Kiss

Wine like a swirling kiss

Under a fang of a moon

I kissed her dizzy

And sip this wine



.

The Ride

Gate after
gate after
gate!

Like today!
Who knew Mister
You Know Who
would rush in breathless
and request a replacement
for the check he lost last night
doing who knows what!

Or that Miss
Say No More
with full moon eyes
and shy smile would say
she’s oh my god!

Always another twist in the wind!

And who knows when the phone groans
what fate that voice will bring
but sometimes I feel my life speeding by
and no mask or practiced gesture ever sets it right—

right?


.

Day Off

I drank coffee
and emptied my mind

(except when I filled it
with curlicues

smoke rings
and rhymes)

then I noticed
everything rhymes

and when I stepped outside
and looked at the sky

something inside me said
it’s not me

and that felt fine



.

Snapshot

She (and her tits)
starred as Queen Bitch
in a lavish flesh flick
once.

He (and father’s fortune)
fenced her in a mansion
and played Ruthless Business
Man.

They frightened each other with lies
insisting the height of their lives
was this prize
glaring back at them.

A snapshot shows them both
hiding behind sunglasses
beside a private pool
and laughing like hell.



.

"I papered my walls with rejection slips!"

Do this
and you
echo

the mew
of matryred
genius

(a lie!
a dream
of ego!)

and crowd
your brain
with clouds

of crap
(claptrap!

trap!)

and lose
your next
good move



.

History

He wore a path
in his carpet bald
pacing in resentful meditation

which roused his will
to finish his
diabolical treatise

that kicked the groin of the world
while he coughed in the shadow
of its constant industry

that insulted his days
and clanged in his sleep
while he dreamed up plots to topple it all

and then he’d wake and rub his head
and write more arguments
and one blue day

he died. And was no longer ignored.
Governments used his arguments
for agendas he’d abhorred.



.

Testimony

Bad gravity
swallowed me.

Haphazardry
tore my circuitry

and suddenly
nothing propelled me.



A shadow covered my mind.
Dull, mapless,
with a cracked compass,

I meekly tried to find
what I thought I’d lost
—a groping ghost

whose clues
were flashes of dignity
in more than a flickering few:

a courageous sanity
of human decency
that inescapably knew

that she is me
and I am him:
a mirror to model myself in.



Friends, I hate to admit
that I almost tried to quit,

almost stopped striving to be
more than merely me,

almost bowed to fear
and wished to disappear.



I’m still here.



.