GRANDCHILDREN 

What about the young?

Seems to me they're all here,
though no longer grinding brass strings
against the highest notes
whenever and wherever appropriate,
or appropriate as dictatorial fate dictates.

How can you,
blinded by foggy mirror,
how can you,
indeed, how can you when shattered
against granite questions?

How can you,
flipping and flopping
in yellow-tooth fishing net
cast by ancestors self-satisfied
below moonlit headstones?

I turn and stand,
6 points glistening as only 6 points
can glisten, blinded or half-blinded
by the 12 points of calcified suffering
of brothers and sisters before me.

Oy, that's how it goes.

We've got 2, 4, 6 points,
if we're lucky,
or no points at all,
or we've got those fabulous points
which make us a larger target 
for government shotguns
sent to clean the mess
we always seem 
to find ourselves in.

Not much of an option.

Tell you what; forget the points;
they're just symbols, anyway,
materialistic, capitalist symbols
designed to distract us from meaningful contemplation.

If we put our minds to it, we could fashion 
a marvelous existence thumbing Sonnets to Orpheus 
at the local laundromat,
or loitering Neo-Latino art hidden deep 
in the bowels of Jersey City!

We could even assume that black holes
are anuses vomiting our organic universe.

You know, infinity.

Bald eagle fans his wings
above the white fangs of July maples—
catbirds hunker 
uppermost branches.


JAZZ

This smoking pile of seaweed,
trumpets and saxophones, bubbles 
through the angst of another corporate meeting
like molten lava providing a religious experience
equivocal to ten thousand years of homo sapiens evolution.

This purple tattooed voice
mimicking a troupe of Vietnam monkeys tracking volcanic mud
into confessionals, convinced, despite the laws of nature,
they can heal themselves of disease and indiscretion
(if one believes in that sort of thing)
every second of monkey reality tattooing its pearl, goggle-eyed 
scales across the warped 2x4's of the Lake Worth pier.


Nevertheless, this seaweed jazz
removes her unassuming clothes, reveals herself
to be the sister of Neruda's mermaid
sauntering aimlessly, evocatively, innocently,
through a jade tavern off the boardwalk, Atlantic City.

Only this time she doesn't flinch,
takes her seat at the bar,
rotates the latest version of coin-operated roulette
with her blood-stained fingernails
and orders a blue agaves mescal
straight up.
 

THANKSGIVING SONG

Woodpecker, wild streaks
of pomegranate ashen cheeks,
cheeks of pure elegance despite
what culture offers in middle school.

I'm afraid school curriculum is political.

Sorry for that.

As though you hadn't discerned, alas, 
from mythical history books written 
by academies on the verge of foreclosure.

Well, then, star-nosed moles
gobbling diamondback worms
gobbling the worms
that'll gobble you an hour-and-a-half
from now,
that'll gobble you on your knees,
that'll gobble Hansel and Gretel bread crumbs
scattered across the universe,
that'll gobble faith
like turkeys on Thanksgiving day,
that'll gobble youth
and adulthood
in one single, fell-swoop gobble. 


LISTENING TO SIBELIUS & PROKOVIEV VIOLIN 
CONCERTOS: D MINOR & G MINOR, RESPECTIVELY

Violins like white flamingos thrash the surf
igniting a squash-colored farmhouse 
in Holland. . .Candles along snowy windowsills
in Czechoslovakia. . . . .Fingertip touches a gland
along the neck, humid shoulder & nipple the color
of exhausted coral.

Black pearl moon. . . . . .neck 
enveloped in seaweed
or half-zipped vest made of dark matter;
black pearl neck oozes resin
of black plums, irrigating a culture
out of touch with heaven,
but palpitating sea foam
between seaweed violins
vibrating
the sandstone belly
& olive oil leaking
from innermost thoughts
of love. . . . . . .the actual taste
of love. . . . . . . . . . .nectar
quivered by the body
& filtered through the gills
of imagination. . . .nectar 
of love. 


COLD VOICE

So, what do you crave, sad soul?

What sort of question is that?

Don't tell me . . . . . you've forgotten
the intent of simple questions?

There you go again. Questions that
hold no meaning for me.

Why do you sob like a patron
on a conveyer belt of chilly hospital gowns?

We aren't even on the same planet, 
you and I.

What planet . . . . . what green hour
. . . . . what pathetic dream splashes you
like a taxi through the rainy streets of amnesia?
 
Never mind. You're in another world, now.
We exist in separate skins, you and I.
If you want to reach me, I suggest
you use a voice less parental, less condescending,
a tone less like the Dean of Humanities
at a local community college and more 
like the cloudy blue eyes of a mountain lion cub
with a 50-50 chance of surviving adolescence. 
You do know about mountain lion cubs, 
don't you? Or did you age 
without passing through childhood?

Clever, but I don't get your drift. Where
do you come up with such absurd questions?
I'm beginning to get the feeling that you and I
live on different planets. Why don't you just
grab life by the horns, as they say, and drop 
that antiseptic melodrama dripping 
from your melancholy?

Why do you stab me with insidious questions?

Why do you resist?

Why do you care?

Who says I care?

I assumed . . . . . . . . . .

Assume nothing, fool. What you assume
I shall assume, also. If you believe that, 
I shall continue to hound you.

Let me tell you something.

So, now, you're going to enlighten me
to things you deem significant?
Who gave you the arrogance?
Who gave you the right?
Who gave you the adequate despair
to convince yourself that I give a damn
about your hideous questions?
Poor bastard. With your faith. . . . . no, 
not faith, your stupidity of a flightless parrot
eyeing up the pompous bars of its cage.
With that stupidity comes a certain obligation 
to force your bare shoulder against the bloated bars
of that cage hanging beside a swollen screen 
inside a fern-infested patio near an outdoor paradise.
What gives you the arrogance to diminish me,
you flatulent fool? Why did you become a poet 
in the first place?

There you go again with those awful questions.

And you, where do you expect to find
yourself tomorrow, the next day and the next,
without even the simplest of answers?

Well, the day I dislodge this shivering sun
from its nest of straw, feathers, and human debris, 
I'll see far enough into the fleeting future
to touch your blue skin, cold voice,
and perhaps answer just one of your insidious questions,
just one simple, platonic, conceptual question.
Then, you won't even exist, cold voice.
You won't even exist.

Fool.


ODE TO A BLACK SPIDER

You were mashed 
between the pages
of a robin's egg rubric
folded for final exam.

Inert like ink.

Legs
stained 
into paper.

I'd have exchanged places
with you, if I could.

If only words  
turned back time.


QUASIMODO

Quasimodo dragged his leg 
for a reason.

He wasn't pussyfooting around.

He had issues.

He had royalty
& archbishops on his back.

Quasimodo was the man
everyone feared
yet somehow yearned to be.

He was a democrat
enjoying his turn
at the plate.

Each shattered gong
left hairline cracks
in dictatorships destined
for ruin.

Quasimodo was a Jesus 
with unfortunate  
roulette deformity.

Today Quasimodo loiters, 
looking for coffee, for comfort,
for anyone willing
to believe in something.


FLINT

Flint. 

Sapphire eyelashes crush 
sandalwood 
in whiskey nightclubs.

Tattoos separate beaded 
curtains of rattlesnake eyes.

Cigarettes scatter elephant trunks
across dingy floors of crystal ashtrays.

Amethyst leaps from dark voices;
Stratocaster singes the ark's ceiling.

Flint.
 
Sapphire dust from crushed coquinas 
flickers round tables from whiskey 
nightclubs & orbits the outer rings 
of Saturn eyes as cigarettes 
discard their dung across the dingy 
floors of crystal ashtrays.


CRAZY LOVE

Zeppelin burning bottom up
proudly launched but collapsing
into guilty cinders. Tabloids made
a fortune for generations, bought Roman 
fountains next to indentured movie stars.

                  *         *        *

She rose from humble beginnings
like a humpback dodging killer pods
& occasional great white bachelors
cranky from lack of sleep & wary
of tiny promotions that amounted
to tiny promotions. Nevertheless, she rose
from humble beginnings like a humpback 
to the kindest, I'd fend off Japanese whaling ships 
for you; I'd give that cranky great white bastard 
better than I got for you, & I promise this is 
true, I'd take a harpoon for you!

But she knew that.


INTERSPECIES

To understand another species, one must 
adjust the Superglued gyroscope of his/her mind. 
What's normal for a dung beetle, housecat, paramecium
isn't wholly compatible with the infinitesimal notch 
on the scaly gyroscope that humans inhabit, 
thereby an intricate lock on an intricate vault—
though each notch has its half-life & so on.

Must we exist as a cabbage butterfly,
black seeds peppering our coriander wings? 
Must we starve to death like arctic bears, South 
African cheetahs, Asian tolerance for dissenting tusks,
however subtle, imitating their version of the human
gyroscope? Or might we just as well shed our ludicrous 
DNA without applying the clear adhesive of boredom 
across every living thing on this planet?