing hydraulically
and the neighbor dog performs
the morning micturation
as per hilarious habit, sneezily.

A night spent navigating
the ungainly geometries
of foreign elbows, knees and hips
beneath a quilt,
patch by patient patch,
assembled by someone's
probably grandma,
leaves both her and him
not quite refreshed,
their individual patiences tested
by surprising snores,
unintelligible, midnite muttering quips,
the somniferous ramblings
of two brains dreaming
in precarious proximity
which, though not calamity,
might be dubiously dubbed
tragi-comedy.

The exigencies of the morning
being dictated by variants
on wage-slave drudgery,
half unconscious mumbles he
"We needs must get to work, us!
Damned be our rest-deprived
and over-cooked noodles!
Though we both be sleep-bereft
arriving late's employee theft!"

And so to this nonsense
two sleep-wrinkled mugs
bootstrap themselves into action
leaving the floppy-shoed,
jug-eared, honking knob-nose,
pillow juggling performance
(badly clowned,
still off by fractions)
to become more
professional protagonists,
now persnickety in pursuit
of a goodly cup of morning drug-
leaving behind a single rectangular ring
of their most unreknowned sleep circus.

A Byproduct of Commerce

Oh, the drear idea-
"beauty products"
does suck
rich winds
from Charlie's
simple sails.

To wit-
beauty's not produced
but born/bestowed-
this much our Charles
yet quaintly avers
and whatsmore
pious prays is true.

What he feels, he practices,
but does not preach-
to walk unflinching 'cross and through
a world hammered hot with hates,
where dead-hearted men
go unimpeached and
asphyxiated forests cough out
dirty verses for flocks
of bald and songless birds,
high plains pocked and puddled,
wronged with painful, radioactive rain
as unearthed crude congeals
along the bastard beach-

Thus Charlie's charred,
disenchanted conscience
squirms and churns.

He counts himself humbled
possessor of an awkward
and ungainly faith wherein
Love's omnipotency yet teaches
those limber enough to learn-
yet his horrific hesitancy has
oft left him stumbling several
stupid steps behind and betting
blind while twothree sawbucks short.

So, while psuedo-surgeons,
ply their pathetic plastic
and siliconize the valley
more rightly populated by
pendant, peach-fuzz and perfume,
Charles' maddened mind fumes
and sears with nightmarish themes
of the world by man undone,
his song stung and glutted with
garish/ghoulish imageries-

post-apocalyptic ghost-towns
where groups of coyotes,
gutted, fill a roadside ditch
'mid the stink of feral feline piss,
the rabid hiss of scavenger birds
on various carrion enriched
beneath a stunned sky the
gun-metal gray of a groan,
and hard by, the prayer tree
by man-made lightning smote...

these things by rote our
rent-hearted bloke recites,
all rosey visions gone out-wiped
while direct unto his unguarded part,
by spheres celestial, is piped a dirge,
an ancient ache whose primal surge
by dark-winded instruments is blown.

Charlie: Uncut

A head-shakingly
constantly unconstant focus,
a vagabond vision,
an arrant knave’s attention
that stops and follows
a startling series of unwritten,
careening characters
(man/dog/bird/star
cat/kid/wind/woman whatever)
as they slide and slice
nicely cross his cross-haired lens
which zooms and pans bizarrely
(oh-so nearly/farly)
taking hummingbird sips
at life’s nubile nectars-
the seven-holed head
a camera that shoots to shoot
having naught to do with cinema,
with Cannes , with actors' glitz,
Paparazzi (turds), red carpets out-rolled.

This inner reel of his wheels
with bold words/sounds/images
through grabby eyes/ears/nose
(an operant blessing-curse)
a crazy collage in starts and fits collected-
both impressionistic and precise,
having naught to do with virtue/vice,
an actual furious festival of filming
fit to throng a cutting room floor...

unless, of course, it’s fickle force
could rearrange, repeat, congeal
and somehow yield a song
both true enough and strong
to resuscitate just one torpid heart
asleep/benumbed too long
to the ticklish ubiquity
of heavenly handiwork,
the shift of sacred,
timeless sands-

this little much of hope
our chummy Charles,
the darling dope,
though oft stuck in the above
described mucks and mires
still strugglingly
scribbles towards,
awkard and ungracefully aspires.

Moonlit Ministry

Up Charlie’s gleeful soul-sleeve
lies the frank fact that 
attendees rarely genuflect
or scuff and scab their knees.

Dress code being blue collar drab
it’s effortless for folks that work
and don’t disguise the tics and quirks
so easily detectable for those with,
for example, eyes that see-
burnt-out, noble nurses,
grumpy garbage men and maids,
flunky junkies not too far gone,
slacker soda-jerks, crabby-ass cabbies-
everyone slightly stinky
and a bit worse for the wear-
they shiftily form a funky flock. 

Across the board
this motley
(not to deride) 
almost hoard
deserves little more
than the obtuse orations
hobbled with torturous tangents
and oxbow-slow, dimwit digressions
which preside. 

Though they be infused 
with some sacred individual,
inner music conjured and cobbled
without hocus pocus
the speakers can not be confused
with an orator whose focused. 

But Charlie doesn’t champ
his well-chewed bit too much,
for when the time is come
no half-hearted howling
there takes place,
their noisey joy is not enjoined
and basically beatific turns every face,
all aflame with impeccable intentions,
be they in sin quite quaint,
voraciously venal or mildly mortal,
they’ll burn but moments longer
til the shabbily administered ablutions
clean the collective/clotted consciousness.

Charles then returns to
ancient dream-themes favored,
looks about while inward
oathing all devout
he’d not sell out
for sex or money
if he could one day
find and savor 
a girl-shaped fount
of blood and honey.

Parthenia

Childless Charlie’s dipshit studies
a concentration are-
which dip him wholly
into a dialect of distillates
whose desired effects
are to yank forcefully
the rank vulgar
from the mucky ditch
(if lucky)
long enough and just so long
to compress a bewitched and feeling flood
into a cogent song designed
for the consecration of the Nine.

To pierce the true, thick vein of ore,
palpate the precious pulse, to place precise
that hallowed weight into the labour of the line-
a perhaps gimmicky mimicry
inspired by the sublime symmetry
of maid and maiden which so oft steals
the poor and merest trace of sense
from the foolish, runny tongues of men
and leaves them mumbling madly
to achieve what churlish seas with ease
express through green furled waves
while in quite quieter quarters
warmly culturing pearls in the
salty deeps of green lagoons.

To kind and kidless Chuck,
this merely means-

"My songs meet few and futile ends,
on Fate and Fury our maddened hearts
and unmajestic mind’s depend-
poesy’s just the wanker’s way,
a time-waste for misfits,
creeps and old buffoons."

The New Myopia

What beauty brings
to mind,
being an equilibrated
constant in the calm calculus
of Mysteries all around,
needs no tele/micro-scope to find-

it’s under each/every rock/root/road
around/above/behind whate’er’s
within your sight/smell/touch.

This meagre much it seems
our lucky Chuck knows
well enough and deep.

A short-list of reminders
down did once he scribble
and in lint-riddled pocket still
he superstitious keeps-

where now and anon,
in various states of
foul and frictive fretting and
minor maladaptive malaise,
he uncrumples and idly peeps:

the high thermal glide
of birds of prey over
sun-stunned highways,

old sung myths strung
and ultimately preserved
in the wheel of constellations,

brown Brooklyn girls
doing double-dutch with
felicitous facility,

the raunch and romp
of unapologetic addicted
angel/whores to certain
songs throbbing through
the Tenderloin,

the sad, unswung,
lathed lumber on
the slumping slugger’s
shoulder in the
late October sun,

by the back stoop,
slug-slime shining
on dew-damp flagstones,

the smell of sleep
wafting up from
the bundled,
warm and wiggly
daughter drowsed
upon her fathers
knotty-knee...

Taken to the Mat

Charlie clambers crazily
toward radical yogini therapy,
composing quickly as he goes...

“If seems there
an oddball acceleration,
a spittle spattering stuttering
to the chit and chat
of this that and sundry,
if below the sun
I bumbly blurt and blather
work yourself not into a lather-
‘tis no great grand matter.
This friendly fool, Lord knows,
will be praying - ‘Rain!’-
the patter pitter to obscure
the mild, thus endurable, pain
of a savage heart aflutter,
a marauding mind atwitter.”

voice

just ululate-

liltingly illuminate eternities,
gloriously eviscerate neo-conservatism-

guide, orchestrate.

Dear Helen: An Open Letter to One Blessed by the Baffling Gods

Unsought,
the would-be Princess/Queen appears,
as happens, Natural,
each several seconds/centuries/years.

She the obvious
(though unspoke/untold)
result of a Gods'-graced birth
beneath a lode of bode-well stars,
the dark-bright best of what
Woman is, has been, can be-
every subtle/supple attitude
perfect and perplexing
perfumes exudes.

Though the merest shard of light
shed luckily upon the Face of Truth
would utterly shatter/shred his poor,
over aeons, yet unlearned perception-
still, with weak words,
toward ephemeral and
partial comprehensions
does the Dreamer/Poet/Fool
lean and yearn.

With ample access
to au courant colloquialisms
and fine phraseologies
(antiquated and otherwise)
arms he him(silly)self
toward the illumination of Mysteries.

This only to, perhaps,
attain, painstakingly,
a not-quite-clear,
filtered light-
such as that which golden afternoons
through saffron skirts might blow-
a subtle scene
for eyes enough alert
to notice such small things
while trains pass, work is done
and Time's noose
tightens sickly slow.

When such a She
by Fates’ Hands placed
before such a Fool’s
thrall-marked, world-thirsty eyes
what should occur
but a moody mind-music,
all mellow cellos and violins
candle-bright and blurry
should shimmy soft
and murmur down
the far, high-deep skies
and unwrap him
from a right rapt silence.

No Princely sums
can the baffled Bumbler muster,
no bold gold bribes
through influential families filtered,
no military machine itself assembles,
no clever Generals convene to connive
on his bewitched behalf.

The Heavenly Bodies have all
long since been named,
the myths made,
the high songs sung,
the epic scenes
all painted, framed,
and while his dreams swim
in Eastern imagery:

kohl pots
of wood and ivory,
exquisite, etched with curious care,
the Priestess painted hennaed hands,
the langurous clank of brown, bangled wrists,
a slender finger ringed in amber-

is our Fool fool enough to drape
his yeoman, hairy hand
upon the lowest (yet still ascending) rung
and through thoroughly thrilled throat
state and simply mean-

Namaste?