folding you to my soul

it wasn't an illusion, after all

your ass shining like the shimmering sea
under the harvest moon
yellow under my firm grasp

all your beauty
was shaking like a little girl
spooning her soft raspberry jello
before her philosophical studies began

i thought i could take you!

you drove me senseless somehow
into the clouds where a phantom
with invisible arms
asked me my name
and i gave him yours instead

my hands were not the mirage
as they held to the pleasures of your body

what went and came out and in

here and there and slowly
folding you to my soul
was much more than a musical note

which a little boy plays in his sleep.

I am tasting the Holy Ghost

i would tell you
not to dust me, nor dance me
on the fine sharp brittle edge
of a darling dead poet!

i am wrapped in wrinkled leather
and famously stuffed inside
my fatal gas oven,

screaming Daddy words
like chiseling pieces of
hard dust, literary dust,
hallucinogenic personal dust:
dust like piercing shards of Hell
which do not fly gently.

in the adjacent children's room,
where they sleep under cover,
under blankets of soft candle glow
more dust settles
and falls and sifts like a splendid flour,

quietly.

their pillow seems wrapped
inside the dust of mother's love.

i see the dust fill their eyes
and watch it take away tiny smiles.

i feel the dust settle onto
my tongue as it whispers:

i am tasting the Holy Ghost.

i hear an anvil brightly ring
while the fire still burns,
white sparks and gray smoke,
the hammer and the forge,
hot coals and fine ash,
like dust rising into the warming air,

into the jet stream current
of an old and dusty Earth,
into the brief minute it spins
with no seconds to spare.

and ghosts on a midnight train
always speeding into their dark dusty night,
without a map, without a hint, without a hope,
without a conductor waving the baton
which tunes the note:

into the bones of a family grave yard.

arms and legs and bodies of dust,
headstones of dust, obituaries of dust,
young and old, triumphant and worn,
the great elephant seal of dust,

this roaring locomotive tossing me
with tracks across my head.

my feet and hands into blood,
into the chambers of a beating heart,
into the water with a virgin birth,
and when i hear talk of dust,

i wonder why no angel

gave me wings. 

a lot has been destroyed

yes, I am an American.

more than most, I also am an avid reader.

as many know, when I go shopping at any grocery store,

I'm always able to find cold milk.

other food items are also in abundance.

we only stand in line to make our purchases,

even when the self check-out is available.

our dreams can be simple when our bellies are filled,

and as Americans, we love to eat,

inside or outside.

at home, many Americans watch their TVs;

they find solace, sitting mesmerized.

the Truth can't be found on TVs,

a fact that doesn't seem to be upsetting.

but what pisses people off is when the electric

power dies:

a weather event often causes this temporary blackout.

when the TVs stop working,

a light flickers and minds fade even deeper into dullness.

Americans see war on their TVs.

The adults find it entertaining,

but the children go to their mobile devices to play games.

a lot has been destroyed in this world,

while here in America,

the winds blow warm and steady,

and early flowers bloom;

everybody assumes that life is good!

but so much reality is missed,

sometimes even the flowers cry,

 over  their own cold milk.

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.

Absolutely go to Singapore!

Absolutely go to Singapore!

it's not just a slow place to spend special time,

it's the Swift place.

The great pandemic seems to have run its' course,

so now the show can go on,

from dusk to dawn.

boosting tourism is fine,

but spend a dime or more:

Absolutely go to Singapore!

the parks are lovely;

the vehicular traffic is slim.

don't simply procrastinate:

visit on a whim.

never once feel disappointed,

rather feel anointed,

like a king or queen;

older or a teen,

eat, drink, and be merry;

take a ferry!

Absolutely go to Singapore!

a failure to communicate!

so the kindly old man isn't deemed cool!!

he's being tossed into a neglected swimming pool

even though his eventual substitute

is almost as old, wearing a fat man's suit,

with a claim to fame of being a heartless brute.

no, it doesn't seem fair 

that a nasty man with thinning orange hair

could captivate American voters with his tiny hands,

enthralling those minions sitting in the bleacher stands,

watching his con.

they know him as The Don.

well, the weekdays and the weekend,

like fine fabrics in need of a mend,

are unraveling before my eyes,

and to be honest it's a cruel surprise

that the recent opinion poll cries:

it's the huckster!  he's winning!  the medicine man is on the loose!

he's fingering the rope, counting the strands of the noose

he hopes to wrap around the neck

of a country he keeps referring to as a terrible wreck.

will there be no sweet melody

or remedy

for the home of the brave and the land of the free

when the doors completely close and the lights go dark?

will no flowers grow in the public park?

this country might eventually be filled with hate!

a failure to communicate!

no second opinions or debate!

will it really be too late?

is that the fate,

written on the western wall

before the fall?

Picasso's little cubes

Pablo Picasso died on the field of battle,
a bottle of Spanish wine in his hand,

he went laughing his head off:
a bull on a long one nights' stand.

he often painted his Paris canvas,
made a clown inside a monkey's head:

his party rate was higher than a cloud.
he said Monet was dead!

while up in the main saloon,
he took a running jump.

his friends watched from their mountain top:
Pablo said it was a dump.

Olga was his aristocrat;
a Russian princess of the stage.

he rehearsed love with forty women:
but kept her in a cage.

when he inhaled, he sketched two breasts;
exhaled them both firm and dark.

he confidently brushed with a mix of paints,
his little cubes became a work of art.

the last one stood before he sat,
waves washed over his blue wall.

his Spanish heart had a vision
to describe what he imagined he saw.

abstractly dancing on Mediterranean sand,
or in bed with his latest girl on top,

caressing life was what he loved:
he said he'd never stop.

a man called Confucius

 There was a bombing in the Basilica,

but fortunately no one was injured.

the media coughed up the story for a week,

like a house cat with a huge hair ball

stuck in its' throat.

Finally, the news shifted to Hong Kong!

The BBC along with many other international media,

breathlessly proclaimed that a street protest,

which started at the intersection of 

Yee Wo Street

and Hennessy Road,

grew like an old Confucian beard.

The throngs of people were heard singing,

it was reported,

with many carrying placards which

spoke of humaneness.

Uniformed police were reported to have been

shoving everyone within their reach.

Undercover agents were actively taking pictures.

Of course, police behavior was not appropriate,

as many protest organizers were quick to say.

Propriety, it was noted, was important;

sufficiently important, the BBC wrote, to galvanize the protesters.

The assembled people appealed for wisdom from their elected leaders!

Yes, this proved to be big news!!

But the upper levels of Hong Kong's political elites

proved to be less than trustworthy.

Within days, they capitulated to the wishes of

the mainland Chinese leadership's interests.

These interests, it was known, were not about

the 5 pillars!

Thus, the old Confucian beard was trimmed.

The majority of Hong Kong people had hopes and hearts

surgically removed, like an arthritic hip,

without anesthesia.

Finally, the news, (BBC included) shifted to an Indonesian earthquake

and the subsequent tsunami.

Yet, historically, there once was a man called Confucius.

The Dora Maar affair

The brown rabbit with thin ears sat upon a blue circle and took a curiously surrealist look around, finding several orange crates and a pink stamp stuck onto a small corner of the neighborhood bar. There, the minotaur grabbed his fine glass and took an extremely long pull, swallowing his pride with his famous bull on a hard chair inside the Deux Minots cafe on the famed Left Bank of Paris where Madam Figaro threw her bleeding knife between the fingers of her shutter hand. Her brightly-colored nails were trimmed and lady-like as she cleaned the white tablecloth with her anxious sighs. North of the Louvre in the 8th arrondissement sat this private moment of two artistic minds with French red wines between an overcoat and a scarf. His thick layer of oil paint on the clear glass etched a deep thought and with an easy laugh, it became a negative and a muse was born.

World History: Shahid #4

The tin soldier grew bold, stood tall;
his loosely laced shoes worn only for a laugh.

A girl, Mandy, tugged his pants,
and held his hand for a while.

His black eyes, crossed
in front of empty space, 

lost focus for a considerable time.

I was
the newest statue in this room,
a substitute for a particular lady
who had escaped on her teacher broom.

I read
the history instructions she provided:

A map of our world, their home planet,
damn it, damn it, damn it,
not an insignificant map; not poison gas
or a strange path to an essay museum.

There's Vietnam, I pointed out,

and Mao's mainland China,

and Formosa,

which I mentioned in reference to

a Mr. Peanut 

who was angrily tossed at the blackboard,

fell to the floor,

then crossed a narrow strait to his island.

I leaned on the blue podium which reeked of tedium
but it held my weight 

while
the tin soldier killed me with his lame jokes.

He was missing a prominent front tooth.

A lopsided smile, mostly.

But his classmates saw him as a stud;

a teacher denier!

He held their attention.

They ignored the map.

Their voices like lead balloons,
crashed into insignificance,

while I grasped at straws.

Their future was a warning bell soon to ring,

It rang!!  They quickly emptied the room.

and That's All Folks!

Paris in the spring

no, it doesn't get better
even if you visit Paris in the spring

it never meant a thing
you skinny little bitch
doing coke-a-cola in a junkie ditch

yeah, i wanna know whos' smoke
is hanging between your lips
hungry to please your hips

but you're cold

looking for some heat
taking everyone new you meet
but leaving them for dead

well, i ain't going down
into that coal black town

i'm looking for a piece of air
and i won't find it there

so sorry there's a needle in your head
but it's not my stick

you're making me sick
lashing whip on a hard afternoon
coming again but way too soon

no, it doesn't get better
even if you visit Paris in the spring

it never meant a thing
you skinny little bitch
doing coke-a-cola in a junkie ditch

kicking a habit out the door

thinking nevermore

yeah, i wanna know whos' tattoo
is on your ass smeared in blue

their name outlined in red
and i wonder what was said

and i wonder how you felt
as you watched his rocket melt?

did you crawl away with the score
or turn around to ask for more?

so sorry you've lost track of time
you once were a friend of mine

but i couldn't change your tune

anytime late or soon

no, it doesn't get better
even if you visit Paris in the spring

you can't remember anything

Inno di Mameli

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

the lady of the house 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.

while eyeing an ample supply of caviar,
she headed to the bathroom.

as she walked down the wide hall,

the artisans stopped smoking their opium.

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.

while they watched her eat,

they tossed barbed messages among themselves.

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.

to map Hell

Bullet has muzzle velocity, so great:

1,235 feet per second

and 1.2 seconds after being fired,

it meets steel helmet,

who held up as well he might.

But bullet's force was great,

and He was melting and vaporizing and

spritzing out tiny droplets of lead

as helmet surrendered,

gave inward, bulged the steel,

and onward rushed bullet

1.204 seconds after leaving muzzle,

jagged outer edges of  helmet now behind Him, He met

hair

who held Him up nowise

in His journey.

Skin gave way to mushroomed bullet and

bones deformed at His will,

671 feet per second forward He went as He tore

into vessels too shocked to bleed,

and nosed through soft gray-white-crimson

stuff

hardly hard as warm butter.

First, He cut through the memory of Mother,

then thru a small dog, eyes shining upward;

through a first kiss, a used car, a classmate's smile,

but what the Hell it ran amok through a huge area of

scraped knees and pulled pigtails,

then a small amount of fear-about this and that-

about bullets,

then through a respected Father,

and next the warm, inviting skin touch of a girl,

and plans for a house-someday-and tears,

a smell of acrid wine first tasted,

the remembrance of raucous birds calling

in the foggy gray dawns of winter;

of food cooking, the aromas tasty and pungent;

of sex, and school, and sandwiches, and sorrows.

Then bullet was through it all, that brief map of life,

and out the other side easy as punch,

flicking helmet's edge,

continuing on,

erratic now,

partly flattened, traveling 662 feet per second, slowing until 853 feet 

beyond the tipping helmet,

He rested Himself in the bark of a standing tree,

still bewildered by His path,

duty done, 

to map Hell

where paradise once had been.

America in Iraq

Under cover of darkness,
the Assassins' Gate
displayed a terrible eye
and a commanding presence.

The watchtowers
and concrete blast walls
eyed nervous travelers
coming in and going out to kill
or to be killed with black-smeared faces,

some wearing helmets and others armored vests

or both,

In the first few hours
of our visit,
the atmosphere was physically cool, but
it soon became intolerably hot, particularly
between the hours of ten and six.

The fear was hot, too.

During the day, an intense sunlight grew into this vivid,
shimmering yellow ,
which often washed away any sounds of happy life.

Soccer balls still bounced, but they made a heavy thud.

Laughter was hollow, uncertain, seeking permission

from people far away.

During the night, few slept peacefully.

Inside the Green Zone,
along the west bank of the Tigris River,
paper shredders sat ready while
Truth and Madness
grew fat wearing aviator glasses,
playing cards and drinking warm American beer.

Dreams of normal life became an intrusion,
as extraordinary happenings felt normal or
nothing would happen at all, also normal.

24 hours were never enough for a single day.

We heard a bearded schoolteacher talk reverently
about his God, while watching a solitary man who was missing
his right arm stare at me as he shuffled past, unsmiling.

The niceties of conventional life largely absent, no one
seemed to know where they were or how to escape.

Frequently, an AK-47 would appear, carried on the wind with dust and
dirt and the call to prayer, oiled, fully-automatic, angry and vengeful.

Nearby, there was an obviously dead Iraqi visible,
fallen flat in the faint shadows of the Baghdad zoo.

It was a man, his clothes soiled, matching the dirt on which he sprawled.

Other animals not yet dead
seemed to dream of suicide or living through yet another day.

Which was which?

Violence slept on many beds,
out in the streets, near the mosques, or on small beaches south of Basra
where modern tides experienced a steady flood of doubt.

No one wore makeup to be beautiful.

What should we do?

The Sacred Heart by Dali (1929)

Salvador Dali
came into perfect view
flirting with you
but painting me.

walking toward a Spanish horizon
approaching the southern sea
he found a vast stash 

of cash
and his model sailboat.

he stopped suddenly
and asked politely for his winter coat
but it turned out to be too small

or maybe he had recently grown too tall?

he cruised around the Barcelona block
where he found a melting alarm clock
and a bleeding red eye.

it didn't particularly appeal to him,

so i
rescued him from the intense cold.

he was growing sensitive and acting old!

he began shouting to a nearby friend
playing with perspective
and tickling time 

which he would twist and bend
into a happy birthday cake!

well, for Heaven's sake
some things are not what they appear to be:
he kept painting me

because i was not averse to reciting verse
or running from a disappearing leaf.

his social scene began like a moving film
of pleasurable mischief;

1931 records of New Orleans jazz
is what he has

playing often.

there seemed no time to spare!

i asked him for his secret but he wouldn't share.

i subsequently made him my mistress
but somehow that didn't feel right:

he became a famous artist and i an unemployed tailor
dressed in my best uniform of a crucified sailor
escaping an abusive dad;
it wasn't my only destiny but it was all that i had.

i worked very hard and grew a faint smile;
the mustached Dali was intrigued and asked me to stay awhile,
and during the course of our future cruises,
i noticed he had blasphemous wins but occasional losses
while playing spades.

but with a talent like The Sacred Heart

his printmaking had a decent chance to start.

our lives kept intruding

then finally pulled us apart
when he used India ink to spit on his mother
whom he often truly adored.

i tried to curry favor with my brother
as we sat together on a comfortable perch;

Dali ascended from his bench and attacked the church!

he never called me again even when i heard times seemed good.
our story ended with a rough outline as it ultimately should

have.

never visited Singapore

Ho Ching,

some say quietly,

is powerful enough

to earn the trust

of a country's leader,

and she is beautiful, too,

with her strong face and bright eyes.

Jenny Lee,

who shares with my sister

her first name,

is wealthy and gorgeous,

and so so young.

She has no interest in being

with any leader.

Jenny Hoover, my sister, was younger than me

by 3 years,

and never visited Singapore,

much to her dying regret,

and was never rich!

She was married to Mike,

a Fed Mart clerk.

He was not interested in being with

any leader, either,

but he had my sister for 50 years.

Lucky guy.

Something money can't buy!

a last supper

Where have we gone wrong, America?

the tide has come up too high

and all aboard are about to die

sand castles wash away

beachgoers in stunning disarray

a banner fluttering in the sky

spelling out words LONG GOODBYE.

the taste of salt on all the tongues

makes it way to all the lungs;

a last supper served on the plate

and no one wants to be too late.

you're a penguin

I am having breakfast:

two eggs and toast, with very hot tea.

my phone rings but I don't want to answer;

there's simply no reason why I should.

my eggs would get cold if it were a lengthy call.

but mostly, there are few people with whom I want to talk.

you are not among the few,

unless you're a penguin.

his red beret

with a yellow sun and a brilliant green sky,
this small village
on the Mediterranean coast of France
has blue boats and streaks of hot sand

fish in wet nets at dawn on a busy beach

deep-vermillion color of the harbor's water

light which is more than light.

the tall man wearing his red beret
carries two easels,
one with tiny points of paint placed artfully

across a stretched canvas.

a wife sits in a rented room

old cobbled streets

a steep hill to climb,
and a narrow view from an open window.

Collioure,
summer of 1905:

warm!

and it rained in July.

Vlaminck held the letters which he read
over and over:
the wild beasts had escaped!
one certain mustache,
unshaven,
pipe in mouth.

another with glasses the better to see invisibility.

unnatural minds,
looking without success for dark shadows
while finding even more shifting light,
intensely,
vividly,

pointing to open space on a splendid line,

while the evening fish were eaten whole. 

a humorous Matisse

The Blue Owl could not tell her creator
how she tried to fly at night,
but failed to get his price.

The task to tell the master
was left to a humorous Matisse,
who, without reticence,
spilled the news obliquely.

800,00 francs might seem a lot,
but it was a very large canvas
and expected to gain an even bigger price.

Being emotionally insecure,
Picasso was in constant need of
reassurance.

So,
Matisse wrote that the beautiful blue
of the bird actually looked wildly black
under the artificial light of the exhibit.

That was his explanation for the smaller sum.

And birds in flight symbolize freedom.

They both loved birds.

Picasso loved money, too.

much more than the birds. 

underneath a fine Parisian sky

Montmartre

on a steep historic butte 

with fresh strawberry tart, 

unwrapped nudes,

& excited affairs of the heart 

underneath a fine Parisian sky 

watched i 

seated outside my busy sidewalk cafe 

wondering what people say 

by the walls of the ancient Sorbonne 

in their studious Latin tongue. 

nearby, the spry 

Agile Rabbit 

sitting on his vineyard hill drinking cheap local swill 

with a painterly friend of mine, 

asked Joyce if he really had a choice 

or was it just a rumor about the invisibility cloak? 

perhaps another drunken joke 

about a man stuck inside his wall:

a shadow of a ghost before his eventual downfall? 

there's more that i should say: 

i recently talked with Claude Monet 

about his first impressionist flowers brush-stroked every single hour until 24 had been made. 

he said he was adequately paid. 

i sipped my warm cafe au lait wishing this Paris memory would stay and stay!

 

then a wind and hard rain came up abruptly and took all the suspense away. 

Montmartre 

on a cobbled July afternoon 

in the shade, 

stirring with an unfashionable plastic spoon, 

i the tourist began to consume 

a Lebanese grape and a sweet pepper with a stem shaped like the quarter moon. 

the slightest trace

corpus callosum

amygdala
basal ganglia
i am looking for you everywhere
but can't find you anywhere.

are you a sore on my ass
a bent blade of grass
a lady with exceptional class
or nearly nothing at all?

thinking, but i can't recall
from where are you watching me
and why aren't you here?

i want you near, dearly

tell me if you're close by
with a simple sigh so that i
can finally be at ease
would you, please?

i sat by the pond & watched the fish
poked at my food, didn't finish the dish

lost the appetite i tried to keep

but wanted you

took a quick peek
saw nothing interesting, went away
and determined finally to stay
away, 

but your pull, your eyes
eventually even i realize
there's magnetism and magic
in desire 

along with the tragic

Oh yes, i'd like to see your face
the faintest hint, the slightest trace.

how much i've missed you

baby, how much i've missed you

and i've never even kissed you

never had the chance to spend the night

satisfying my lover's appetite

no, i never had the sense

to climb down from my lonely fence

i never had the heart

to imagine a brand new start:

would you see me in the morning?

take me without any warning?

would you be the gentle to my breeze?

would you become the welcome to my please

the smile i'd walk a mile to see?

the arms my charms would love to have wrapped around me?

baby, how much i've missed you

and i've never even kissed you

never felt the smoothness of your fingertips

moving with desire across my hungry lips

no, i've never had the sense

to climb down from my lonely fence.

safe at night

the bird was dead

folded wings and closed black eyes

lifeless on the ground

but still imagining flight

safe at night

belly filled with seeds

in a nest made with straw and spit

her short time

as busy as a professional chef

darting 

over the clover

quiet now

in spite of the winds

blowing her soft feathers

the pause is probably permanent

as i hold the tiny body

in my warm hands

feeling her chill