Kingdom of Jordan

He wouldn't listen,

that much was certain.

"Don't you see;

I don't agree!"

he said.

She wailed, and sobbed, and howled, 

tossing a soiled rag,

hitting his head.

"You couldn't have put it better," she hissed.

She was obviously pissed.

He was a skinny man with a thin wisp of chin hair,

very Arab skin, with brilliant chocolate eyes, scholarly, and

the nickname of Flash Gordon.  He tried to be fast!

She was a heavily built, powerful woman with hair on her face

which ran in her family from the Kingdom of Jordan.

She tried to be slow!

"Ah, I see!", she calmly spat,

"I should write your name on toilet paper and toss it away!"

"Of course," he rapidly said,

while re-lighting his cigarette and blowing smoke in her face, adding,

"You live in a world of dreams."

And that much was true, as most who knew her would say:

former marriages, divorces,  old lovers, new lovers, 

ball-and-chain relationships, and sudden infatuations mixed with

the current heresay, but she stayed true to herself.

"At least I'm not lost," she remarked in reply,

"And you're still here, and I can only guess why!"

He tugged at his wisp of chin hair, smiling,

but said nothing.

I and my many Selves

I called myself on the phone:

it was an i phone,

full of apples, mostly, to keep the medical profession

at bay.

and like a leaf in the storm, like a tempest in a teapot,

 I heard myself answer

"to whom do you wish to speak?

it was the assertive me,

but the shy me didn't answer.

for he was in a bedroom, applying lipstick,

while humming a song from 1963.

between songs, like a school tease, 

I grabbed one of several membership cards

and began to whack away at my infidelities:

Whitman, again, in my head but off in a far corner,

and his multitudes yelling,

'Ship Ahoy!'

my wheel was spinning, like a mammoth spider web, it spun and spun.

I yelled, too, with a chorus of voices,

each a different sound.

but now I finally have control until I lose it,

I'm in the fog, I know, but the sky is clear blue and

the winds calm yellow, like that solitary flag in Philadelphia,

high atop a stone building in the middle of William Penn's city.

dreaming, cowering under my bed, I hold onto my blankie and soft monkey toy.

the monkey looks like me when I am being my silly Self,

so I don't take it personally, 

but I do take it with me when I march off wearing combat boots.

my literary Self is nervous about acting childlike

in a war zone, where I think of John Wayne and the tough guys

who spit chewing tobacco juice on the floor without apologizing.

the cleaning lady is watching with her clean white towels.

she could be me or I could be her, as we both push the cart without apologizing.

I am often GI Joe but shop like GI Jayne, looking for bargains in the bins.

and when thinking deeply, I am shallow like a shim of milk over day-old cereal.

acting bravely, I hide like a furry caterpillar inside my newly-spun cocoon.

when I am kicked, I see an angry mule and get angry at those floppy ears.

when I kick in return, I see my anger like a flash of despair over a fragile childhood

spent in puzzled hurt, and

I do wonder if that hurt has completely gone away,

while knowing that it hasn't.

my vulnerabilities can be dunked like a basketball.

I acknowledge the ball rolling across the court of my life,

foul or fair,

as I sit in the second row of the bleachers,

where I am yet a player, but

just wait until I tell mother, I hear my younger sister say.

just wait.

I wait, holding my phone.  the seconds pass and a lifetime, too.

a voice finally answers, and I speak normally,

asking how is the weather where you are?

I age and yet am not old,  so weather is what it is!

I discuss and listen but sometimes don't really hear.

I entreat and hold my hand to be held, while holding my breath,

hoping to be loved,

seeing the flowers among the weeds.

I love, too, and love and love, and more than love,

I and many Selves:

we steer the ships, and man the sails, and tackle the seas,

plotting our charts, 

diagramming our diagrams,

with no particular place to go:

I am the parent and the child,

standing on the shoulders of others who have guided me.

two new best friends

the two new best friends

went marching near the band.

a man holding his rifle watched

as they blew kisses,

fondling the air left hanging between their lips.

a salute without a glass,

yet the glass was half-full somewhere out of sight.

they two were from different countries

but they shared a border and a common enemy,

so it was assumed.

the assumption followed them to the conference table

eventually, to a grand meal:

they digested points of view

they drank in strategies and weapon systems

they regurgitated ideas for world hegemony

they ate lemon meringue pie

they listened to translators

translating

over a fine dinner

with Chinese teacups!

Toasts!!

the hot bravado

was wearing nothing but a bare white chest:

the world listened

ears were bent

sounds fell to the ground quietly

where a damp puddle smothered their good vibrations

and then the dust settled once again.

first day of school

on the first day of school

bits of limestone and raw clay
took my normal shyness away

and i became the baker with his bread
using time and patience and my head

to knead you.

rising from a heated kiln

one piece off the top shelf had cooled
and i was initially fooled

into thinking i could never learn to fire
or to apply thin glazes with a wire

to pot you.

then, even the fresco on the teacher's wall
became damp and started to fall, 

but i watched it take another form
when dried and reapplied warm.

and i was very happy to see 
the complete unity
of my final piece.

Israeli settlers on my porch

Outside on the porch,

overlooking a slow-moving creek,

i see an abundance of spring green,

dotted with large blooms of purple Rhododendron,

and attractive red Azalea.

a busy squirrel is nosing the ground,

soon joined by another,

and they begin wrestling.

i am sipping my hot morning coffee,

while also watching a nearby robin sitting on her nest.

i know the robin is resting on warm, small blue eggs.

her eye are glossy, bright brown, shining with life:

she is alert to every movement and sound!

according to a book i referenced the evening before,

the eggs are due to hatch sometime soon.

the robin must know this, too.

but what she didn't know was that a mob of Israeli settlers

had just blocked a food convoy!

i read this news report between warm sips of my coffee.

it was unsettling, this latest news, but still i had the creek and the green

and the flowers.

the squirrels, too, and the robin with her eggs.

yet my thoughts slipped to a bad place i once visited:

Dachau, near Munich, Germany.

Then, away to the stories of the Warsaw ghetto,

of people being accosted on public streets, beaten.

smashed store front windows.  Raised sticks.  nighttime flames!

And images of skeletal bodies and, of course, those awful eyes,

shrunken, dark and despairing.  Railroad cars.

but the convoy was simply transporting flour and rice and other

needed essentials to a hungry people,

people who were of a different religion from the Israeli settlers.

people who were, according to reports, starving just the same.

this news told of piles of rice and flour that were thrown onto the dirt street,

to the accompaniment of loud cheers and other noises of celebration.

Yes, no food from this particular convoy would be delivered to the hungry mouths,

those waiting with hope just a few miles away.

so i looked again at the robin on her nest.

she was constantly alert!

soon, after hatching, her little babies would bob and weave,

stretching their weak necks skyward,

and their mouths would open cavernously, hugely for so small

a body below, expecting food.

sadly, i sat wondering if an Israeli settler group would block

the mother robin from feeding her babies.

and then my drink turned cold.

The Burial of the Dead

Ford Madox Ford.
Ted Hughes!
his old lady
and her oven shoes
writing in their London flat
where she poetically sat
listening to the news
with Ezra Pound
and Dorothy,
who slipped underground:
he to Venice
stressing clarity
& musical words
absent disparity.
Robert Lowell.
Robert Frost!
at St. Elizabeths
at any cost
at any hour
giving the inmate
a special flower.
James Joyce
had no choice:
he always wore glasses
to see
language and brilliant infinity,
while Marianne Moore,
went quietly approaching her door,
but no one was there.
and it didn't seem fair
that Edna St. Vincent Millay,
who kissed all lips,
had the softest fingertips
to write sonnets
which the modernists hated
and constantly berated.
they loved Eliot, though,
especially the flow
of The Waste Land:
Pound for Pound
despair
and
The Burial of the Dead is there
stirring the air.

a Copper moon

i slept in the Victoria Hotel

down in old Mexico
where i walked on handmade tiles
colored in deep indigo.

Eliot wasn't on my floor
nor was he in the bar
listening to the young gringo
strumming on an old guitar.

i heard he was still swimming
in a pool without a sound
with a handful of wasteland dust
i remembered he had found.

he was wearing a huge sombrero
pulled tightly against his cheek,
with a slip knot fully made
and still showing the receipt.

my margarita had no salt
but i drank it all the same
to not offend the bartender
who called me by my name.

a Spanish lady with the melons
she was proposing to sell
approached the nervous tourist
ringing the front desk bell.

i came to walk the canyon
so deep it smelled of death,
where spirits wear an empty mask
and take away your breath.

a train would leave the station
soon maybe the next day
and though tempted by those melons,
i knew i shouldn't stay.

my coach was full of writers
down on their luck & drunk
on mescal which they all consumed
until their voices shrunk.

i stopped above the canyon walls
and began the long decent
into darkness at highest noon
i wondered what it meant?

i heard the hidden waterfall
down in these depths of doom,
and supped on endless poetry
beneath a Copper moon.

Bibi, will it be you or me?

Bibi,

will it be you or me?

the man who spilled his own beer on a narrow street,

who couldn't keep his feet,

I called to you and what did you do?

you brought in a few toughies,

mostly the religious roughies,

who began to bluster and boast.

they helped you butter your toast!

meanwhile, a young boy who lived near the coast

faded away since he had nothing to eat;

he, also, couldn't keep his feet.

but unlike you, sir,

he wasn't a self-indulgent minister

with body guards for every sip and bite.

he simply wanted the peaceful life that wasn't in sight.

you wanted to be exonerated for any possible crime,

and didn't want to do jail time.

he only wanted to have a happy meal,

hoping to heal.

Bibi, will it be you or me?

the man who gave it all away to rule for just another day:

you gather many incredulous looks

and will certainly go down in the history books.

the fat lady sing

i drove into the oldest part of my old town
and saw, sitting on an empty window sill,

the woman
with a fancy cigarette hanging from her hand
and inside her mouth a psychedelic pill.

she was the only girl on the entire block
with two legs kicking instead of twenty four,
a wind blowing papers which she wouldn't read
hard up against the bottom of her front door.

some cats played music in the middle of the street,
humming a southern spirituality tune.

one stray dog slept until he was done,
then began howling at the shadow of the moon;
his eyes red and two ears hanging way down low;
he started licking himself where he felt it hurt

and had no where better to go.

another mangy dog, stretching, went looking for his next meal

when a saloon exploded like a house of cards,

scattering Wanted: Dead or Alive Posters into the adjacent yards.

favorite loaded pistols were shooting at whisky bottles wobbling on the bar!

thru it all, nonchalantly sat the woman on an empty window sill,
waiting for me to get out of my damn car.

she was watching an elephant and a brown bear with balls
juggling coins in a game of pure chance.

while far down the old road marched a traveling band,
playing a sweet song of  adolescence romance.

young kids in blue jeans, tattered and with holes in the knees,

sang along without knowing the words,

several boys dangerously swaying from the few nearby trees.

behind the patched circus tent in an alley full of loose string,
a striking fat lady danced her weight inside the big top ring:

a crowd of local drifters were sitting around 

acting spellbound:

they had come to hear the fat lady sing.

no one saw Hemingway

 no one saw Hemingway shit into his green slop bucket 

so fuck it 

he's long dead now 

but i walked on a tour to his former studio 

and people in the know 

think it's cool he was an expat who came from money 

Hadley was his first special honey 

he wrote in a sharp narrative style making himself famous 

winning awards from the House of Lords on a hill near Paris 

i didn't give a damn that he grew depressed 

who could have guessed 

he'd loudly kill himself?

he still quietly lives on many a library shelf: 

the old street is narrow where he walked, drank, talked 

the Paris traffic passed by in its' familiar hurry: 

it did not appear aimless as it sped over ancient cobbles with edges smoothed by dreams 

which have often bled with age.

he couldn't sail

my great granddad was on the late train

he delivered the US mail

right out of college he needed a job

and he knew he couldn't sail

he held important letters inside a leather sack

i watched him shuffle on down the freight line 

but never knew if he was coming back

white smoke and black noise filled the air

while my great granddad sat on his lonely chair

on the last car leaving at night

sorting his letters by candlelight

no woman to keep him company

he had an important job to do

whatever he might have been thinking

he knew the mail had to go thru

each day could be slow or amazingly fast

each day could be his last

but he had a smile as he counted sacks

rolling down the railroad tracks:

my great granddad was on the late train

he delivered the US mail

right out of college he needed a job

and he knew he couldn't sail.

 

Le Coeur a gaz (1923, Tristan Tzara)

the play was three short acts, &

the last spectacle on the program was a

complete Dada farce,

with a trumpet blaring inanely, mangling the Marseillaise

in front of an infuriated audience.

this time around, there were no professional actors

to storm out singing about the utter pointlessness

of pretending to be body parts while wearing cubist costumes

made of stiff tubing,

which reduced their walking to a geriatric shuffle on stage.

outside on the street, the police heard the angry voices and stormed inside,

where fist fights between Dadaists and the future Surrealists

had begun in earnest,

with several already badly beaten and in no mood to be mollified.

shouts for order bounced off walls, hitting no one.

but damage to the small theater was considerable:

seats were smashed and faces bloodied.

Louis Aragon tried to rescue Eluard while the police arrested

the entire audience!

but later,

they concluded it was all a big misunderstanding.

Sir Elvis Presley

in the state of Tennessee

i left the freeway

to climb an old oak tree

once owned by Sir Elvis Presley

before he hit the sack of an apparent heart attack.

he had an iconic pink Cadillac,

a 1965 which he'd drive

all the way from Tupelo.

the Blue Moon Boys put on their famous jail house show

after the high speed drive, you know,

before Elvis gyrated his hips out of joint

trying to make an innocent black and white point

at the lonely Heartbreak Hotel.

the backyard wishing well

was filled with dozens of blue suede shoes

which made it easy for him to choose

which pair to wear.

in the state of Tennessee

i found the Rockabilly Boys

playing Chuck Berry songs with all their musical toys

heading down to Nashville.

there, they'd eat to get their fill

of rhythm and blues and an old hound dog

because 

in the state of Tennessee

they don't eat much frog.

it's an unforgivable

it's an unforgivable

and too often repeated

CRIME

against humanity

white mob intimidation

and RULE

beyond cruel

vicious and violent

heartless torment

causing death

bleeding and painful

SHAMEFUL

hardly an indictment

levied

even when the FBI pokes a nose

into the affair

it isn't merely UNFAIR

it's an unforgivable.

under Southern heat

i heard Merl sing
after lunch time
on the prison floor
for a red hot dime

he sang real hard
meant what he wrote
about a hanging judge
with a midnight rope

and a dark man
on a wild horse
underneath the tree
being held by force

long time ago
white as a sheet
in a rural land
under Southern heat

laughing at love
smiling at pain
trying to be bad
swinging in the rain

i heard Merl sing
outside his cell
just like Johnny Cash
in a wishing well

he sang real hard
meant what he said
that an outlaws' life
was better than dead

long time ago
white as a sheet
in a rural land
under Southern heat

a nuclear Iran

the grilled chicken salad was a perfect meal

and you were the perfect guest,
as i watched you easily eat your plate clean
with a fork and a knife:

what an appetite for life!

it appeared to me that you enjoyed
our time together:

my iced root beer wasn't able to
provide any profound statements,
although i sipped with eagerness.

the grilled hamburger i ate resulted in an
onion burp far removed from our table
but i covered my mouth and apologized
to no one in particular.

it's true, as we discussed, that a nuclear Iran would pose
regional balance-of-power issues!

what is not certain is if the Israeli
Air Force will send 100 (+/-) fighter jets
on a preemptive attack against these nuclear
facilities, creating awful uncertainty.

but it seems certain that Muslim terrorism is 
a growing worry worldwide.

Hamas and Hezbollah, hear me!

October 7, & a redux, perhaps?

climbing over the rubble?

what is not understood is how to address this
extremism!

there are historical facts about Islamic
expansionism that we can know with certitude,

but IS this truly expansionism when the land in question has always been lived on,

cared for, kissed and loved?

i have not read the Koran or The Satanic Verses,

but perhaps in uneasy dreams, i, too, could become a suicide bomber, 
wearing an explosive vest or belt,

anxious to express my outrage and defiance!

the Middle East is on the knife edge, and all blades are historically sharp.

we also have sharp eyes to see what is necessary,

and eyes to cry, as well as to see suffering.

but who will publish the guide book?

and i trust you didn't have too much trouble
digesting our meal together,

assuming you saw it clearly.

on the love seat, quietly listening

it was winter and the snow geese stayed busy in the snow.

i asked if she'd like a cup of coffee.

again, 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 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 securely 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 eventually exposed.

suddenly, no one could guess what would happen next!

it's always that way,
that much was certain,
while she and i sipped our coffee together on the love seat, quietly listening.  

Shuffle in C

they called him the King

but he didn't know what he wanted to B

looking around for a place to sing

he did the Shuffle in C

driving thru town in his pickup truck

feeling damn good but down on his luck

no holds barred riding out on the range

heading late at night into tiny La Grange

where Austin ladies with their Hollywood dreams

sway under the lights of his pickup high beams. 

feeling damn good but down on his luck

looking for adventure in his bright red truck

heading to California or by damn it's a bust

leaving behind the hot Texas dust

for, well, just about anywhere else!

by why not just stop?

to dance with the ladies until they all drop!

they called him the King

but he didn't know what he wanted to B

looking around for a place to sing

he did the Shuffle in C.

fishing for the soul

a long war and a needless war

although some are short and important

but all are terrible and traumatic

and there are horrible injuries and horrible deaths

scars on skin and scars inside skin

legs without bodies

bodies without heads

heads without hope

memories

dreams which reoccur like breath

in and out

out and in

weaving and bobbing

fishing for the soul.

so Picasso didn't know

so Picasso

didn't know

James Madison,

but he knew quite well

Dora and her magic spell.

and he often wore a dandy hat

going to a fancy Paris ball. 

his first wife, Olga, wrapped an ankle

due to her opera fall.

their marriage took a turn for the worse,

but there was no Spanish curse;

he simply decided he deserved what he wanted

and vows be damned,

and how the wind doth ramm!

like the unholy penis in his skillful hand,

he felt great and had the EYE:

short and spry,

full of himself while distorting any female breast.

yes, who could have guessed?

he stroked and poked and painted,

grabbed Jacqueline by the neck until she fainted.

later-in-life ceramics on the shelf and red clay on the floor;

a favorite brush on a small table by his studio door,

far from Montmartre and his room with Fernande and being poor.

the young boy with a gift

on the world stage as an adult in an untethered skiff, 

adrift,

clutching his genius.

a Purple Heart award

i'll give you something to chew on,

like a piece of fat or a this or that:

when young, i pulled a wing from the body of a colorful

Monarch butterfly and felt nothing was amiss.

i caught a yellow and black bumblebee with a bare hand

and it stung me, but i didn't cry.

i tossed 6 colorful baby chicks from a 2nd floor porch on

an Easter Sunday and they fell heavily onto the

black asphalt of a driveway.

they all died from the fall, but i didn't understand death.

my mother madly chased me around our home but before she could grab me, 

i dashed into the bathroom and quickly slammed shut the door!

i could clearly hear her screaming for me to open the door,

but it stayed firmly locked.

a while passed before she handled a garden axe and threatened to

smash the door if i didn't open it!

i watched the leading edge of her axe as it blasted thru the flimsy wood door.

my father kicked me when he became angry, which was often.

he had a temper and i was his little boy, too available.

i once found his brass knuckles in the master bedroom;

they looked well worn.

i still have a knife tip scar on my right forearm, but can't remember

whether it bled when i was initially cut;  my father said it was an accident.

on a memorable Christmas morning, my excitement to open a first present

was smothered by the realization that it was a gift box filled with black Pennsylvania

anthracite coal.  The coal was hard, small chunks of aged rock.

i sat in stunned silence, the box on my lap.

as a young adult, i became a soldier in a foreign war in South Vietnam,

but i didn't merit a Purple Heart award.

i already had one, thank you.

the Deng government

It's been called many things,

now Beijing:

a large city wherein the Deng government ordered soldiers,

most all of whom were wearing combat helmets and clean uniforms,

to enter Tiananmen Square.

mere moments after, hopes and dreams were crushed, mangled, obliterated,

as were bicycles,  left riderless

underneath the steel treads of angry, active armored tanks.

i remember that exact date in 1989

because a friend of mine

died.

he was shot multiple times

while standing defiantly between his mother and elder sister,

both of whom cried as they fled on foot,

into the screaming darkness!

hundreds murdered, shot, beaten by dutiful young men

who followed commands;

thousands more were rounded up like cattle,

herded and whipped and taken away

from the huge square where freedom hoped to live.

and like the historical death of Jesus,

the believers in freedom and democracy know

that the CCP stone impediment will roll away from this tomb,

and a new fleet of bicycles,

with fresh air inflating onward rolling tires,

will return to Tiananmen Square,

with courageous Chinese riders steering their handlebars toward a

a new nation.

and it will be a happy nation, too,

because dreams will be allowed.

Chemical Ali: morte 01/25/2010

Chemical Ali was not there
in the rarified air
at the summit of Alpe d'Huez
where a sign in French says
"Allez Armstrong"
go hard and long

he was often hung in the press
accused of doping i should guess
but never strung on the gallows as Ali
is soon to be

yet he seriously kicked ass
and would certainly out-class
most sports writers
playing pencil lovers dull as fighters

Chemical Ali will soon be dead
for what he did, not what he said
the ghastly gassing of the Kurds
an act of evil beyond mere words

innocent children and mothers
fathers sisters brothers
uncles aunts old middle young
poisonous clouds all far flung
by Iraqi Migs and French Mirages
no racing bicycle in those garages

thousands dead and homes razed
survivors stumbling in a toxic daze

while Saddam smoked his Cuban cigar
sipped bourbon adjacent to his palace bar

holding perfect Kosta Boda crystal
and his famous Glock 18C pistol

but Chemical Ali was not there!

along for the ride

tiny pieces of my heart

well, where should i start?

upside down, left side, right side:

there's nowhere to hide

but i'm along for the ride;

someone is telling the truth and someone lied:

i remind myself that i've always tried!

and when finally i climb to the top,

even then the pains never stop.

but between the rounds, after the bell sounds

there's just a simple bloody nose;

is this the lesson that everybody already knows?

digging deeper and the road keeps getting steeper,

but plugging away helps me on my way,

tapping toes, 

watching to see which way the wind blows

and that's good enough for me, holding my own key.

opening doors, sweeping floors

thinking it's really not too hard,

shuffling along with just one playing card:

there's somebody singing my favorite song

so how can i ever go wrong?

tumble weeds and flower seeds,

Sheryl Crow and mistletoe 

that's about all i care to know:

tiny pieces of my heart

well, where should i start?

upside down, left side, right side:

there's nowhere to hide

but i'm along for the ride;

someone is telling the truth and someone lied:

i remind myself that i've always tried!