A Fitzgerald moment

Isadora Duncan,
with her purple hair,
sat dining at the Colombe d'Or
wearing dark aviator glasses.

Scott rushed to her side,
fell to her fancy feet without his famous book
or his crazy wife,
and pulled out his sword.

"My centurion," she said
as she played with his head.

Zelda, watching from nearby, rushed from her chair,
which had recently been used by a Riviera celebrity,
and flung herself off a nearby parapet.

Her drink remained untouched on her table,
but when she miraculously reappeared,

famously alive,
she downed it in one gulp.

Her hands were blood-smeared and left
red streaks on the polished crystal.

Isadora smiled at Scott.

He leaped up and danced across the floor,

ignoring his wife, who continued to bleed.

His dancing was nothing to write home about,

but later he told Hemingway it was great.

Inno di Mameli

in the morning,
over worn stone steps,
the Italian artisans walked inside.

the lady was hiding her head under the covers,
a fresco recently made of her ass;

it was like an tasty island rimmed with collector's red lipstick,
freshly painted on the nearby marble ceiling.

waving her arms
in the eighteenth-century manner,
she rose from her bed
and headed to the bathroom,
stepping over an ample supply of caviar.

the artisans stopped smoking their opium
as she walked down the wide hall;

no man whistled or thought of a pick up on the street,

even though one of them was a Turk!

an artificial lake in the porcelain bowl,
like a small grotto in a nearby park,
held her false teeth from the night before.

when she finished with her makeup application,

she reached for her sunglasses and put them on.

it was almost evening before she set about
assembling a breakfast from ripe olives, tobacco, and red wine.

a crowd of visitors were already
in her kitchen, 

tossing hand grenades among themselves
while they watched her eat.

she was very, very cool, chewing slowly.

when she finally finished her last sip of fine Piedmont wine,
everyone came to attention and saluted.

one woman soon played a snare drum and 

a small dwarf grabbed his acoustic guitar.

the crowd began to sing Inno di Mameli.

but i wouldn't see her again until the following year,

by which time the artisans would be finished with their tasks.

she wasn't green or blue

she wasn't green or blue
as she lounged about in bed
her hair was fairly dark
long body painted red
an oriental lamp
a table made of steel
a pine tree in a Mason jar
which couldn't have been real
a sketchbook and a head
whittled down to only ears
a harlequin with folded face
and sad eyes filled with tears
a rain cloud in the window
umbrellas flying past
her lonely heart still beating for
a love that's made to last.

Erich Priebke

Priebke died in his ripe old age 

but

as a younger man, 

he was a captain wearing a fancy SS uniform,

with God on his side, a holster,
and a fierce Nazi salute in the streets of Rome.

years after the 1936 Olympics,

where a black man in Berlin
silenced the adoring crowds of
blond smiles and white teeth
with his flash of muscular brilliance,

Priebke participated in his own ceremony:

the 1944 massacre
of Italian civilians in the Ardeatine caves
near Rome.

it might have been the highlight of Priebke's career!

but he never shied away
from his enjoyment of
hating minorities and other gypsies,
who sang and danced and drank pure German beer

with the pretty flower vendors in the streets of Munich,
in halls far from Der Marienplatz.

Guitar, 2015

the North Korean leader said to
prepare for war
and what is more
the behavior of subatomic particles
is fundamentally unknown to the many people
the world over
who have fetishes.
Putin, meanwhile, acting like a rag with no intention of selling
his shares of the Black Sea,
kept squeezing all the piss and vinegar
from nearby Ukraine, hoping
the natural laws would seem less menacing,
the nails in his head would no longer cut his hands,
and a guitar found dead near the Moskva river
would no longer seem like such a paradox.
the threatening noise from that shadow rising in the East,
like a sorcerer's apprentice,
grew harder
when i slipped my
finger inside her panties.
it was winter and the snow geese stayed busy in the snow.
i asked if she'd like a coffee.
it was always a cold day in Hell but warmer near my wood fire,
the grey mantle rocks radiating their protective heat as
her soft moans reassured me that my fingers
were generating
an illusion of protection against the gathering storm.
she said she'd love a cup of coffee.
Einstein was close with his famous notion of general relativity,
which is deterministic,
and he had no intention of selling his idea to just any bidder.
he spent many years hard at work with sticks and stones
and strings,
trying to answer the question of how to tie the button.
both the Bishop and the Iman tired to ignore him
and their many allies also feigned disinterest while
from a close distance
they watched me kissing her neck,
becoming especially aroused when her two lovely breasts
were exposed.
suddenly, no one could guess what would happen next!
that much was certain,
while she and i sipped coffee together on my sofa, laughing.