walking in NYC in June but not this June

She walks in my dreams, a song of olde English on her lips

She sings Portmore and Tennyson, Shakespeare and Soul

Somewhere a harp slides out its steel stringed tune

As the fall of her gone moves like silken water across

The shapely curve of her hips

Take from me this moment, take from me any mention

Of this forgotten love, take from my mouth the

Power of the pen and cast them out into the desperate darkness

The promise of beauty, the pleasure of this night

As I walk the streets of New York City clad only

In my poems shimmering like urban mirages in June

very dated to late 20th Century

The Politically Korrect Poem

3 o’clock, winter solstice,

Urban city, I stand on a dirty gray street,

Amidst pieces of newsprint and cigarette butts

Collecting in corners of the edges of the sidewalk.

The chilled smell of coffee perking

On an old hot plate in that diner on the corner

Drifts- no wafts out to the place, where I-the-poet-

Am standing.

I watch the boys-not-yet-men

With torn up jeans and longish hair exerting their minor

Rebellions over one another as they run one into the other

Yelling insanities and screaming exhalations while I wait

On the bus.

It’s late.

Again.

And the Women with unshaven legs and shaved heads,

Mismatched articles of stained clothing

Yell out anti-sexist remarks at men as they pass them by

Stomping their purposefully ungainly marches. The colors

Of the human spectrum mix into an absurd pointillism

That would baffle Seurat and excite hot flashes of

Avant Gardism in the new artists fresh out of high school

Filled with misshapen truths like the knarled hands of the

Homeless man or is it woman who croaks out for my charity.

I look at the mass of humanity which flows and floods around

Me, all the while knowing that the bus would arrive just as

I grow interested.

I felt, at the time, that if I wrote this down

That it would not be received well by the howling metropolis

Or even the poets it is concerned with.

Hence I await your reply which I know is forthcoming.

Mo’s Place

There may be a place as good as it gets

I have looked high and I have looked low.

I have gone north and west and east, and even the south

But have found nothing so pleasing to satisfy my stomach

Nor my mouth.

Food beyond compare, company beyond measure

All from these people who really show that they care.

Whether you come for the food

The folks or the mood

King Tut’s Grill is the best kind of

Restaurant Attitude. 

King Tut's Video Vimeo

more than a mouthful

Howling Back

For Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation seduced by greed, maniacal scheming selfish despicable, driving themselves through Mexicana streets in the evenings searching for absolution’s high,

Political spinsters trading their souls for mortal power and the lies of wealthy lobbies to power this machine calling itself democracy,

Which laughs from on the heights and looks down of the deprived and vacant smokers as they claw for the super rich and their Enronic nomenclatures, meditating to the rhythmic strains of water falls,

Who bartered our futures off to a God who has forgotten his children and an Allah who praises death and killing,

Who walks among the educated, like messiahs declaring for gospels of technology and ipods screaming the music of the spheres

Who brazenly stand in penthouse lofts drinking new wine and eating caviar that was grown in Kansas,

Who grew pot in apartments avoiding the police by making a living wage far above the peddlers to the desperate fools in the mobile meth-death labs.

Who preach patriotism and loving soldiers trained to kill but to believe that they aren’t killers,

Who raced the clock to bring doctored news to the multitudes who scream for blood and bodies of children and women killed at schools and weddings by misfired missions from men with families of their own,

Who displayed their wares of destruction in the market places and called for rights to the good gun carrying public who ratified their amendments that would ensure that the rest of the world would hate them for their ignorance and cruelty.

Who left the young to fend for themselves so that the really important things could be looked for in life like beauty and fat,

Who traveled around the world and brought Coca-cola and Hershey’s chocolate and tooth decay to Eden,

Who built great pyramids with golden arches to the foreign places in hopes of edible food and self-centered cultures?

Who stormed the palisades of Lost Vega sacrificing earnings and retirements for the promise of easy living

Who paying homage to the unforgiving slot machines which promise absolution of sins because they would have you believe that sins only exist in the Mafioso city out in the valley of death and nowhere else not even in Rome.

Who believe in written words on electronic mediums over well known facts because the writer is right for the moment

Who smoke tobacco death, enslaving the young to ideals of rugged and sophisticated idolatry while denying truths as their parents die choking in bleak hospital rooms.

Who market mass murder for entertainment and relief from mass market stress.

Who storm the barricades of religion calling upon blind faith, blind justice and some wicked idea of micro management for yuppie insurance.

I look to the unassailable stars twinkling in amusement down on our desperate race to reach them with actually going out there.

                                                            II

What gargoyle of sarcasm and treachery stones the masses with small skulls of the less fortunate and forgotten ethnic war victims?

Moloch! Isolation! Clean Killing! Tobacco! Firearms! Alcohol! Pop stars screaming for American Idol! Girls crying in armies! Senior citizens weeping at the polls!

Moloch the indescribable computer! Loveless and perfect! Smarter than men!

Moloch the processes by which Ram is remembered and calculating the fates of the plastic masses of sheep-like humans who scatter beneath his massive footprints.

Moloch! The bringer of chaos and war reaching down from Avalon and steal the firstborn sons of tycoons and coalminers alike.

Despair and parades! Sex and Disease! AIDS is one of three and the Angels cry songs of despair and defeat.

Technology and bibles of science will disprove all that has been written and discovered confounding the fools as the disasters arise among the ruins.

Depeche Mode was right all along with their blasphemous rumors that God has a sick sense of humor and when we all die we will arise through the smog to find him ROFL.

I C U as you want me to see you; the mp3’s playing our symphony of history as this generation faces its apathetic doom.

                                                            III

Allen Ginsberg! I stand where you stood in Rockland

            Where you are insane and I am too.

I’m with you at Penn State

            Where my sniper shot and killed eight

I’m with you at Waco

            Where my government burned the unbelievers in their temples.

I’m with you in Oklahoma

            When an angry America asked for justice with a bomb.

 I’m with you in New York City

Where we drank lattes as the Islamic Anger brought the towers to ash and destruction. Where heroism and despair ran hand in hand for one day of fire

And paper rained over America the guilty gave us fear and the president gave us a war that would claim the rest of our youth preaching peace with a gun and the missile of fun.

I’m with you in Rockland

            In my dreams I hear your cry for justice, as we hide out in America waiting for

            Waiting for some sanity to return and I can look at your grave and wonder how

            Long it took this howl to die out from the throats of the hippies to stoned to

            Realize that this would be their fates.

It was almost like a poem

Almost but maybe not so close
Hand grenades  and  horse shoes have
a better chance than a snowball
does in the middle of Hell
unless of course it doth
freeze over this year.

I wrote this ditty not so much dryly
but dimly witty as to say
hey this could be something other
than a ridiculous attempt to
lather on a  compliment
to a  woman who does not
exist which is what I originally
meant this year.

Words  are weapons but hardy
effective plowshears.
poems are messages based more
on feelings than any real
thought that  can be measured
in moments of esoteric pleasure
Eliot and Blake, Frost
with some measure
later  this year.

I  write, not so much in honor
as horror can allow for
improvement and  pause.
I sing with my pen and mark
time with my paper
looking  for rhyme since
reason has  long fled with
what  little passion I had
earlier this year.

a Woman I've not met

Yesterday, I missed the woman I’ve not met

I drove down long roads listening to sad songs

Wishing that I could outrun her memory

Last night I made love to her in my sleep

The feel of her soft fingertips on my deep dreams

As her murmurs of pleasure fill my head

Today I thought I saw her reflection in my mirror

She smiled at efforts to remain calm

Her scent surrounded me fogging the glass.

Budweiser has nothing on me

Why do we ask why?

Can one escape that dreadful question why?

Realizing it is rather silly to wonder by

So why is blue the color we give to the sky?

Is that a sigh, as we prepare to die?

From the malady of asking the wrong person why

Still I risk all in my desire to sort through the murk

This longing for understanding often irks

Those whose answer are like a shark who lurks

From the smartasses who would become jerks

As a mark of the blessed innocent quirks

Uttering why must one ask if it all just works

Why is why why? Ask in a sudden and savage cry

My heart leaps as my inner voice utters a civil sigh

If all things were even, could pigs have wings and fly

Like the decisions that are made without motives so high

Meaningless judgments passed endless sentences oh my!

Treaties written carefully then on a whim left to die

The travesty and the awful reality of the need to pry

An answer, an ending, closure from the mouths of babes

The words of wisdom spoken by the old man so sly

There must be a response to this ultimate request

Before the other question is to be put to the test

I must try to solve this perilous quest

And put the answer why to its final rest

I will not be threatened into another tight spot

I will not be cajoled or harassed or get hot

I will not fear the run of the foolish desiring lot

That waits to ask the dreadful question

Why not?

Ode to a sound board

O ye feat of wondrous technologia!

Thou hast me ponderous in ideas

All ye rows of buttons lit and bright

Blinking away with ye visceral light

I turn thy dials in thy electric flow

Admiring your form for all I know

I shall slide your level from hence to e’en.

Hearing thy whispers in betwe’en!

O’ how I long to understand thy inner workings

As I hover here in awestruck lurkings

What brilliant minds made you made me

You LS9-16 will for e’er fascinate me!

WHISPER

WHISPER

There was a whisper in the winds tonight

Of darkness, of shadows and wingless flight.

Sleep comes creeping, crawling up to my door,

As dreams slide stealthfully across the floor.

Death dances to the heart's slow, sad beat,

His chill burns cold against my sheets.

I wake in sweat, frozen to the bone,

Crouching in silence, I have slept alone.

I wake with Hunger grumbling his tune,

Shattering the silence in the graying gloom.

Something calls for me outside my room,

Something beckons to consider my doom.

I sit on the edge, my bed pale and white,

I will not rest until I sleep again tonight.

I wipe the sand from my weary, cringing eyes,

As Destiny calls out in my newborn child's cries.

What is poetry?

Poetry is the language of our hearts as it sings of our passions for living, nature, beliefs and hope.

As it sorrows for each lost friend, lover, child and dream.

As it grows in search of peace, understanding, faith and of truths.

As it sees the world thru new eyes, new ears, new realities from ancient scripture to modern prose.

Poetry is verbal art. It will be ugly and it will be beautiful.

It should tear the soul and revive the spirit.

It should change the world but not forget it.

Poetry is for anyone who will pause to listen or stop to read.

It cannot be barred from all who would write it…

But it should be protected from those who would demean it, strip it of meaning, commercialize or silence its voice.

Poetry is a person’s song for all people.

A repeat? yes in honor of what I am reading

VISIONS OF ILLUSIONS

There are visions of illusions that I once had in my head,

there are memories of friends that are now long dead.

I dream of allusions, words echo in my brain

I dream of your tears, illusions of rain.

I fear for the beauty shackled to the beast,

Reaching never grasping the sunlight in the East.

There are visions of illusions that I once had of you,

fragments become pictures that I remember to be true.

I have dreamt of these visions deep into your night

in a place of darkness amongst silk-satiny white.

I rest in the sweet thick scent of your body heat,

the black cover of shadows acts as the sheets.

My vision clouds as you draw me into your embrace

I feel my lips make an impression on your face.

I feel your teeth scrape across my skin,

your nails bite my flesh, I feel you within.

There are illusions like dreams of the inescapable fire

burning hot in the blood of this passion of the vampire.

There are visions of illusions of the ecstasy in the night,

like the call of bat fleeing the morning light.

But nothing can ever for certain be told

of the bodies asleep in coffins so cold.

I dream of long lost Lilith, beauty moon white

 waiting for her return, for I am her forever knight.

What am I reading? 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 

Touch

Touch

Reaching out across the space between

Love and loneliness

Hands spreading soft warm feeling

Feeding the sensations of the flesh

Sensual pleasure fingers searching

For form and shape arching soothing

Shivering

Touching you touching me

With hot skin now burning as hunger

Needs feeding- anticipation trembling,

Vibration of lovemaking.

Now empty are the days as the nights

Longing for habitation of your space

My arms embrace silent sheets

My body thrilling at the satin memory

Dreaming

Touch you touching me

Skin against skin

Desiring to reach out and touch you again.

Tight Blue Jeans

Tight Blue Jeans

Tense stretching like second skin

Smooth eye-pleasing imagining

Her legs in those tight blue jeans.

Touch the bleach blue sky

A wrinkle curving up her thigh

Sliding to a pocket without purpose

Not for keeping change in tight blue jeans.

Bending reforms her buttocks

Reshaping the form of her figure

A rip suggests exposure of skin

Walking, she sways in tight blue jeans.

This Bird

This Bird

Perched on the rocking chair

With ruffled feathers

Arrogantly searching for

Handouts of seed and bread

Darting its head and looks

Through my window

Brown with flecks of gray amidst

The white like freshly fallen snow

For the sealed package of this world

This seed

Fallen from the mouth of the predator

Lies cracked and broken on a piece

Of naked brick cold as the morning air

Hard against the apparent soft

Brightness covering its skin

This bird

Whose black eyes betray its

Desperate need for satisfaction

Its burning hunger reminds me

How little I have eaten as I sit here

Held by the portrait of

This bird and its rejected seed.

The Song of the Sea

The Song of the Sea

As the wind blows to the sandy shore

So I travel in sleepless night to her door

Along the rocky coast I shall swim

Until I finish my ageless hymn

The clouds roll in, the tide rolls out

Thundering surf, nature’s shout

As I look for her lone sad cry

For the song of the sea

For the sea has its song

Sung in the fathoms deep

Amidst the silvery throng

Like music from conch shells

Full steady and strong

She strides down clad in white

Like the oyster shell, pear and light

She waits for her merman’s return

Their love so hot as a fire to burn

The tides flows in, the stars come out

Revealing her face full of doubt

Her love has not appeared

She shivers so cold now with fear

The merman swam down to the white one’s lair

To seek a treasure for his love’s brown hair

Into the jaws of danger under the ocean dark

Lurks the bringer of death, the great white shark

In the seaweed the reef and the mud

They fought for food, love and blood

Among the trinkets silver and gold

The fighters grew weak then so cold

The blood runs free, the bodies rise

To float on the waters under heavenly skies

As the merman drifts off upon the ocean stream

Of the mortal woman lost to him in his dreams

She finds him among the seaweed on the tide

Holding his body in the surf, sum of her fears

He had promised her forever but he had lied

All she received is memories and tears

The stars are here, the stars are there

The heavens shine brilliant above the sea

Her love is dead; she has lost her only one

Now she can see all that she will ever be

For man is mortal and doomed to die

But the ocean is timeless, one can only sail

Upon its crest, hear the singing cry

Of the beautiful and titanic humpback whale

The waters are deep, the fathoms so blue

The sea holds life, so vast, so true

Still I swim and sing again of she

Who learned my song, the sad song

The song of the sea.

The Secret

I know a secret

About passion

Ascending life

Fearing death

Knowing hate

Wanting love

But in the attempt

Failing to reveal

Purpose or reason

Now to quit

Before finishing

Or solving

The puzzle that

Hides the secret

That I’m not telling.

the first time

The first time that I looked into your eyes

deep blue glistening pooled like

crystal waters in the morning sunlight,

I knew.

The first time that I heard your voice

sweet melody, smooth music,

honey-dripping rhythm and blues

Then I knew.

The first time I touched your hands

warm and soft like cotton sheets

freshly dried in the heat of the midday sun

I knew that I knew.

The last time I was with you

hearing laughter echoes in

and out of the shadows of memory

I knew again.

The first time I knew.

My heart sang,

I could hardly breathe

cold chills shivered up

and down my spine.

And then I knew love

and you.

The Dream Interrupted

Warm sheets from nights of passion and desire

Sweat soaks her skin, sweet upon my eager lips

I kissed the small of her back a thousand times

As she trembles and shivers on my wide bed.

I remember long days of sunset anticipation

Longing for our embrace to enclose me

The heat warms the cold, our murmurs soothe me

When we will wreck the sheets and sleep in their ruins

Shackled to the lust of my imagination, I long to sleep

Finding fulfillment through forgotten hope

No love is lost save from the diminishment of courage

How many days until I will see her again?

The hidden art of sex and ecstasy renders again and again

Like a fresco on my ceiling like primal paintings

My fingers dance across her naked shoulders

Our god like action leaves us speechless listening

I hear her short quick breaths and smile at her beauty

She is all I have waited for and so much more

Than I could have envisioned in the darkness

Wondering if this all has been a dream

The calm before the storm

There is a calm before the storm

So silent that it catches us unaware

It has been there since the day we were born

Death is in its name, chaos in its stare.

This calm that comes before the storm

Carries his ghost who has gone past

Unrelenting to those who are left to mourn

Leaving the desolate, empty at last.

We all tread our paths before the storm

Some paths do cross, others go by

We find friends for comfort and warmth

While we grieve and ask the fates why?

There is a calm that comes before the storm

Like a chill that settles on the darkened land

Like scattered birds we wander about forlorn

Sorrow is final, but together we stand.

Finally the storm breaks and down comes the rain

I find the tears on my face but the smile remains

I find a new strength, a new reason to recall.

I remember my friend, his name was Paul.

I wrote this in the fall of 1988. I was so young then and had just lost someone I was sure was going to be my best friend.

Maiking it Rain

Days like these are like time making rain
falling from heavens far away from the pain
falling down among the righteous and the insane
Days  like these are mostly in my brain.

Rhymes like these roll out on the page
Sometimes weak, sometimes strong, could be sage
of me  to write and reveal  nothing not even my age
Rhymes need to flow and not be forced out like rage

Days come and days go
something's got to give
someones bound to know
am  I right?  am I wrong?
will this poem die or  will it live?

Days like this are liking trying to make it rain
another rhyme another time to be spent
at the desk, on a train wherever I find my
pen and paper, a keyboard, the words went
was it right or was I wrong to write down
this little ditty and make it my song?

The brief life of a sucker

Gullibility and sensibility, good intentions to be hunted down

I believed in honest, integrity and open minded security

But all my instincts were blinded and now those

I felt most comfortable with are little but strangers to me now

With age comes pain and wisdom

Life has been a series of completes failures

And partial success

My life as a sucker ends with absolution

And excommunication of all vices

Such as caution less trust blinded faith needful

Acceptance

I am have always be a sucker

A sucker as hard as I try

To then as I die I shall be reborn into

The skeptical butterfly

Safety net
Give me a word for love and utility
and I will write a poem about the honor of humility
Give me a name of the perfect mother
and I will show you that you can find no other
Give me a moment that is not filled with love or regret
and I will find you a mom without a safety net
Give me a day, a period of grace
and I will give you a poem in its place.