talking to me

in the soft light:
wondering you
and all i see
are eyes so blue
they dazzle me

on Friday night:
two drinks in hand
as you come near
i'm in the band
and playing, dear

for my next toast:
i hear your voice
i watch your lips
i have no choice
my fingertips

want you the most:
across the sea
or in this place
talking to me
ribbons and lace

in the soft light:
wondering you
and all i see
are eyes so blue
they dazzle me

in front of a window with squirrel

a still life sits
in front of a window
opening onto a landscape
where a selfish heart lipstick red with sacrificial eyes
beats on the cheap carpet
hauled home from the local Kmart
by a working salesman in drag.
my only saving grace
except for a single sense of rhythm
is my counterpoint to the kitchen counter
squarely planted upstairs
on the long and narrow desk
under an overhead light
where the intricacies of the pinkest music
keep Big Blue dialing for home.
if i wasn't so shy and short on charm
this austere room with the ballroom door,
a pioneer's face painted over the little knob
with his dim mistress by his side,
would be a popular refuge.
i was never destined to be much of a writer,
but valiantly studied every move by those i hold in high esteem,
which includes the working salesman in drag.
and the confident grey squirrel i watch from my window
has established himself into a budding thief
rapidly and effectively
he can transform himself into a bird and fly away.
he has never asked for a slide-rule,
and refuses to teach me any of his literary tricks.
but still i write,
sitting in front of a window
watching the squirrel steal time,
plus a few sunflower seeds for his journey.

Starting with Something: 2013

dressed like a little Hamlet at
closing time for my New Year's ball
i spent two hours exchanging ideas
about our Empire's rise and fall.
i had combed my hair so neatly;
wore a white shirt with shoes shined,
was barely tempted to wear a disguise
while being wined and dined.
i even made some primitive face
when a figurative lady asked about my art:
mandolins and gramophones
playing music went passing in a cart.
Tipperary was the tune i heard,
the simplest of all the chords;
while handbags and jackets in a pile
surrounded Arab and Chinese swords.
but the Indian guy with the brightest smile
when his brother was about to leave
embraced me with his Buddhist grin
and i felt nothing up his sleeve.
i knew his work from a Russian friend
who regaled me with tales of fire
between rye bread and a tasty leg
which i kept kissing ever higher.
but at midnight there was no emphasis
on the watchman dimming lights
as everyone characteristically
kept pointing out the sights.
so with tie undone and no mockery,
i left an indelible mark;
out the door i went in a hurry
thinking "Man, this is just the start!"

neither women nor oysters

by the summer waves
i watched you touch my cautious hand
as though i were made of glass
and you of apple pie:
two separate things
cut off by a ridge two thousand feet high.
and walking a narrow street
an artist sketched in charcoal our gray-black rocks.
he left his landscape bleak,
so for me there was nothing uplifting
and i found it hard to speak.
ninety more miles we drove
to an epic spot near a newly-planted grove
with a view of the ocean and the town square:
a small eucalyptus-shaded villa on the beach
seemed out of order there.
stranded in little heaps around the harbor
were boats upturned, covered with torn nets and oars
like a female body but not yours,
which i now fear is lost at sea
without any interest
in a final glimpse of me.

the Golden gun

i'm a pauper
but with lots of money:
if you think that's funny
well, i'd say okay.
we're both running away from the Golden gun
little girls and boys,
waiting for the final noise
which will mean we're dead:
some found sunning, some still in bed.
i doubled back,
read the headlines all black and blue.
it was Sunday and i came for you,
but you shook me off
like a button.

O Dark Thirty (not a movie)

0 Dark Thirty
from here to eternity
whether suffering in the countryside
or martyred in the city:
from an alley to the school
it's all the same boat ride you fool!
and neither is more picturesque,
lest
beauty becomes a parody of life.
still eating fancy peas with your knife?
well not in my studio (as in Hollywood, i presume)
is real Truth covered with faceted strokes:
long man-made beasts who clamor for
the sky and the mountains to merge with total war.
and when they do,
i'm reminding you
each blind flower upon hearing about waterboarding
will simply fade and die;
that's why they cry
long before their bloom is over.
rightly, too,
since the fate of any beating heart is often decided
by unwanted water rising in another persons' throat,
and business as usual always smothers the goat!
now darker ages appear
adding black upon our newly fallen cover of white snow.
this is not what i write, but what i know.
i could go on,
talking from dusk until dawn
but i have shamefully little concern about these troubles.

Take The A Train

she waited for the A train
but only knew a little French,
not well enough to know what was going on
around her,
as any avant-garde magazine would say
when it wasn't lying.
and it was almost rush hour, so a small crowd
had already gathered, flipping pages, their tormented eyes looking
up to heaven for answers.
the schedule said the train would be going backwards
and forwards, inside and outside, and some of the cars would be windowless,
some without doors, and that i could bum a ride.
but i didn't want to abandon the Natural world entirely, so resisted
the idea of angels and platform conductors acting polite.
my main worry was just being late for the trip, because
if a new day really was approaching, someone would need to grow
sizable balls, the sort that can give men courage to ride the A train
in any weather, even when the conductor no longer has control.


she = your community/A train = US
rush hour = tipping point
take the AR 15 assault rifle off the open market
ban the sale of the extra large magazines for the ammunition
male political class:  grow balls
women of America:  grow balls
American public:  learn the language of DEMAND action
Cultural imperative:  KNOW what is going on
Otherwise:  the schedule said the train would be taking you for a ride

My Country, 'Tis Of Thee

the big bad gun boomed; it hissed and spit awful bullets
a dangerous dragon tongue of metal and meanness
snaked forcefully forward
and the sound was horribly indiscriminate,
an odor of refined evil spreading over the scattered gummy bears
many who heard the unfamiliar sound didn't know what it meant,
and they died suddenly not knowing what it meant!
if there was any meaning, it has already vanished into the chill
of that sad mid-December morning.
but what is the meaning for the children?
six and seven years old!
six and seven years young!
children dying by their desks without parents for a goodbye embrace
blood and crayons and show-and-tell on the floor
hearts broken after the morning announcement, forever lost in the static
with Barbie pencils and Disney promises and more
screaming inside each classroom without answers for anyone
sufficient for Peace On Earth understanding.
children caught in a desperate moment of madness.
a simple elementary school designed to educate the many for life,
now left with fewer lives and even more questions,
while that vile man continued to boom and hiss his big bad gun,
firing a final fatal hot bullet into his own fatally flawed cold heart.
during his brief visit to a sunny school in Connecticut: 20 children,
12 girls and 8 boys
six and seven years old!
six and seven years young!
murdered
all innocent, pure souls
six and seven years old!
six and seven years young!
the big bad gun boomed
and millions of caring people began to cry.

Landscape with a Bridge

"What a loss for French art!"
the muse inspiring the poet was heard to say
but i didn't believe a word of it
and continued on my way
weeping tears and faking a fit
i sat unsteadily on my throne
until i got used to it.
from here, i saw the dim pupils
dressed fondly in their Sunday best
swarm like angry acolytes
to challenge me to a test:
from a rooftop framed in trees
i heard the bell tower chime
i saw a bridge across a river
and made it uniquely mine.

Passage to (a new kind of) Pictorial Space

the horizon looked like soft tissue
blurring into a small white line
of receding ghost
i could almost make out
your tiny eye still
polished with several layers of glossy illusion
but my view was being drained
several tentative steps at a time, by stairs leading
into an unconventional basement where
a sump pump operated just out of reach
i could hear its' electric motor running and running,
a surprisingly smooth noise flowing
directly from your tiny mouth
i could see you sitting on the supposedly progressive shore,
with body heat escaping from your classical shoulders
as you leaned ever closer to the past
and i saw a nearby rock band plug in their amplifiers
Freddy Mercury was on the Queen stage,
having brought along with him a new kind of leading edge,
previously unpainted and unsung
you must have cared, for you tried to turn down the volume!
and after the show, i watched your arms grow weary trying to fill the
empty seats where the audience once sat,
but no amount of your paint would change the world
you acted surprised, and when your eyes grew larger, i thought there might be hope
i wanted you closer, after all
please don't put things into perspective:
it would only fool my eye into believing something that is not there.

Still Life with Skull (1908)

try listening to the dead man,
the one with a skull
off-center, grieving over a still life!
5 paint brushes in his hand and not a single knife
near a morning window;
the mailman on rounds,
walking slowly to visit Picasso,
found the body hanging in the Bateau Lavoir studio:
androgynous-looking, bizarrely dressed,
it was Karl-Heinz Wiegels,
full of something besides art and himself;
bought from friends or pulled from a shelf.
successive doses of opium, hashish, or ether
and a healthy shot of schizophrenia
in browns, blues, yellows, and red:
no one heard what last words

might have been said.

"merde, merde, merde..."

with her earrings and her cat eyes,
she smiled with an Oriental purr.
Marie Laurencin watched his collar stud
tickling her soft fur.
she leaned beside his well-dressed bed.
he rested while moving fitfully,
very much in love,
poetry filling the air.
his name was Guillaume Apollinaire:
he died of a broken heart and a war wound.
she had all his letters buried
with her in her tomb:
"merde, merde, merde..."

waiting for me

a fireplace flame flickered small by my shoulder
and i was not unpleasantly distracted by the heat,
while the seasoned white oak went about its business of burning a
cozy memory inside my room.
and standing in a languid manner, i walked
to the large window, and from that window
by the hearth i could see a few discarded drawings of utmost delicacy
hidden partially by palm fronds which were not real, yet
evoked a message of wind-blown days from my youthful past:  and i had
a glimpse of a blond boy wearing a dark sweater classically
decorated with stars and half moons across his chest, but it was brief as he was fleet
of foot and also was not real.  i returned his wave, a sudden movement
which might not have been a wave, after all.  Smoke from my chimney
was exciting a neighborhood dog as i could hear the bark coming through
my stone walls, penetrating not only my view but my thoughtful reverie!
outside, there was a grey squirrel chasing dozens of hungry birds
but they quickly returned to an offering of fresh suet and took chairs
when the squirrel left his tail in a fit of pique.  my song birds no longer need forks or
knives or spoons and long ago they did away with their special China, and they
still fly with an athletic grace attributable to long hours of colorful practice in the air.
they do not like to fly against a starlit night sky, or any night sky,
as their eyes work best in the sun and friendly air of daytime.
no frogs remained in the petite pond where the 9 fish reclined
as though waiting for warmer weather on the beach, while a sickly black
male cat stalked the attentive birds in his usual crouch, eyeing his
opportunity for mischief.  a clean-shaven bare-chested man
seemed life-size as he filled the sunflower seed box before
making a quick return to his house, to see if he could find his hiking boots.
i understood all this from my window before returning to the fiery scene,
where i found you waiting for me, with a blueberry in your mouth.

polishing surfaces

but only polishing surfaces,
the cleaning woman and her sculpted chin
scrubbing pots and pans
with her masturbating grin

forever going over the same old ground
up and down and round and round
nary a sound
comes from the deep
which arouses her interest
before her sleep

spending all her free-wheeling time
getting off on a bad start
cheapening her view
with a bone-shaped heart

there might be something noteworthy to do
as she could certainly see over the top
but at certain hours of a certain day
she's back at work with her mop

forever going over the same old ground
up and down and round and round
nary a sound
comes from the deep
which arouses her interest
before her sleep

putting a hand up to her face
like a voyeur for flamboyant scenes
but only polishing surfaces
the cleaning woman with her dreams

forever going over the same old ground
up and down and round and round

etched eye with fertility mask

as an artist, i wanted to shape
her nude form into something more inviting
and starting just
below the forehead and hair,
i imagined her eye etched into the side of her hard head
similar in size to a recently hung masterpiece.
it could arguably be called a visionary slit,
set slightly above the upper lip,
and with full focus on what i was doing,
i made it tower over her neck in the undecipherable form
of a lusty shadow.
but it wasn't until the end of the first summer,
as i watched the profile strengthen
from an initial hint of earthiness on my studio floor,
that i was finally able to come by her side to stretch the waiting canvas.
and i stayed busy during the following nights and days,
adding layers of intrigue and light to a tribal image of her poetic smile,
while providing her an alluring mouth and many perfect fingers.
i wanted to be precise, but without employing too much delicacy,
so i added hash marks and often tilted my head for a better view of her underworld.
when satisfied, i left the lower part of her body behind,
as there was still much work to be done on
her pendulous breasts.
and if i stood her erect, she was as tall as i was;
if she stood me erect,
i wore my fertility mask,
waiting for the paint to dry
when i knew her eye would be completely etched,
as flat as a tongue and equally as perceptive.

a round and round walk

the bare trees of March:
fallen leaves on a forest floor
wild mushroom spore
a crouching sphinx
a frightened fawn
an old abandoned door;
one phallic nose whose breath
plays with the chill of dawn.
a piece of hemlock branch
where i rested for a drink:
an articulating rock
squeezed by certainty and chance
and a golden eagle overhead wondering what i think
as i experiment
with silly primeval avian calls.
a natural figure comes to mind
wearing testicular eyeballs
while i maneuver over
powerful mountain streams,
much darker than i ever remembered
in my dreams.

too much fondue

the cigar-puffing wife
hid her knife
grabbed a drink from a passing tray
and was overheard to say
she really liked Danish Ballet
watching men dance
wearing pants
as they climbed the Matterhorn
no longer forlorn
nor an object of scorn:
simply too much fondue
and not enough to do
in 1952!

The mirada fuerte

Roy Rogers and hat

riding a horse named trigger

both made a pass at me

but i couldn't fall for that.

i watched them fix their gaze

a voracious stare it was

and regardless of age or sex

it could last for several days!

an unsuspecting gent

or a woman with two girls

and a quiver in their step

straight-backed or bent:

still the eye came around

with a sly rapacious grin

and never failed to work its magic

silently or with sound

ascending the mountain

"This is how it should be done!"
i heard her say
as she sat up defiantly straight
and meant to get her way
with a modern touch in mind:
a bit of colored hair, perhaps.
where once i felt a burning desire,
she since has helped it lapse.
there is a simple distortion
in the potting of her plant,
and if it would grow perfectly,
she'd be heard to say "It can't!"
i imagine pointing out to her,
climbing as we are
roped together by the waist:
we've really come too far.
but the lamp in her studio
was her only source of light;
she kept reading protective words
completely through the night.

wall of Intensity

the old bone
in my closet
like a virgin gathering dust
or like an inflated body part
developing rust,
never walked naked in the winter.

but it saw an artist develop the blues
on a hot sunny day
when he couldn't choose,
his dagger tongue jabbing in and out,
injecting a cannibal kiss
and a monumental shout.

he could be seen sitting on a cold cliff all alone
holding in his hands a life-engendering stone:
it served as a counterweight to keep him in balance
when the winds came up
like the front paws of an overly-excited pup.

below the cliff, at the dawn of another sweet day,
a wall of Intensity blocked his way
when he elevated his arm,
trying to throw the stone away.

the old bone
in my closet
as reflective as a Puritan on a rock,
even though that door has a formidable lock,
can sometimes be seen smiling under an old sock.

New Found Land

if you want an 8 bar phrase:
cancel all my Fridays
head banging nursery rhyme licks?
well, i don't have time for those stupid tricks!
i'm off to Newfoundland for their part time eastern shore
and not coming back until i can get some more:

went down to the river side
found a new place to hide
saw the poet with her child
well, they looked at me with their eyes still wild
so i'm off to France for a lesson in song and dance
not coming back until i get some romance

poured myself a whiskey tall
tossed it back glass and all
wrote a message just for you
well, you remind me of the color blue
so i'm off to the crossroads for a rock & roll scene
and not coming back until i know what you mean

if you want an 8 bar phrase:
cancel all my Fridays
head banging nursery rhyme licks?
well, i don't have time for those stupid tricks!

Chester

the man made people laugh
when he put himself into sharp focus,
cracking open his head for all to see
the eerie serenity of which he's so proud.

but he much preferred to cook,
visiting the Tuesday Farmer's Market
where the local Amish came in their horse-drawn
buggies and plain clothing with their produce:
shoo-fly pies, fruit pies, candied yams, fresh hams,
donuts, popcorn, chicken, cheese, steak, vegetables,and so much more.

and with a little money and a smiling please,
all the ingredients for a great meal could easily be carried
to his car in just one bag, or two.  No one would wave as he drove away,
but he always drove off, urging his own secret horses to run.

and he liked the road to Golgotha, where a campfire was always ready
for his evening meal, and the plates were always clean.

There, the black dog he bought from a farmer in Brownstown recently died
of old age and even stranger tumors and he was cradling the dog when Doctor
Delaney injected that thirsty liquid which stopped the beating heart, relieving any
suffering for the dog, for Chester the dog.
Chester didn't like Amish food, that much was certain,
and he couldn't speak a word of Dutch, but he might have had a vision of the Virgin.

There is a market tomorrow and the man will go to shop, putting himself
into sharp focus, with his head cracked open,
looking for another dog.

Bones

the monstrous head
coming alive
and it felt justified
enjoying time in bed
before coffee or tea
with a piece of small toast
this i find i like the most
i hadn't had a bite since mid-June
around noon
or was it closer to four
hard to see from the floor
when you said
"I think I'm dead!"
and i had to agree
it wasn't me.
the monstrous head
came round and round
finding no up side or down
in the padded bed
i was hoping to be taught
not caught
patiently cooked a stew
pointing a finger at you
so full of bones
fingerprints without moans.

Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson
full of an acid enthusiasm
little surfer girls playing inside his head
singing songs better left unsaid
stoning the living and the grateful dead
his beach boy band washing up on shore
ah, the black raven quoting nevermore
for the slooping John B
would he find you there or would he find me?
endless horizons far out of reach
sleeping on a remote Pacific beach
a short throw from his latest solo
the saintly singer, his voice of gold
could we keep him or is he already sold?
ah, just wondering but i don't know
where did Brian Wilson really go?
from the top of the pop charts
stealing lonely lady hearts
he had no need for an afternoon show
so where did Brian Wilson really go?
ah, that east coast girl was hip
kissed him on his harmonic lip
drove his board to San Francisco bay
he knew that wasn't the safest way
but it was a coupe de ville and had its' fill
of good vibrations on North Beach
where nothing seemed totally out of reach
Barbara Ann and Rhonda dance for two
fooling around while i was with you
and it always seemed such a pretty scene
and that's exactly what i mean
Brian Wilson
i feel so broke up i wanna go home
why don't you come on home?
i feel so broke up i wanna go home

The First Book: 2nd Poem

there was a woman in my garden
she held a blue ball aloft
and when she placed it in her mouth
she coughed
discreetly, just a little wheeze
she smiled like Minnie Mouse
such an athletic tease!
and i felt the morning breeze
and intrinsically knew
which way this new wind blew
then across the street i saw ahead
a private place where balls are red
planted in the forest soil
near the laurel bush by a thin-barked tree
a promising facility
but how expensive would it be?
i gave chase and tried my best;
she was hiding somewhere near, i guessed,
far from the definite
and elusive, yet
for want of that woman i still tried
when a heavy numbness gripped my side.
exhausted, pale, and terrified
she vanished in the changing night,
shot like an arrow taking flight.

Sergei Diaghilev (died: August 19, 1929)

he died in Venice
before the floods swept away the chairs,
but the perfume princess brought her broom
to sweep away his cares.
she was on a yacht
cruising the Adriatic with a friend
when his telegram arrived from across the sea
to suggest this was the end.
he had eaten too well,
with rich food and sugary dessert,
and diabetic pain exhausted him,
yet he claimed it didn't hurt!
on the Isola de San Michele,
his grave site sadly
had only four mourners by the muddy hole:
two were Misia Sert and Coco Chanel;
then Lifar the clown and Kochno the troll,
while Massine was hastily trying
to persuade Beaumont to keep the company afloat.
but he said no,
and Picasso refused to gloat.

Salvador and Gala Dali

a razor sliced into an eyeball
and

blood came rushing out:
his boyfriend was the target
& several neighbors' heard him shout!

into the celebrated darkness,
a unique woman appeared:
her pleasure, a Spanish nightmare,
much crazier than he feared.

while painting on a canvas,
hands melting over time,
they wrapped their arms in questions,
answering sublime.

& dancing with surrealists
inventing magic air,
climbing toward delirium
they found a future there.

Friendship 7

early in 1962,
John Glenn jockeyed
his Marine Corps flesh
into the Friendship 7 capsule
for five hours of speedy sub-space flight,
capturing the attention of an anxious nation
while talking to his girl friend about the moon's
lack of gravity and  listening to mission controllers
reminding him that there was a danger the sturdy heat shield
could be in danger of tearing apart and burning his wooden balls
during re-entry and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it.
so for precious seconds before his parachute deployed for a successful
ocean landing, Glenn didn't know whether to expect the angular arm of death
suddenly clasping him in an intentionally fatal grip or if he'd get to screw the pretty girl
again after he landed and went through his physicals and debriefings, but he tried to be hopeful.
he never did get the opportunity to hump over the surface of the moon, like Neil Armstrong did,
but he got the girl.

Apes and the Plastic Bottle

once upon a time the apes lapped their water from a river,
a small lake, a pond, or a stream;
no predatory tenderness or self-indulgent dream.
or maybe from a leaf collecting early morning moisture,
but never from the turning on of a tap
like a modern feckless business sap
who receives a one thousand mile Caesar's salad
and clothing from Bangladesh
which are daily flown-in fresh
like an avocado shipped all the way from China!
once upon a time the apes did everything by hand:
love and communication they could easily understand.
once upon a time the apes joined in evening campfires
without using Skype or the Internet:
at slower tribal speeds there simply was no disconnect.
there was nothing illusory or remote or overly complex:
no derivatives or obsession with balances and checks.
once upon a time there was life on the plains of Africa,
before the revolutions in agriculture and industry
made it ever more difficult to contain modern human history.
and once upon a time the planet Earth was spinning freely
without an urban landscape, before the flinging of the spears,
there were no technicians for millions and millions of years.

Buried on a Mountain

the elephant with its trunk in the waves
and a cliff with a leg of vertical hardness
both trumpeted
as i watched the Red Tail hawks catapult
together into overhead thermals, heading toward distant smoke
before disappearing
into the flooding sound of a nearby river.
a friend's torso and tiny head blocked my view of this shore,
but from where i sat in my left-bank hideaway,
i could hear her laughter
when she suddenly slid down a slippery slope,
taking snapshots of fallen leaves as she passed,
grabbing for anything that might help to slow her descent
toward the parallel steel tracks
once part of a transportation system which included slow canal barges and fast-burning coal.
she spent less time on her feet than other well-off Swedish ladies,
none of whom she cared much for,
nor paid any attention to.
and when we walked together, our favorite destinations were our quest for
privacy, spending time, counting change, searching for different lights by which
to read and write,
sometimes even studying if it would be possible to fly on the weekends,
looking for bluer than blue and truer than true.
the cliff, meanwhile, pointed its sharp finger at the sky and we went there, leaving a
dead raccoon at the foot of a distraught tree, off the trail where the
elephants would never come to visit.
and a glass of wine or a cold beer, but never a cigarette.

The Sea is an Artist

holding you under my thumb
like a pebble on the shore
smoothed by the sea
still struggling to be free

beautiful bones turning white
your hair drifting over waves
the ocean blue
i could not swim out for you

and it was midnight at noon
the clouds hanging low and black
another day
fading as you slip away

irony holding a drink
one i don't dare try to touch
a perfect stone
sinking in the sea alone

Effigy in three Pieces

when the scene painter packed his small tool kit
prior to leaving my studio, under my tall easel
he found a twentieth-century paper window
hung with shades of grim and gray.
it was part of a sketch i made of
the modern movement, which showed some understanding
of the temper of the times, and it was open to a question.
and peeking through,
he caught a glimpse of a woman's pubic hair
just as she was pulling on her blue jeans,
fixing them low on her hips.
and approaching her was a bearded man with menacing
black eyes who appeared to be very angry, and the painter
wanted to shout a warning when he saw the man raise
an arm as if to strike, but he could not speak.
after a blink, he saw pieces of buttocks and breasts and
genitalia covered the floor where the woman had been standing,
and cruel black eyes were cavorting on her grave.
the significance of this find was not realized
until  the scene painter was much older, and by then it was too late.

The Zone by the Fire

i watched as she inserted a tiny key into my heart
and gave it a sharp twist,
and asked me to lay down on her couch for a quick
therapy session by the fire,
during which she would once again shrink my head
to the size of a pea.
and i became ever more obsessed
as i visualized vegetables sitting on my bedside table
by the lamp which held a shade
shaped like ballooning breasts, when she told me it was normal to
covet carrots in the morning with my coffee, as she often did.
if she was to become the root of my eventual recovery,
i wondered why she trailed a beach towel
to the flapping garden door of a black and blue cabana
and giggled uncontrollably
when i said there was room inside for two.
i saw her chair before she sat and it reminded me of an engorged penis,
and she told me it was her favorite place to sit, but she couldn't share it
with just anyone,
although i had the most poetic eyes, nose, and ears
from which she could create a sculpture of the perfect human,
if i would only undress slowly by her side.

Marie -Therese Walter (1927)

Picasso was legend!
he held a dove in his hand
before releasing an orgasm
on the Mediterranean sand.
the only real problem
with a wife and a son
was how to kill marriage
without employing a gun.
the dove was his mistress,
very sexually blond;
he painted her nipples
for which he grew fond.
they went rubbing together,
a little suffering in bed;
two bodies entangled,
he drew her in red.
predictably erotic,
her sleepy head fell.
her mouth full of hunger,
she ate him as well.

watching the moon with mom

in the asylum
when the dark room grew close,
hallucinating and confined,
the legend of your ghost
out of the corner of my eye
like a vivid memory floating in air
revisiting a childhood
near my little town square,
came playing into my mind.
a ball bouncing against the far wall,
catching a cold,
letting it fall,
trying to pick it up again,
seemed uninterested in the evening news.
dressing for the circus like a clown
in amusement park shoes,
and passionately shopping for toys,
swimming near the bank of a secret river
with other naive girls and boys
watching the moon,
my paddle like arms suffer as i stroke,
preferring the water's current
to the familiar joke:
your faint smile and strange eyes
falling from the sky like luminous pride
light up my solitary cell
many years before i died.
had you loved me then, i might not have cried.

Guitar with Missing Pillows

an eye at the end of my penis
saw your hips clench convulsively together
at three o'clock in the afternoon.
a sharp noise had diverted our attention and i went limp
with exhaustion while you began to pray.
your knuckles looked hammered onto each other
when i rose to check the door.
3 carpenter's nails were wedged into the jamb,
and from each nail hung a loose piece of small paper and i
dared to read the writing.
secrecy having always been a game you misunderstood,  i wouldn't
tell you what i saw,
but when i returned to your room, you were gone.
the guitar you had been playing was on the bed,
strings still loosely wrapped around a neck,
impressively out of tune.
in the shadows of the late day, i saw the fruit bowl without fruit
left in place after your departure.
the old wall paper embellished with the flight of a bird continued to
cover up the fading paint.
a rising wind blew outside the window.
you must have cleared away my clothes, since i couldn't find them,
and all the pillows were gone.

by your side

You are in Heaven
where the angels sing,
while I am on land
still wearing your ring,
and walking with Max
watching him chase
his little red bird
when i see your face
smiling at me
from Heaven above:
my dream is to be there
by your side, my love.

Brockport, PA

Near Brockport, PA
Along the Route 219 highway
When the sun was just starting to go down
I met you heading into town
Driving your dad's van,
And you stopped and up I ran.
And the engine roared when it was floored
Shifting gears far into the night
Tuning our radio by star light
Pink Floyd and the Division Bell
We had nothing to buy, nothing to sell
And nothing to hide, nothing to lose
Nothing to offer, no need to choose
The headlights showing us the way
It seems like it was just yesterday.
What more is there for me to say?
My coffee grounds still muffle the sound
Of another one-stop prairie town,
And your eyes shining red:
It was probably time for bed
When your motor died,
and I went to sleep alone and cried.

Michael L. Marchiori (Dec. 8, 1950 - Nov. 7, 2007)

You have left me

without the embrace of your arms.

5 years have passed and I'm searching for your smile

and simple charms,

 finding only empty air.

I look everywhere and you're not there.

My wound is raw and also the pain;

while friends say "Move on!"

I can't and remain

thinking about you as I did before,

whispering your name at night and more.

It's been a hard 5 years without your touch,

the touch I miss so very much.

And your voice and gentle laughter:

when the last supper is over and after

I retire for the day,

I can still hear you say

"I love you, JoAnn!"

and I love you more,

Mike.

In Turin

In Turin,
i first noticed the tiny skin mole
relaxing circumspect near your left breast
and it became a fascination for me.
the mole, however, was initially not so disarmed.
i offered it a taste of my wine, and after our
first few glasses together, the mole became confident that i meant
it no harm.  i then handed the mole a full bottle.
without distraction, i continued my inspection of your breast,
but the mole said i had an interesting face and wanted to do a portrait of me,
so i moved to your other breast, and the fact that i could no longer
hear the mole clearly comforted me, as though a great stress had been lifted.
i'm relying on memory and i think it's accurate, that the mole began to tease me
in a louder voice for having an ugly nose, a Greek nose instead of a little Italian button one,
and that made it difficult for me to exploit my new found position as curator of your
lovely breasts, both of which i would soon want to marry.
as soon as the mole fell asleep, fumbling the glass, spilling a few drops of wine, yet
nothing too serious, i picked up a pencil and paper, first to exploit
the literary possibilities of a talking mole, and second,
to record how kind you are to me in my hunger.

the Riviera (1926)

in a tangle of French pine trees and shrubbery,
the white house was half hidden in the early part of July.
its' oriental interior was accented with a Moroccan table
and a slender woman in the middle of the salon wearing a long dress,
with her vertical vaginalike eyes narrowing in the summer light.
she had recently fed a high strung cat which at the moment was
stretched out on the divan, piled with cushions.
the cat was not asleep, but seemed to be studying an easel
with nothing on it but a palette, unsullied by paint.
a sketch book left open on a nearby table shows the hastily drawn
pair of tights the woman once wore, before her injury.
when a beautiful young man approached her, he opened his umbrella and gestured
for her arm, which she offered.
and she spent most of that summer outside, leaving the work to her husband,
who would do more than install a black-and-white mosaic floor for a patron's fumoir,
a room for smoking opium rather than tobacco.
their garden was always full of surprises, and they visited often,
especially with a drink in hand and surrounded by a collection of wealthy friends.

For me

we never seem to touch
and i wanted it so much
this dream i have waited for so long
just a sudden flash,
and you became a song
i see another man by your side
going in and out on the tide
swimming in an ocean of you and he
from sea to shining sea
the sand always getting between my toes
do you know where it ultimately goes
when i'm dry and everyone else is all wet
if you're wrong, what do i get?
hasn't this all been done before and much more
diving in the deep, mysteries on the shore
making my bed,
wondering what it was i might have said
if each word came out a different way
would you know exactly what i meant to say
and everything i tried to seem
it came to me in a night time dream
like you and he
and there's no room inside for me.

i thank sincerely those who have come here:)

the memory of what has been
and never more will be
from the bowels of East St. Louis
to the mouth of the Mississippi
darkens the earth for me
like a dream of sex that cannot be realized,
complete with self-pity, an old feeling
when i look at my bedroom ceiling.
and all the faded headlines about Hiroshima
hiding in the book store
with the Master of the Universe
and his Raven whispering "Nevermore"
condemned to be a bore
by the children on an Apple high,
hearing screams at night they can not know,
nostalgic for the singer from Tupelo:
a blues player or a shouter
with a guitar for brains.
and all the concert goers eating steak and salad
in the event there's a cancellation when it rains,
the unpleasant sensations getting tuned out
many times over to mute the shout.
where are the story lines designed for insight?
i guess it's time for my coffee and a long good night.

on an American trail

into the shadows on an American trail
under blue skies where the Holy Grail
was said to be found
but it wasn't around
so i'm not sure what's left to say
it wasn't on the mean streets of south LA
under the tracks exhaling smoke
ducking the punch or writing the joke
delivering one liners on a Caribbean cruise
the women said they had nothing to lose
no, it wasn't rape if a baby was born
in a prison yard with a promise torn
circling the castle each rich man's moat
holding the poor man tight by his throat
little brown children a Christmas tree
waiting for an missed opportunity
remembering dreamland walking the plank
sucking sounds as the mighty ship sank
into the shadows on an American trail
escaping boredom like escaping jail
ignoring the warden leaving the cell
exiting Homeland running from Hell
into the shadows on an American trail
under blue skies where the Holy Grail
was said to be found
but it wasn't around

City Lights Bookstore

down at the Goodwill store on the other side of town
i went shopping as a poet with my customary frown.
searching for my glory days on the off-streets of New York,
a spoon in my mouth still looking for a fork,
i found the Hamptons where Warhol bought his wig
and watched the revolution bar be que a pig,
and dealers of dope and modest health-food stores,
gurus signing posters and book shop whores
looking for lonely old Italian men with money,
eating and drinking, until someone calls them honey.
stretch limousines of social-register boys
came for breakfast and stayed to pet their toys.
an envelope delivered on a silver tray
when tea was served and cookies passed my way
said "Welcome!" inside so i rose to grab a drink.
a sentimental lady said it doesn't pay to think!
but if i could decide it would be in San Francisco
or rowing to my houseboat in the bay at Sausalito,
or in Carmel or North Beach for some theme-park rub
instead of sitting here in an old Manhattan club.

high horse

on the high horse
spreading your legs
sure, hide them inside the blue jeans
for all i care
i can still see how you spread your legs
the horse knows what i see
and he carries you willingly
he smiles more than i smile
a big toothy grin underneath his prominent nose
he knows you better and is not nervous
you spread your legs so close to his face
but he's a horse with leather taste
his ears straight up point to the sky
which watches you spreading your legs
i see a lonely cumulus cloud
that wisp of white and the sky
and the horse and i
we all watch you squeeze the saddle
between your legs and feel that pressure
and agree in unanimity,
you must be a very good rider.

Berner Oberland

There were no answers in Murren
even though the Eiger Monch and Jungfrau sat
watching me in my solitary descent
from the Schilthorn across our narrow valley,
where wild rhododendron kept kissing my face.
in the midst of this temporary affair with flowers and
with high meadow cows ringing my bell with each step i took,
i could still hear the whisper of the Swiss maid who
poured my beer at night, urging me to fill my blue-eyed well;
in the mornings, she buttered my croissant with her patient knife,
packed my lunch with a promise, and left her message in the way
she folded my bag.
But there were no answers in Murren
even though the rain fell during the morning i made my deepest penetration
into the back country, so far away i jumped over swift moving streams which would
take years to find the ocean.
and when i finally opened my bag for lunch, i heard the Moonlight Sonata bouncing
from the valley walls, each piercing piano note like a stab of recollection, in no
small measure, measuring me as i did the apple in my hand.

His last name is GOSTISHA

The boy from Santa Clara
smoking a red pipe
held his young nose high in the air
opening a military door
yet found no answer there.
simply the Stars and Stripes on the floor
neat columns of black and white
glorifying war
but that didn't make it right.
Some distance from Saigon
another helicopter pad
armed men with survival minds
but that didn't make them bad.
And man he loved his tobacco
sucking an Italian stem
shot me through with his questioning
"was it US or was it THEM"?
The boy from California
on a beach near Malibu
still remembers the crying girl
who stumbled without a shoe
and the child without her skin
and the boy missing his head
down by the water buffalo's blood
and all three were dead.
We went camping at Big Sur
walking the tide line without socks
he cried on the drive there
and when we rested on the rocks.

PULSE

the Mother with her infant girl
in her arms
sat on a burning field in Spain
near where
the German bombs had just fallen from the sky
a terrible noise fell and dead bodies fell
drumming piercing stabbing wails of anguish washing the wounds
no Democratic musician seen grooving to the sound of
heart beats of concussions thousands of screams mournful hearts
tossed dreams limp like un-stuffed dolls
haphazardly dusted in blackness each solemn face etched
and every eye tired and sore and bleeding tears
dense smoke coiling and crying children hiding
underneath crumbled bedroom walls where
no childhood memory no family picture remained intact
the temperatures rising, rising
as church bells ring in the near distance while hope fades
miracles fade, too, from the dry lips of anxious fathers
who wonder aloud about a better future or any future at all!
sleepwalking corpses methodically with a purpose
below a full harvest moon
hear the sound of each weeping field as their feet tip toe over ruin,
looking for a place where the grass is greener.
and another Mother with her infant
girl
in her arms,
her Earth finger pointing directly at the melting ice
near where ancient glaciers now frequently calve
a terrible noise as solid pieces fall thunderously into the salt sea
she holds her gaze steadily and
ice bergs newly born in their solar maternity ward begin
the long float away to a different sort of watery oblivion.
oh no, i fear they fall down on me! so i run, run
trying to stop the bombs as my feet
tip toe below a full harvest moon, over the same ruin
overwhelmed by the Mother's moan and her infant's sigh .

When i'm 64

grey shadows
maybe black or navy
the lights were so dim it was hard to tell
where exactly was i when
Van Halen began to play?
(oh) Greg it's time to ride i thought
i wasn't listening to the Beatles singing
for the 100th time after the murder of John and
the quiet death of George
When I'm 64
but damn if Ravic in Georgia didn't send that sweet link
i just had to give it a spin, pay attention to the lyrics
straight from the Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
song track number, hmm, not sure but i can almost see
wait!! it's old fart land and do i want a clear view?
i can see for miles, but do you feel like i feel?

especially when it's a quarter to three!
it's simple, there are no hordes of cheering admirers
no beautiful woman with puzzled philosophical eyes
removing her cotton bra with a knowing smile,

remembering even if i forgot what was important
a teacher (perhaps) and i the attentive student
sharpening my pencil in a hand-cranked gear-tooth driven
little machine many many years after Darius the Great
used this very same machine to conquer his local world
remember, 2, it was Gore Vidal who wrote about him in a great book,
many many years before my recent birthday on the 6th of September
when i turned 64 and there's no turning back and of course
i miss Darius.
who will miss me?  once,
when i was fishing underneath a Paris bridge, i saw the padlocks that street lovers
secured to the open fence, hundreds although i never counted, because i
was never good at arithmetic, all meant to secure a relationship.
my fishing buddy in the Seine was Carl Sagan, who hooked me on science.
and even though i never measured the legal limit, i later
joined him on a chair outside of a Monmartre cafe, and mentioned to him
that his painted smile looked like a Starry Night,
like a Van Gogh, i guessed,
and he postulated that a trillion trillion trillion galaxies were in alignment
and those distant stars and others were our friends, smiling or otherwise.
all of my friends are stars, too, i said,

remembering their faces and how they soulfully laughed

or cried without embarrassment, regardless of the day.

and we drank to that!

Vera Savina (nee Vera Clark)

At the Arc de Triomphe
the sun was streaming
early one morning
when Massine could be seen dancing under
the arch.
he was looking for Vera Savina, with whom
he had recently fallen in love.
Diaghilev was furious, and went racing down
a nearby flight of stairs determined to keep them from meeting.
Picasso kept quiet, as though he knew nothing of ballet.
And soon, Vera found and took Massine by his hand to her bedroom.
Again, Diaghilev was furious, and said "Hadn't [I] made him?
What had Massine...been?  Nothing but a good-looking face
and poor legs!"
But soon a young refugee from Moscow arrived in Paris and visited
unannounced in Diaghilev's suite at the Continental.  He was a
seventeen-year-old Russian known as Boris and
Diaghilev instantly became intrigued.
This all happened before the company traveled to Madrid, where the gypsies poured in to dance.

Pretty Woman

gripping the wheel
pretty woman asked me how i feel
into a corner a hundred and five
hell, i'm lucky to be alive
but it felt damn good
just like i knew it would
(when) she picked me up
tossed a whiskey cup
told me to drink
enjoy it, baby, don't even think
'cause we're heading for a thrill
here, swallow another pill
grab me tight
we're crazy tonight
two wheels spinning top down
heavy metal satellite sound
so how's it feel
behind the wheel
screaming down the avenue
hell, i hardly knew what to do
Hendrix Cheap Tricks Hot Licks
and she picks
me and i'm sitting shotgun
Bonnie and Clyde run, rabbit, run
across the desert our mad dash
running low on gas but lots of cash
the stars dancing on the highway
Roy Orbison thumbing a ride heading our way
gripping the wheel
pretty woman asked him "how do you feel?"
into a corner a hundred and five
hell, he's lucky to be alive
dreaming about you honey
love me like it isn't even funny

the Preservation Society

the lady from the Preservation Society,
knocking on my green door
with her hard hand and midnight feet,
never saw the scooter driver
even though she heard his approach.
he turned abruptly from the river road
onto the cobbled street where i still lived,
and pushed an autumn breeze over his face.
he sped closely by her indifferent look, and never
thought to pause or stop.
an open cafe was serving late drinks in glass mugs
and he was thirsty, finally slowing to find a safe
place to park his bike.
when the motor cut off, he could hear her
hard hand knocking on my green door, but did not turn his head.
inside, as i closed the shutters before walking slowly to my bed,
i watched the night air brush a chill onto the hallway walls
and for a very long time after, i tossed and turned, and
felt sad to be alone.

my garden

there's fear on the front page of my newspaper.
death is spreading over the editorial page.
they're both falling in pieces
onto section B C D and
even the comics have any weapon at hand
i can think of:
12-gauge shotguns and .22s are the little ones.
they're coming in with one motor gone and
a wing and a prayer
on their lips, but they're coming like a star-spangled parade.
and in Washington, D. C., no one is home.
the big bodyguard is on the news and we all watch his lips move.
he is often heard saying "I am the perfect shot."
kicking in family room doors, his arm moving at lightening speed,
he is looking at his usual target.
it's you.  hey, it's Y O U.
"but i'm only a reader," you squeal, trying to keep the home fires burning.
it does no good, since this is a war/fear planet.
and you wanted Utopia, but Tommy doesn't live here anymore and the neighbors
are under the Witness Protection Act far from where you are, getting it on
some place else.  they even have satellite TV and a flushing toilet.
"Phew!" you exhaled.  and for a moment there, i had you worried. 
you stood, hands on hips, and looked at me with that slightly nervous look, but i
didn't say you were incredulous.  or disbelieving.  no, never disbelieving!
i said you didn't have to live like this.  read that again.
now pass me the bottle, so I can take a swig and let's talk.
you:  "God damn you've gone crazy!"
"Ha, I'm only waiting for the boat."
you:  "There's a boat?  What boat?"
i wait for the boat.
and that's it.  i'm waving and waiting for the tide.
you, on the other hand, should go back to wherever you came from.
oh, and take your fear and death with you.  they're messing up my garden.

in a good mood

i have
no midnight sweats
when the bed pillow is soft
and freshly laundered white sheets cover my head.
even in the dark
my flashbacks would not flash
and some dreams,
being ordinary,
come on like a childhood lullaby,
and that war was over, after all.
so,
in a good mood
when i was sleeping with somebody,
that God damn grief might not squeeze me by the throat
and ghosts, silently, one by one, might  make no noise
while floating by with bloodshot eyes, watching me.
i always try to get out of their way,
letting them speak,
to not interrupt them as they tell
each story as it should be told.
one walked colorless with a fine needle stuck in his swollen arm
as somber music played without rhythm,
and he tugged at the sharp stick and tried to make sense of his addiction.
another swallowed a live grenade and began to sing in a foreign tongue,
squatting as though to take a shit just as the explosion ripped away his ass.
and a third had no voice at all and kept looking at me with eyes out of register,
her lips moving in the candlelight, soundlessly.
and after they file out, and others join them, there is no comfort in my room.
then my mood becomes tight, like the taut strands of a hangman's noose.
in the morning mirror while brushing my teeth, i see yet another ghost.

ask the clerk

and even if you didn't want to know,
it's time
beyond time past
in the here and now
before we go much farther
the result will always be the same:
a standard M-16 gas-operated
assault rifle weighs 7.5 pounds unloaded.
Packed with a full 20-round magazine it weighs
8.2 pounds and you will carry it everywhere
in combat.  this is a combat weapon.
of course, available newer rifles are much better and lighter,
but i never owned one or cleaned one or even held one.
i see them in glass display cases at local dealerships and in
glossy pages of masculine hunting magazines.
there is maintenance gear necessary for the care and feeding
of this gun, while there might not be anything for the care and feeding
of your soul.
you will have to ask the clerk.

and your brown eyes

and your brown eyes
moon lit skies
under the covers
contented sighs
and just when the sun
comes
satisfied hums
and we took it all the way
the length of another day
far into the night
i could hear you say
with delight
it was never too much
fingertip touch
and then some
such and such
we made the bed
got up got fed
went ahead
and made the scenes
don't know what it means
don't know what it means
blue jeans
and your brown eyes
moon lit skies
under the covers
contented sighs

Summer at Juan-les-Pins (1920)

the Two Nudes were magnificently
conceived as life-sized torsos
with astonishingly perfect breasts
schoolgirl toes
volumetric classicism
imagined at a school in Holland
in 1905
with a corpulent rear end
on both
arm in arm
a full painting
not made for alarm
but to hint at sapphic sex
to polish a classic subject
in a modern shine
and yet
one wonders
who was inside the glass?
was this a picture of Gertrude Stein
and Toklas?

looking for a stranger

going to the seance
a table on my knee
looking for a stranger
but at the door is me

a seeker and a soldier
in uniform or out
looking for assistance
and i can hear them shout

an organ boy is playing
his candle burns at ten
all hands are simply folded
in prayer once again

a rushing then a rapture
starlight in fine eyes
and everyone can notice
everything he tries

going to the store front
a dollar in my pants
looking for a stranger
to offer him a chance

and he sees me coming
in a mirror on the wall
but the music grows in volume
no one can hear me fall

a crowd is approaching
all listening for a sound
looking for a stranger
he's lost and can't be found

and everyone is leaving
hearts beating as they go
i ask them which direction
but no one seems to know

my front door

so
our love is no damn good
and this is what it's come to be
you never really wanted me
like i thought you should:

holding open my front door
see, there's nothing up my sleeve
i'm watching as you leave
while i ask for more

but
there was never any sugar in my tea
no spoon stirring my morning coffee
and on the top no cream
no nighttime lover's tender dream
an unmade bed
where my soul craving touch waits still unfed
under the spreading chestnut tree
i found no woman stands for me

so
our love is no damn good
and this is what it's come to be
you never really wanted me
like i thought you should:

holding open my front door
see, there's nothing up my sleeve
i'm watching as you leave
while i ask for more

The Dark Knight Rises

master master
i hear you are between heaven and earth
that you have invented everything
including earth and heaven
and hell where you jostle the devil in passing,
falling on your knees before God
who presented to the community of Aurora, Colorado,
a sold-out midnight premier of
"The Dark Knight Rises."
Veronica Moser
was 6 years old, brightly blond and blue-eyed.
She'll always be 6.
She was in attendance with her mother, Ashley,
when a popcorn piece fell to the carpeted floor and her young hand
reached for it, hitting it with her finger tips at the same time
that a talentless bullet sliced open her tiny skull, splattering blood and bone fragments
all over the new pair of blue jeans she wore.  Veronica's mother screamed and
tried to reach for her fatally wounded daughter, but a mad bullet
ripped at her neck and a second crazy piece of hot metal slammed into
her abdomen, splashing mother's blood onto the still soft skin of her dead child's face,
soaking the floor near their feet, and the cushioned seats now unoccupied by Batman fans.
master master
i hear you are a loving lord
but 12 dead moviegoers and 58 wounded in the largest mass shooting in America:
master master
explain yourself to Veronica, who didn't get a chance to eat her popcorn.

Saint-Raphael, France

oh and how he came to loath her,
filled with heated sperm
she refused to taste,
as he stood watching his erect penis
swell into a giant head.
but at first she was a trophy,
and his time was spent
drawing her into an affectionate sketch near
his summer studio on the productive coast.
it would have been unthinkable to color her face
as an emerging vagina,
with her smile turned into a vertical slit
of pink and rose hues,
her pouting mouth uncoiling a seductive tongue.
no, he would love his mistress
with an innovative lust, but
not the bride:  for her, the traditionally representative way,
intrinsically feminine
and radiating with sunny freshness.
but then the problems!
from his balcony, he saw the physical and psychological monsters
climbing to her window,
opening the view, and one took her leg and one
took her mind,
setting the stage for his theatrical ballets on the beach
where one mistress loved to swim.
and the bandstand
below his opened window had a pagodalike top and beyond
was a sea of blue ink as far as his eye could see.
with this and more he would eventually have his metamorphic way,
distorting even the first wife.

Gypsy earrings

her gypsy earrings
heard about the party for the major players and their friends:
among them six former lovers and
a famous poet, who would return the
following evening to ask her (and only her)
for a liaison.  of course, when they were alone,
she acted demur toward him, and claimed
to hate being put on exhibit or to be coveted
so ardently, with entertaining wit.
yet she quickly accepted, asking him to make her
a subject in an important piece of literature.
and he quickly agreed, asking her to recommend
a Spanish dancing school of impeccable reputation.
this was not mere politesse.  they were intent on
pandering to each other, almost from the start.

Le Tricorne (1919)

her thin fingers were magnified,
while tiny lines of Russian smiles
were seen dancing on the stage,
waving to the audience from a
perfectly classical ballet position.

and there was sincere applause for the flesh-and-blood
physicality, but grace and beauty
shared all the jumps and spins and bows.

in the scene-painting studio on Floral Street,
Picasso had mixed light chrome with pure white,
to produce the beauty of old ivory, which added richness
to the sets of Le Tricorne, which needed it especially in London.

Massine played the Miller, speaking with his feet
in a stomping fit of flying sentences, tipping his hat
to the ladies and the admiring men, all thinking
they were watching the future Gene Kelly, while dreaming
of an umbrella and a cup of warm tea.

apparently it was raining,

or soon would be.

Ulysseus

my mariners!
come with me to tackle weeds;
to choke the fragile brown grasses
which grow beneath our feet
in this new east coast heat wave of 2012;
to rip stubborn roots out of the rocky soil;
to ogle women wearing unIslamic dress;
to drink to the stars our Gods placed in the local stadium.
we're old, but old guys can still get it up,
use the mower
and the axe,
the digging iron and the shears;
to make a path to the far horizon
of a boundary line my neighbor might have drawn.
but we can smash through any fence that sucker might
have made and hurdle over any barrier!
my son has his own mind about our property;
i have mine.
i want a hand-built gazebo and will toil excessively to complete one.
he wants to sit by an evening camp fire
where the wet wood hisses and crackles in a small depression of the burning Earth,
entertaining his community of friends with endless songs of compassion.
i must dig the pit,
like Lyndon Johnson dug America into a deep hole in Vietnam,
while tugging at the ears of his unhappy dog.
i have no puppy to lift, and he had his important work to gather
thousands of uniformed men and send them packing, few of them proud
of his leadership or his ability to tackle stubborn weeds.
my mariners!
we still have tasks not unbecoming men who've watched tv on a
Sunday afternoon, when the seas were calm and the ladies hot.
i will travel great distances to find a long-eared pup,
even if the winds begin to Howl and my arms grow thin.
so let us venture forth,
out of the sand traps and through the woods,
beyond sight of the devious scoundrels of Bain Capital,
setting sail for a seldom visited national park
where we may govern ourselves.

Fender bass

the ice was dull
my blades were sharp
the water underneath a bottle of Perrier
the classical woman on her Viennese harp
the thin man on his Fender bass
bringing another case
for poor Sonny
who died when his head hit a tree
like an arrow splitting a knee
it was in the dead of winter
in the American west
but we go on with our lives
imagining they're the best
they could become a dime store novel or a penny
a farthing or a pound
a fatal fall from every grace
or a trampoline rebound
when time runs down
and the entrance runs on and on
day after day
what more are you willing to say?

celebrating another fourth

i knew i could pull it off working straight ahead
through the night and daylight hours
coffee and well-fed skipping bed
through the bombing and all the confusions
taking only a quick lettuce salad
with small yellow & red tomatoes
with pesto and green shadows
of extra virgin olive oil
i still can feel the recoil of an M16 machine gun
see sparks above the wall
celebrating yet another fourth
just before the sticky night fall
under banner headlines no longer crying
the bye bye by lines
i'm skipping an invitation
so i can carry a wounded child
to the nearest medical aid station
where i can continue my less than social ways
hiding in the haze
of an incomplete life
but my work is slowly getting better
each and every single polished letter
standing alone on a public stage
like a spotlight on a naked page
surviving through each day
like a madly whirling rotor blade
drawing a picture of machine powered flight
sketching the blue of distant Saigon
tossing back a glass of the finest French red wine
i know there will be time for friends and family
on the fifteenth or the seventh
when the writing disappears
it casually reappears
as all smoke needs go somewhere
said The New York Times but
i'm on a methodical tear
a big bender
on another bridge
a knife-edged ridge
leading me to a perfect body of water
and near the summit
in a tiny bed of the wildest bravest flowers
i can worry about an afternoon storm
even as the sky remains clear
since it doesn't matter if
i've already taken in the view.
and you?

Queen

into the water
warm and wet
diving into the deep end to see what i could get
reading the paper at a quarter to four
too many pictures i can't see them anymore
into a daydream
mister
can you tell me what it might mean?
a picture on the diving board
and it's a Queen
and her Lord
she's painting the town
he's polishing his sword
and she's spinning on music
pulsing and high
dancing on memories
no longer shy
asking for a new number
and he's holding a nine
saying he's sorry
but she wanted a sign
into the water
warm and wet
diving into the deep end to see what i could get
driving the freeway at a quarter to five
too many people i can't get out alive
into a daydream
mister
can you tell me what it might mean?
a picture on the diving board
and it's a Queen

Portrait of Andre Derain (1919)

was it le gros
or was it le petit
who each night fell in love
with a new English girl,
forgetting momentarily about the war in France?
ah, it was Derain.
he did resent Picasso for having it
easy, for avoiding the trenches that Braque
and he had been stuck in.
but that was then and this was now, walking
to the National Gallery with Pablo but without Olga.
and Pablo was generous, sketching a black pencil on paper
portrait of him which was of exceptional strength.
soon, Derain would marry Alice, who had formerly been
a Picasso mistress.
but that was then and this was now.
Le petit was the Spaniard, who had no studio in London.

Derain was the wild beast who painted in Collioure

with the colorful Matisse,

long before Still-life with Dead Game

was awarded the Carnegie Prize.

deep song

the knots were nicely made,
tighter than usual.
she wondered if i liked them
and of course i did, so
she pulled her hat down
to just above her raw eyes
and entered into her gypsy world.
she started to dance the flamenco and cante jondo
on my back, where my hands stayed tied.
being unable to stand, i arched my eyebrows
to the click of her heels beating into my skin.
in our summer heat, she tossed her clothes
during the prolonged spanking of my whimpering ass.
i wanted to take notes of the minutest details of her technique,
but she swallowed my material, and so i never
learned the flamenco, although i know why her dress was red.
which is all the more reason for me to learn how to sing.

writer's digestion

i heard he smoked a pipe with reverence,
holding one in a state of respectful admiration.
so sweet that draw, deep and dark,
into his healthy lungs forever and forever
he would suck
until the chill cooled the fire.
and i heard he wrote lines of verse,
employed an intuitive eye, and believed that
his mind was farsighted.
he saw the smoke rub around his nose,
and curl effeminately into the watching eye.
i heard he had a following, too, and was selected
9th and 11th place out of a possible 50,
once upon a time.
and his pipe was content as his fingers held the stem,
stroked the bowl, and inhaled  the deep and the dark.
he never seemed superstitious about the smoke, which
like a little cat, purred against his happy face.

the reading

it wasn't loud enough.
the near window didn't shake with envy or fatigue
because the vibrations weren't strong when
they should have been thunderous,
but slipped rather like a soft mouse around a corner
in an undertone of nervousness;
or like a quiet frog eyeballs fixed atop his water lily pad beneath the
purple blooming Hosta along the shoreline.
the public reading was sublime, marvelously so for an hour
and it was very good as each guest enthusiastically congratulated
the reader who,
with a glance in my direction, looked for approval.
it was a modest event, however, and i felt no need to walk into that trap,
so i held myself very straight, radiating neutrality.
even in certifiably intellectual surroundings, such as a bookshop or
a library, the voice should attack the words in earnest.
and it's even more imperative when there is weight to be throw around.

my preference

well, i certainly didn't want any trouble at the frontier
or crossing the border,
so i was tempted to leave myself behind,
clothed or nude it wouldn't matter.
imagine, i feared, having to explain to a bearded young
customs man
why my hands seemed so soft and competent?
most likely i would be tempted to screw him over, shouting incoherent French.
and if he began to ask personal questions, it could go badly for me.
but i did have one regret, despite my love of adventure,
and that was the separate rooms i was being forced to live in.
and if officialdom mistook me for a man of substance,
then everything would change.  so i had to be careful.
my first concern was to be clean and well-fed, and after that
the thoughtful delights of a less luxurious brothel were at least affordable
and kept me in a good frame of mind.
i didn't need a library, for God's sake! but simply better shelter.
and for that, i shouldn't need to cross over or
make a nighttime trip in the pelting rain.
and with approaching old age,
maybe i wouldn't die, after all,
which is my preference.
so i studied the travel guides.

Blue and Yellow

the journalists who usually trail me
failed to notice the wound on my right side,
where i hide my heart.
it was early summer, and the sidewalk cafes
were full of tourists looking for warmth on
the nearby beach, so it was easy to disguise
my true feelings.
sculpture was uppermost in my mind, as
i would glue, sew, and otherwise fasten bits
and pieces of myself onto a hasty mental construct
while sipping my morning coffee, when i had some.
and if i rose to walk, my limp was hardly visible,
since everyone was watching the sun, wondering when it
would blur the gap between the here and the now.
once, the moon appeared above the dark ocean and it
raced through the clouds, like a ball.
noticing that, i grabbed a stick and drew in the sand,
just as i used to do as a child.
and in that moment, i felt no pain.

at the age of 16

the soft Transylvania vampire
sucked my hot blood in buckets
from a book shelf lined with Greek classics
where Sophocles wrote his plays during the day
as a bag of woe hung limply from his veins.

i looked into her bat eyes before any drama could be
realized by the addition of a third actor
and became lost in an ancient romance
when her microphone was stuck inside my ass
where even in the darkness everything could be explained.

but at the age of 16 only fragments still remained
of what i wanted to be when the sun would fully shine
while in the shadows of my war a hard rope held my soul
by the door where a machine gun was tied around my neck
and the helicopter flew into a terrible rage.

i lived to be 90 or 91 i can't remember which but the really
remarkable thing was that i wrote many good tragedies
while pissing on a neighbor's green grass in a suburban area where
European cars were thoroughly washed every Saturday
and vampires were thought to only live in books.

Agent Orange

Agent Orange proved to be a nasty fucker
killing millions of trees, leaves, and flowers
over the course of years and weeping hours
turned simple mud into blood
killed soldiers
gave them cancer
medical science no answer
killed Vietnamese by the score
and even more and more
babies
no ifs ands buts or maybes
animals dead (that's what i said)
environmental degradation
a democratic nation?
a huge violent 'Spray of Shit'
to win the war
the Vietnam War
with many immoral activities:
what?  salute the American flag
or frag
the NCOs or the officer
who wanted to be over there!
Lieutenant  Calley,
what's the final tally?
and at the USO show,
fiinding no humor on the stage,
the great screams of outrage
became empty uniforms
packing for home,
address unknown.

Lady, my friend

i slid my blueberry eye inside her ass
looking for a masterpiece,
and felt relieved that i no longer
had to console myself playing the organ.
i was mainly attracted by her warmth and
wit and charm, but her hands
proved very affectionate and
inspired me to make a drawing of all
her sharply painted nails, for my own pleasure.
she had cut her hair short, and dyed it
bright orange, so i felt the old girl
was ready for a grand dinner-party.
on the strength of that idea, i wove
her a dress of chrome yellow and asked
to watch her wear it.
she was the perfect princess, and i in my
brand new dinner jacket was her lucky escort.
at an exclusive showing arranged in her honor.
with only private guests invited,
she did prove to be a useful companion.
now in the evenings, the room i once shared with
my wife is empty.

Memorial Day, 2012

Mickey Mouse was on the cover
of a 1950's comic book, smiling like a big cheese.
nearby, a new church stood righteously in the background,
surrounded by asphalt roads and cement sidewalks;
a small yard of grass held three empty crosses.
the little blond boy with an egg-shaped head was
holding the comic book, showing it to his mom with a laugh.
the church had no parking lot for the congregation,
but it was known to be easy to walk the few steps to the door.
the yellow-haired kid would play in the grass, sometimes after school
and before Sunday services when the weather was right.
he would only cry if he fell, tearing his skin, or when
his dad beat him for being too much a boy.
his dad would visit the church wearing a suit and tie,
taking the family to any pew where there was open space.
the wife was in her fancy clothes, too.
organ music would attempt to fill each head with religion.
the young boy would sit between his dad and mom, drawing on a piece of
paper with a pencil.  he would draw simple pictures of airplanes and tanks
engaging in combat, using short black dashes to represent the line of bullets
and bombs leaving one weapon and aiming toward another weapon.
he never drew a picture of Mickey Mouse when he was inside the church.

PULSE

it was my pulse,
and it was on exhibit for a friend to see
when we were mixing pleasure with a chilled glass of wine,
as the beau monde was attracted to an art exhibit at
the new location of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
i avoided the retrospective, preferring to hang with the less
distinguished and the less important, who was not interested
in being "among those present" mentioned in a morning review.
so i never saw the diamonds and pearls not yet in pawn, but i knew who
was certain to wear them, all the bottle tanned women with their bare spines
and tight smiles who never disappoint.  nor the fresh champagne and tiny
sandwiches which might have been sniffed and nibbled,
but so unlike the fate of buttered popcorn at the Friday movies in younger hands.
i skipped the late night closing for my own intimate opening.
and the day after the opening, i was back working in my shop, filling my time
with thoughts of a friend who was mixing pleasure
with a chilled glass of wine:  she was nude, i was nude, and the stars were nude.
the wine was never able to extinguish the fire in my belly, and
all day we had the place
entirely to ourselves.

balance beam

if you hoped to feel serene
and joyful when you took
a glimpse at that picture of
happy fruit, like peaches and pears
artfully hanging from the brilliant gallery wall,
remember the balance beam and please
don't forget about the failed poppy crop
in southern Afghanistan or the vicious cannibals
sucking energy from all the little children
still playing freely in my front yard.
these friendly kids are growing weary, tired from
the constant waking under a selfish red sun
where they see our glaciers melt, and suffer
from a nervous exhaustion made even worse
by the running of the Bulls and the Euro crisis.
Carl Gustav Jung disapproved of a fundamental self-
indulgence, which he thought was tragic
and dramatic, but he could offer no permanent cure.
and if you've been to vampire country, you know how
small bites can lead to a crisis of identity.
in sitting with a model in my studio, i'm often
reminded of the balance beam when i place her fruit
alongside my ceramic pitcher, which is full of water.

1928

he had the exploding blue penis tipped with tan
and all the girls went crazy
considering the possibilities,
if it would only come to rest between a pair
of splayed human legs, mainly female and
maybe their own.
but the adulation
and the applause
were less for the man with the head of a horse,
an eagle with a woman's breasts and bull's legs,
and a bird with the head of a girl who was not talking
to a playmate or combing a momentary lover
for another brush with her sexual energy.
so he crouched down on all fours, hoping
to catch the ball an athletic lady was about to throw him.
and expecting a glimpse of her holding the key, he
unlocked his door and caught the ball in his hand.
he squeezed it roughly, and would have her
any way he liked, and one of his favorite ways
was to be naked on a clean, white towel.
acting as her immediate supervisor, he wasted no time
in training her to please him and she was not to laugh.
her hair remained golden on the floor,
mixing with his jealousy and his sperm.

Back in Paris

the grim, gray face
had great dark eyes
waiting for the second World War
from a safe balcony in Paris,
near where an island forms a church.
she was without her Spanish stranger,
but he was holding a young blonde girl
in bondage and was unable to break away,
as her ropes pulled tightly around his past.
and his Russian wife was too skinny to know, and not
well enough to understand that her own misfortunes
had driven him far far away and it would not be gentle.
he now lived inside a hot beach cabana, peeking outside
only when he needed more money.
the young blonde girl quickly became both his obsession and his sister,
as she curled her pubic hairs inside their bathing hut on a
sandy Dinard beach and gave him plenty of pause.
his wife, meanwhile, kept her own hair
cut short, to resemble a current fashion.
and the gray lady in Paris put her hand to photography,
instead of a bust, but it wouldn't make any difference;
the Spaniard would seek her out, eventually.

Polka dots

Marguerite was standing to the right
of the polka dot fireplace
with an envelope in her hand.
Inside it, she had a letter to her husband,
who was playing checkers to the left
of the fireplace.
within the room, there was a strong rush of air,
but no flames were visible and no heat
came between them.
she was seldom very private about her emotions,
but needed to sacrifice openness to reach him,
particularly while he played a game.
he was very formal about his relationships,
and they kept their house meticulously clean,
especially when the weather was gloomy.
that did not mean they were stuck with whitewash
for their walls, since a box of watercolors was
inside a bedroom drawer, a gift from her mother.
but her husband had little creativity and often dismissed
the notion of fresh paint.
in her youth, Marguerite was very gifted.
in his youth, her husband was a businessman.
their initial relationship was full of aspirations, and at first
they had the tools for a wondrous journey.
but after the trip, there was no other big event, so he spent his
time waiting at the post office for the checker board.
one day it arrived and, being a good sport, he invited his
friend to play.  they played as much as they could, in
good times, in times of illness, crisis, or financial straits.
and always in the room with the fireplace, which Marguerite
began to paint with polka dots. 

The Workshop

what is drenched in death
that we can see
when the sky is blue with
a noontime sun and a simple
calm soaks the many bathers
on our beach?  and i wonder
where is the swimming woman
with her prophetic powers
when i need her answer
and her arms.  each time i think
i have it figured out, her mouth and eyes
become colors on my palette, while
the rest of her body flies away in an abstract plane.
my room is empty.  the bay window is open
to a great expanse of sea and laughter, but
i have my back turned and can only guess.
i hear she is slim and has a fine outline,
fully imbued with an indescribable something;
not flawless like a point, but she could make my day
for 24 hours before i die and
i would not feel guilty if i asked her
to be a friend.
and if i act out of place, she might
even see me better.

La Danse

when i put all my blood
and guts
on the clean white sheet
where we once slept,
my arms become bruised
reaching for that night.
i wear no glove on either hand,
so i might directly touch your skin.
my mask is on the floor
by your shoes and socks;
one candle burning.
we need nothing more to walk
together, hand in hand,
but we should dance
before the paint has a chance
to dry.

man in field

little boy playing in the tasseled field
pretending to be a captain or uniformed colonel
without serious thought darkening his nocturnal
no deeper idea about an older living or the younger dead
an all American global blue white and red
carrying his cardboard captain's shield

guaranteed invulnerability to anyone left behind
or under the super moon on a starry night
and all without an urgent sense of fright
just sidewalk ghosts sneaking around
oblivious to the very tender, fertile ground
where all blind people are eventually consigned

there was a crack of the bat and a flying ball
he spun and went over the nearest pile of hay
he simply had nothing of importance left to say
he tried, but it was considered obscene
light years of urgent words and what did it mean?
he's still playing like the happiest boy of all.

on the rue Boissy d'Anglas (1922 and beyond)

behind the black door,
Barbette in drag was a great laugh:
boys and girls
dining and drinking and dancing
the high and low
gens chic and gens louche
often broken lights and leading lights
a thick flood of cafe society
gorgeous young men and women
often free, others at a cost
pouring into Le Boeuf
like refugees from prohibition
and puritanism
with Picasso and Proust
(who would soon be dead),
arriving around eleven o'clock
with a drunken argument and their friends
in white tie and tails
or black like newspaper clippings
in a dinner jacket,
the men with ladies
in Chanel, Lanvin, or Vionnet

the ladies with ladies
watching Doucet, the house pianist,
make the rounds with his Corsican brandy and his keys,
past throngs of the beau monde
fashionably discrete he could hear them
whispering softly for their latest drug score,
or conversing with some unbelievable
pimps and queers before being turned out at 2,
when the bar closed to the Paris streets

and another day began.

Day of the Dead on Garfield Square

i was in the Castro District
on a slanted pacific sidewalk
near a collection of hard-edged
locals who traffic in tourist photos,
trying to keep a lid on my disappointment
and a hand on my wallet, which i had relocated
to one front pocket.  i imagined i was attracting the
notice of too many fine young men by striding
through the busy intersections with both hands on my hips;
but the weather was holding, full of sun and windy, so i relaxed.
it really was a gorgeous day and it wasn't like i was
really lost, so i continued to descend on San Francisco
with an appetite directed for Haight-Ashbury, where i expected
to find a smokey politics with no hint of ocean fog.
yet the uphill walking in the afternoon
was more than i expected and very steep;
i eventually began to shudder with hunger and fatigue.
my vision continued to be fine, it was the map i used
which was confusing:  soldiering on through the breeze,
i found my way often enough to eventually arrive at a
crowded block of streets where i saw Jesus.
He was on a scale considerably larger than life-size.
i knew He was Jesus because He carried a sign, so I had a new mentor.
i asked Him for something to eat and received a piece of bread.
within less than a year of apprenticeship, i had my own bakery.
now, living in the Mission, i attend the Day of the Dead and also
pretend i am Jesus, wearing His crucial sign, smiling with my eyes, and
passing out bread to everyone i meet on Garfield Square.

Anne, admit it!

Anne,
admit it!
this still-life
proved a godsend
for anyone moderately
gifted and we've seen a
few works tastefully done
and widely read, so the idea
of magical power to climb and
cling is alive and well in our old age.

i don't think i've ever heard your voice up close
but i feel your energy and have an appetite for it.

The Bowers Writers House

10 people and
the brick wall was cold
and i sat looking at the empty hole
where a fireplace was permanently stuck
no dry wood was burning, no wet wood either
nothing to steal the chill from our tiny room
no heat or close body warmth and
no hot conversation forming
inside the gray heads or the stranger eyes or
on each cautious lip
whispering into view
soft gossip from an old chin or tongue
rolled onto the large rectangular table
where the student chairs sat squarely
with no visible stain to help identify
a momentary fit of passion, which didn't
exist anyhow or anywhere within sight
there was a nearby shadowed sun room leading
to the grassy rear yard which had no running dog
no dog in fact no cat no caged bird singing no bird
no garden and no gardener bending to the
springtime task of preparing soil or
fondling seed bought during a prior fall sale and
now ready for the one great brown dirt fertility act.
a small kitchen where a crystal bowl mostly full
of jellybeans tempted no one or maybe one
was nearby with a bag of local pretzels
salted & dark and open near the potato chips
no dip no margaritas no strawberry smoothies
the student introductions having been made,
class began with a handout and a reading
of the handout and more handouts and more explanations
and the idea of needing some generic
Viagra to get it up popped into my mind,
but i have a new bicycle saddle which should help.
i heard the teacher introduction explaining
this was to be an introductory study of the
Beat Generation and i knew i would be beaten
when the woman near me said she was stiff from
sitting and at the age of 86, she expected it.
her neighbor said she wasn't stiff and she was
91 and i began to feel nicely stiff like a corpse all made up
in my final box as the few remaining family
members turn away toward their cars, fumbling for a
cigarette or remembering a good place to eat nearby,
while discarded flowers are scattered on the cemetery ground.
i heard a distance fire siren and looked at my watch,
as pictures of a newly-born grandson were handed
around the table for our mutual enjoyment and i thought
you can't beat this, Jack!