now, ladies and gentlemen,
as you can plainly see
I am quite adroit and learned
and this lady quite occupied
I am, let me make it clear,
extremely preoccupied
keeping this lady warm and happy
as she in her turn does ditto for me
Now whether we please ourselves missionary
or front to front
is really no business of yours -
but it’s purely and ****** our business and pleasure
So, most lovely ladies and resourceful gentlemen
you must find yourself a different room each
and leave me to fiddle or ****** as I wish
O shame on you ladies -
do you not lure your men
far enough into your depths?
O shame on you men -
do you not come hard enough on your women?
go you now and find each a body
and go spiritual, ****** or *****
have no guilt, enjoy abandon
love as you wish -
but really, you busybodies,
it’s time for you to relinquish pretense of  surprise
and depart from here, and  
leave one body busy with the other

1 THE KIDS
it’s a simple toy
that’s all they want
these gypsy kids
Plastic discards
cups and basins
consumers-people throw away
change into toys and inventions
in the hands of the gypsy kids
Simple inventions
unique in the change
a life of the imagination
free, unencumbered
just a place on the earth
the space they play in today
That’s all the kids want this moment
not confined walls of classrooms

2  THE PARENTS
Just like the kids
Just these dads and moms
who still revel in the infancy of the earth
And their women
who cook a meal
with what the wild might offer
who are content with what’s in the basket
And who can see into the sky
and see what‘s the weather coming
this season
And so when it is time to move, and where

3  GYPSY BEAUTY
Gypsy beauty
dance your body for me
swirl it like water
spin it like a top
fly it like a kite
O gypsy beauty
with your knowing smile
and your distant eyes
O you beauty
who wears the colors of the earth
twirl the elements for me
like the winds show what’s
behind the clouds


4  GYPSY SINGER**
O gypsy singer
your voice in the air
like the voices that filled
the first days of the earth
that still echo down
the crags and valleys of the mind
O gypsy singer, sing the earth to peace
Sing hard hearts to gentleness
Raise that voice of yours
that voice pure
always so unencumbered
and bring back vision
to these tired spirits
that possess and ravage the world
sing these city-organized  minds to calm,
sing all living beings into clarity

1
just watched the news
my morning ritual

2
today’s news, as  I saw it
(today and this week)
as I heard them all interviewees
them politicians, men of God,
holy ones and pure ones
organizers and statesmen and entertainers
and various personalities,
they all used sincerity terms:
“….to be honest,” one said…”to be frank…,” said another
And yet another: “I’ll be frank with you….”
“Well, frankly speaking,” declared one eminent person…

You wish the interviewer
would interrupt and say:
“You mean you haven’t been honest till now?”

3
and yet, frankly speaking,
that’s not news;
that’s old wearied news
for I’ve heard that from 1960’s
since I started watching interviewees,
to be honest

Little David loses mum
in the big shop
and he runs around
and between aisles
shouting for his mum
“Monica! Monica! Monica!”
he shouts for his mum
and finally mum appears
and  she admonishes her son:
“You know you shouldn’t call me Monica,
son – always call me mum”

“I know mum,” says respectful little David
*“but you can see the shop is full
of mums and mums!”

those of the nobility
of such refinement and susceptibility
they revel in sublime love
expressed in sonnets and exquisite epics
But we, the comics,
the mundane, the ordinary, the clown and the fool
we love like coffee desires teeth to stain
like birds love to poo on cars*


1
I love you like the snail
loves its shell
I’d like to creep into you
and always stay inside

2
And I love you back
like the pig loves its sty
and the mud and the filth it rolls in
I love you like the pig in the wild
loves its leaves, roots and fruits in its diet  

3
O I love you always
like itch loves skin
like dust loves the table
like tongue loves to lick the lips

4
And I love you back
like barnacles love bottoms of ships
like underwear clings to the organs
like the dog loves a bite


*And now that this serenade
of such elemental love is done -
do you fancy we could lie down
on the hay in the barn
and have a vigorous and quick one?

Where have all the Juliet’s gone.
The princess' to rescue, the maids to save.
A woman’s gift use to be so more defined.
As was the part I had to play.
Not that I was a very good actor.
Was never much of a factor on the main stage?
If I could go back to the days of Arthur, when chivalry was alive.
Joust with evil princes and slay fire breathing dragons
to ride, on an steed through the meadows and dales.
Listening to minstrels sing my story accompanied by a lyre.
Guinevere wouldn't run from this mans passion.
Exalibur would be pulled from the stone.
Alas I live in the technology age the dark ones are well past gone.
What is good for only some, never ever lasts.
I still have my pen which lets me sit and fret
and lament for a sweet Juliet.

some days I can wake up
and understand why the world
does what it does.

today, the sun strikes chords
on my naked spine
and I roll over, retreat
beneath blankets and sheets.

I falter at the thought of
senseless murders
land mines and apartheid
babies starving
and mothers dying
in an epidemic of ungodly
proportions.

what's the use, anyways?
nobody's winning if
we're all losing.

When you have just one life to get it all right
would you give it all up in just one night?
The effort, the fighting, the kicking, the biting
illuminating the truth with the most brilliant lighting.
To claim such strong love yet throw such big stones
seem truly a trick and a dead soul's lost moan.
My window has shattered, my heartbeat has stopped.
The blood in my veins and temperature just dropped.
Around me is glass and rusty-grey stones
with a rotten dead pain that roots from the bones.
My life line depleting is a deep red relief,
with a silent mind violent, with a broken belief.
Apologetic to apathetic in no time at all -
wrenching and wounding; the greatest of all falls.

Imagine if life was just a cup of tea -

So simple,
leaves steeping in the steaming water.
Only to spread what they have
to the joys of all around.

But instead,
our lives are just large scale mitosis.
Splitting between emotions out of our control.

What starts as a seed, roots deep in the ground,
not a flower, nor a tree, but a mountain.
Growing taller than we give can see.

See, mountains are just like our lives.
Starting deep in the ground,
yet growing far out of eyesight.

And, still, when lightning strikes
that simple, vulnerable point.
It all collapses around us.

And we are left,
alone,
in the rubble that was once something great.