the white-haired patriarch
   beard and moustache    
    a bit colonial  
benignly smiles
   at the United Nations building
   at Times Square
   and at 8th Avenue
where hot-pantied women
   in buzzing crowds
date strangers
   to share their loneliness

humidity is high
    on muggy summer afternoons
at the core
   of the Big Apple

          * *

Diapers and politicians
need to be changed frequently
and for the same reasons

********

los panales y los politicos
hay que cambiarles a menudo
y por los mismos motivos

By Arcassin Burnham


loving how your feeling when you look at me.
memories of you my eyes can't unsee.
special like the woods that we use to run in.
emotions felt sturdy when we were just friends.
it hurt so bad when you left me now.
I couldn't get you back,not even somehow.
did you get enough of me, but not feel nothing.
you're glad you turned your back on something.

/
Especially when your not the one
I find attractive,
I'm stuck beyond two souls and a cracked
Giant boulder, captive,
The eye of the beholder,
Watch me fall for something quite older,
Even in line of being lost is progression,
I hardly got the message,
The ice is really thick but it melts quite quick,
And your time runs out,
Now the fires are lit,
And you've wondered what you missed,
In your life,
Is it right?
It was never wrong,
You'll do anything for i-tunes songs, but you,
Just bootleg them,
Lost and found , like soul collective,
Oil color with prospective,

You're an artist not retrospective.

I want to work my vision
And make a story
A story of the crazy

For the crazy
To pass to the man
Who says he is sane

Trapping those who walk the borderline
With those of a mind to            or
With a mind not to

I commend my soul
To the vastness beyond
I beg of thee, bathe me, cleanse me

Take my talents and possessions
That I leave here on earth

Scatter them share them
To bear witness of fresh new birth

They will bury me
Under a star lit sky
Beside a sinless tree

Call us perverted,
But read on first,
Then, by the end,
After our verse,
Call us your worst:
***** old men, gutter snipes,
Lecherous gawkers,
Cause we gaze in wonder and awe
At girls from eighteen to ninety-five.
Don't step back and feign aghast,
Whisper covert tsks, and gasp,
What? Oh such ***** old men!
But we are most the same.

We don't ogle or use a scope
Waiting behind a bush at night,
Til the lights go on
Through windows known to be undrawn.

We don't visit public pools
With goggles and a snorkel,
That's just sick, that's not us,
Our admiration's not so twisted,
We grew up to respect the sisters.

We wonder at the parade of beauty,
So pleasing to our eyes,
They dress to allure
Younger looks,
They swagger, tilt and sashay past
With legs as long as trees,
No VPL to interrupt
The curving imagination.
Compare it to one window-shopping,
Admiring wares and worth;
But please, read every line I wrote
Before bellowing, Pervert.

If we were eighteen years again,
We're lads out plowing fields,
Sowing wild grains,
Reaping refrains of They're boys just being boys.

We had our ancient pleasures,
Still comparable to now;
The lushness of the ripened fruit
Hanging on the bough,
Is for younger hands, not ours.

The columned temples of runway models
With flying buttress thighs,
And the bull-frog fronts and volleyball stunts
Please, but we don't pry.

          (We're not a ***** grabbing lot,
          That's not how we usually talk,
          In fact I haven't shared these thoughts,
          I'm reluctant to do so now).

You know you can't blame us
For what a blind man sees;
The cleavage, high-slits and commando style,
The augmentations meant to beguile
Has caught us in crossfire.

The soft unbleached skin,
The ***** and the neck,
The falling, twirling tresses,
Grace the backs of backless dresses.
Wear grotesques to dissuade us,
To disapprove our ageless looks.

Our eyes don't linger on the bust,
We don't display old men's lust,
In fact we're rather obsequious,
To the point where we're air,
You'd not notice that we're there.
But we are, and we look;
And I remember what it took
To be young and on the hunt
For the Yeti, Loch Ness, or alien jump.

Don't tell your friends we're perverted,
Scurrilous id-focused men;
We're neither. We're average fellows
Watching from the stands.

Yes, our daughters are older than
The babes seen on the screens,
But that has naught to do with us,
We still think like eighteen.

We watch re-runs of Mary Tyler Moore,
Drink tepid tea with toast and jam
To the credits of The Golden Girls;
But when the grandkids come to visit,
We take them for ice-cream,
Or if I take poodle to walk,
They pool like thirsty fleas.
It isn't my intent to bait, but I have eyes to see,
Those girls somewhat eighteen,
Like to please by teasing:
     I really like your wire rims.
Their eyes grip, the wind flips,
Their hands soft and supple...
I'm at a loss-
What's a man to do-
Between forty and forever?

This reaper's aged,
The harvest's in.
The grain that bowed the straw
Has now been threshed,
And milled to flour.
Add heat to rise again.

our grandchildren are the reward
for not strangling our teenagers

I feel so uninspired
maybe because I’m tired
of all the nicely rhyming jingle
I’d rather wish that just a single
great thought or image would appear
of love or hate or lust or fear
unfold is imagery of riches
     no matter whether clowns or witches
that might be generally admired

alas, I am still uninspired…

By Arcassin Burnham

Ultimately I'd rather be a pawn in your game
Of love and trust but it was more like a game
Of life,
Let them know just how you really feel when
Your not biting off legs and your expensive
Taste for high heels,

I've begged the heavens for you to be one,
But they stand so tall and quiet,

there is no easy way to love you if you leave
me behind.

Originally i would have been a loner in a world
full of wolves that lay their seeds of hate and lust
upon the world,
Gleaming like your the only bright star in the room
of lost souls pleasing everybody through the
struggle,


i feel it in the air tonight , it's everywhere in different
corners of my body, if i say you give me joy,

there is no easy way to love you if you leave
me behind.

There once was a lady in waiting
Who still enjoyed all the male baiting
When one was too daring
She slapped him with a herring
and chided him for not abating

I wonder if I can write a poem with two voices?
Don’t know mate, maybe you can.
Who the hell are you?
I’m your second voice, you muppet.
Ah. But will they be able to tell?
Well, skim readers might miss it.
Oh.
But if they read “vocally” like you do,
It should be okay.
What, even when I go
Onto a new line?
Reckon so, just about. In any case,
Some websites will format it differently,
But we’ll get away with it.

Is it still poetry though?
Could be, mate.
Really?
Well, it depends on the wording I guess.
So we need some flowery language?
Yes, like the dogs of war are gathering,
As two adversaries square up,
For gladiatorial combat.

MMM. Well, I’d prefer to write things like:
The sun is streaming over snow-capped mountains,
To greet the summer
As we awaken from our wintry slumbers.
That’s okay too mate: it’s all poetry.

But should I really be seen,
Talking to myself?
They know you’re mad already, friend,
No worries there.
That’s okay then:
Let’s get this thing posted.
Yes, go ahead.

Paul Butters