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, France (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?

or random beach-goers who attracted his special eye?

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.