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?