There may be a heaven
And maybe a hell
But there is one thing
I know **** well;
There are devils around
And they do their worst
To put the working man
Into a poor man’s hearse.
They hate poor people
And kiss the royal ***
Of those who they think
Represents real class.

And real class to devils
Is money beyond belief
So they side with the creeps
That hate welfare and relief.
They know what they are doing
And they do it every time.
They gleefully participate
In global-scale crime.
They pump up bank accounts
Of the obscenely rich
And call the working a man
A loser sonofabitch.

They buy the politicians,
Who are devils themselves,
And push helpful programs
Onto a dusty back shelf.
If it doesn’t make money
For the greedy one percent
Then any such bill proposed
On the floor is never even sent.
So, I do believe in Devils
Not so much of the rest of the book.
If you don’t believe in Devils
Turn around and take a good look.

I woke all the way up this morning
No snoozing around in my bed.
I was singing Summertime again
Music humming around in my head.
I was singing at a gathering too
A room full of mostly blacks.
With two white friends of mine
And they all asked us to come back.

And I wasn’t singing it like her,
That sad woman in Catfish Row.
I was singing it just like I always do
Since I started so very long ago.
I was singing about a person
Who life was treating way unkind.
A person who had lived through
Every bad choice he could find.

It was a kind of benefit performance
To thank these workers for their toil
And we didn’t want to leave them
Until we made their senses boil
With rhythm and tune and lyric
A break from sweat and tears.
We wanted to give them a show
Like they hadn’t seen in many years.

We each sang our own song
About work or losing a friend.
We blended together in between;
Made it come together in the end.
We let the heart and soul sing
And looked them in their eyes.
We reached down into our spirit
And let the loving feelings rise.

As we shared our last sweet notes
The audience got onto its feet
And sang it right along with us
And they didn’t miss a beat.
They clapped and yelled and said
That they wanted us all to know
They hadn’t seen anything that good
Better than a Broadway show.

I didn’t call her baby.
I always called her maybe
Because nothing she said
Could ever be carved in stone.
We’d have a date on Sunday
She might show up on Monday
And no word of apology to share.
I learned about love all alone.

I learned a painful lesson
About what was important
I mattered which you asked
Because she really didn’t care.
I’d have tickets for a concert
And she’d go to the desert
And come back some days later
Never said a word about where.

She called herself free spirit
But I really couldn’t see it
All I could hear was stories
And she was the star of every one.
Things might have been better
If she had written it in a letter
To tell me sweet goodbyes
And then it would have been done.

But when she was around me
She managed to astound me
With whispered words of love
And telling me I was the only one.
But they were just at hand
Like the lies of a one-night stand.
I wish I hadn’t fallen for them.
I wouldn’t have been the lonely one.

Little Lolly LOL is not too bright
She types LOL day and night
She seems to think that abbreviation is
To replace things like parenthesis,
Or hahaha, hello or goodbye.
She uses it constantly, don’t know why.
The way she uses it is a blight.
As I have said, she’s not too bright.

We never met, Little Lolly and I
But it’s almost as if I can hear it;
Her ending every single sentence
With LOL as if it were a period.
She can be chatting about ******
Disease or crooked officials
But she manages to end it with
Those silly, mirthful initials.

Little Lolly LOL I am sure totally fails
To understand what she has said.
I even tried a few times to get
The idea into her fluttery head.
But to her, she is being ‘with it’,
To her it’s just like saying ‘whatever’.
And that it means laughing out loud?
She never quite puts that all together.

With Little Lolly LOL, that is the price
One has to pay for her friendship.
To be sure, she’s not being funny.
LOL is punctuation, not a valid quip.
She saw and somebody explained it
So, she grabbed it and she uses it.
It never occurred to her addled brain
That there was any way to abuse it.

Here sits the poet
The scribe of the times
Rendering the wordless
Into heart-rending rhymes.
Listen to the poet
Who says what most do not.
Pay attention closely
And see what the poet has got.

Sometimes you listen,
Then must listen once more,
Because hidden inside
Might be the words to a score.
Only you don’t yet hear
The music it is playing
Because you are still listening
To the words they are saying.

And, sometimes you must
While reading the second time
Be careful not to penalize
Because the words don’t rhyme.
It is often about the cadence,
The way the words dance along,
That turns the words from prose
To the beginnings of a song.

The poet’s job is to treat you
With a bit more than just language
To give you all the artistry
That the spoken word can manage.
So we use things like spacing
And often joyous syncopation
To achieve your attention
And catch your imagination.

Whether in a limerick
Or in a soothing lullaby
We do our best to slip things
Like satisfaction past your eyes.
We are, after all, artists
Who take what you have heard
And use that to entice you
To fall in love with the spoken word.

I’m sure it has happened
To many other people before.
There comes a moment
A feeling one cannot ignore.
A want, a drive, an impulse
To have, to hold, to own
Something, someone or
A moment that is yours alone.

At a party, a face appeared
And our two eyes connected.
It seemed we were talking;
A dialogue was being erected.
A relationship of mere moments,
It seemed powerfully right.
And at just that one moment
Nothing could be more right.

We left the party immediately
And went to my place to see
If followers through with feeling
What just the right thing to be.
It was all a wonderful adventure.
I am sure we had no kind of fear.
It was an accident of timing,
One I would suffer for years.

Twice more and we were broken,
Never to be together again.
No thoughts about if ever
Not a question about when.
And after the last evening
I knew things had moved on.
When I looked into my wallet.
All of my money was gone.

All because of impatience
And not wanting to be alone
I let myself fall into a kind of
Rock and roll Twilight Zone.
Why didn’t I ask more questions?
Because in that single moment
I wanted a fantasy romance.
Nothing was more important.

It was months later I discovered
In a routine visit to my doctor
That I had contracted a disease
That would ruin my life forever.
They didn’t know what to call it
In those days before the name.
Those were the days before AIDS
And it’s horrific kind of sick fame.

And they had no way to treat it
So, most of us just quickly died.
We had no ability to resist it.
We had no resistance inside.
We lost all our friends and lovers
Because for one single moment
That one evening with a stranger,
Nothing was more important.

I fell into a frenzy of not caring,
Drugs and drink and debauchery.
I felt I had lost all hope in life
And lost all my chance at dignity.
Of course that made me sicker
My resistance went down further.
I no longer wanted to live like that
I was sick of my life altogether.

I am writing this to you, today
So you can share it with others.
Tell people that getting laid
Is not the same as a lover.
Point to me and advise them
We may have just one moment
For valuing ourselves as a person
Nothing must be more important.


(This is dedicated to many of my friends over the decades that suffered from *** and AIDS related issues.)

Halloween, nineteen seventy six,
My friend and I were prowling.
The holiday spirit was strong
It was powerful and howling.
We were visiting friends,
Both is and mine that night,
We saw some wondrous things
House to house that night.

One house was amazing;
A Los Feliz mansion.
It was glorious, a jewel
Both high, wide and handsome.
Inside, a silent movie ran
From foyer to the third floor.
And every room of the house
Was a delight to see and explore.

The next house was a study
Of **** smoking and chat.
We intended to stay awhile
We saw nothing wrong with that.
And, as we plowed through
The crowd ebbed and waned.
I giggle as we tried our best
To maintain the footing we gained.

Then, from the gabbing throng,
A face of a handsome guy
Came out and apparently he
Decided to give kissing me a try.
He pulled me close and it worked,
He planted on me a warm kiss.
He was aiming for my lips and
He aimed he scored, didn’t miss.

The thing that made it memorable
Was that it was a perfect kiss.
I remember thinking to myself
“It’s been years since a kiss like this.”
In a night of traditional revelry
And simulated comic danger
I got the best Halloween kiss ever
And it came from a total stranger.

I never saw him again or since
As he melted back into the crowd.
They were all talking and shouting
So no good shouting out loud.
I just had to accept this hot gift
And go on with my holiday journey.
But that was a most wonderful kiss
And it lives today in my memory.