Near Vladimir is Where?

he might not actually die
but from the dark wall i heard him cry
with a sharp needle stuck deeply into his Russian arm
like an angry plow blade in dirt on a communal farm.
looking up from a narrow balcony
he caught a fleeting glimpse of me.
i saw him watching a solitary woman frown;
he saw her golden hair was turning brown
and didn't want to let her down;
he thought it high time to sound a national alarm,
so i ran upstairs for a quick ten minutes
to find them both in high good looks.
scattered on the floor were religious books,
other stolen relics from their historic past,
and cold drinks in a hot room meant to last
until my visit came to its' awkward end.
yes, i might have been a former friend
but our conversation was not a great success
i left feeling more downs than ups:
i must have drank too much and was too far advanced in my cups
many others had lost their way on the descending stairs,
some very strong characters with plenty of cares
and the weaker ones who haven't fared as well
when looking from east to west for a tolling bell.
they lost collective nerve and fell.
he critically blamed me for all his imagined woes:
his small stature, the frost-bitten toes
and those pervasive feelings of neglect and fear;
even the torch-carrying lady wouldn't blindly tread near
as he laid on his most personal charms.
i heard him threaten her with force of arms
but she didn't go to pieces all of a sudden
like some other girls did.

but would not die

i was a gentleman
standing on the street corner
minding the store
at a quarter past four
when black-masked men stormed the door
disturbing everyone with their extreme hate
and it was too late
for several who went to the floor
automatic rifles had already begun to roar
dictating death
cartoonists who once penciled in lines
fell to the two Muslim gunmen who drew bright red
and calmly fled
before they in turn were killed by French policemen
in Paris, the magazine Charlie Hebdo bled
for what was portrayed not for what was said
yet freedom of speech will not die
and any sane person can understand why.

Still Life with Fishing Net

blue eyes
standing like a ram's head
while all the pretty young ladies
thought he might be dead
by the end of the following day.
sure, his guitar looked old but it continued to play,
and with a new mandolin
and a fresh fruit dish,
his first idea
was to get his latest birthday wish:
an allegorical magic like a common law wife
changing completely the course of his busy life,
and a candle dripping wax onto his naked arm
reminded him that age has a certain passing charm.
in the soft sand he found an empty fishing net
and since the surf was about to make it wet
he decided to keep it for himself,
secretly placing it on a hard-to-reach black shelf
where for more than sixty years it was out of sight.
one day he decided to paint the shelf white
and instead of a net, he found a solitary fig,
a glass tumbler and the head of a promiscuous pig.
he searched for an answer but didn't know,
knocking down a few walls in his studio
to get a better view of the neighborhood bars:
newer girls smiled from their passing cars.
he saw all he needed to make a choice:
a woman approached with a gravelly voice.
blue eyes
asked her to sing him a song
and she agreed but only if he'd sing along.
for twenty years they rambled and roared
over piles of books and never grew bored.

guessing and looking again

Pablo said that Cubism was full of deception,
but nothing was more deceptive than his lies
which blinded his wife's vaginal eyes.
each time she cut her hair short
she seemed too frail to withstand his
phallic nose,
so he sniffed around in other places,
finding yet another vagina,
this new one lower than his waist,
as he sat with his back to the sea
calmly drawing her a tattoo of a snake
which might have been a baby.
with her candy floss hair and a tarnished finery,
she watched with her mouth agape,
her face between his Spanish feet
smaller than his smile.
another vagina with reddish arms once gave him
a shoe which he wore to a convention
of art lovers where a giant breast tripped him
and he fell into the heart of the matter,
asking himself repeatedly why an orange smells like
a kiss.