Like God amassing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,
vain potentates, possessed by pride that riches will confer,
depleted pillaged villages in pagan days of old…
With ******* privileges, their fortunes were foretold.

In feudal times, chaste clerics, cloaked, wrapped rings around the mind
with hymns of magic, mystic myths and figurines enshrined,
while blessing bayonet-like blades that mutilate and maim…
With ******* privileges, believers bore no blame.

In search of caramel colonies, some sailors set their sails
to conquer puppet provinces, for sovereignty prevails,
purloining wicked treasure troves which others claimed their own…
With ******* privileges, such sins sustained the throne.

Well, nowadays the quest proceeds, this time for ebon oil,
so peoples once again are caught within the serpent’s coil
and, pierced by fangs of greed and lust, death yields benign escape…
With ******* privileges, you’re free to rip and ****.

We wave the flags and beat the drums and often kneel to pray
to glorify our victories, bold, that happen far away;
but none salute the severed souls impaled upon a pike…
With ******* privileges, the riffraff look alike.

One day the moguls won’t agree on how to slice the pie;
they’ll spit and spat and, ***-for-tat, atomic barbs will fly -
but when the button’s finally pressed, they too will grace the heap…
With ******* privileges, the hole that’s hewn is deep.

love gripped light

~ for r, sleuth of life ~

you sleep with a metal detector,
unearthing dreamed artifacts,
that messenger many fates of many young,
belongings of dead men living again

and

of a living solitary man, a vision of him, envisioning,
dancing on a property line dividing
immortality dreams
and finality schemes

dead men living,
these different men, haunting and roaring, sighing pointlessly,
speaking to you alone, pithy commentaries, they, predecessor poets,
someone’s ancestors inhabiting a soil world familiar, awaiting we too

you whip yourself over life’s lost campaigns,
where strategy proved insufficient,
lost to men and materiel superior in numbers,
the hearts that were captured, imprisoned, stolen,
and worst, lost by grievous bad judgement human weak,
your dreams are you own artifacts, recovered

long after the battle smoke clears, you remain,
questioning not the how, where or when, only
was it worth it? and so sadly,
you answer yes.

you keep a record of your poems, losses,
each battlefield has no victors, only losses,
each poemfield has no victors, only losses,
it tires you so, to be guardian, the promise keeper,
you asked for burdens, you got just desserts awarded,
you share some, the ones under the pillow,
gripped lightly and tightly, simultaneously

with long distance lovers of your soul,
those you barely know, until met in red soil someday,
what matters it, they ken a kinship bond, and
love you oh so lightly

and they are

gripping you so lightly/tightly with the lightness/tightness
of words,
two book bound souls.
one shared spine...

2/10/20
100 Centre St.
NY Criminal Court
1:38

drrry spells

~for the r in all of us~

a normanative condition, a kitchen condiment, an un-relished
I’m-in-a-pickle relish, when there in no hot **** dogged doggedly poem perspiration in the fridge or anywhere to be found; nothing but a top sliced bun, ah, plain buns, old stale dog ones is all ya got left for dinner, during one of them there drrry spells that
no blonde tanned unweathered weatherperson ever
forecast correctly

Normanative? Oh yeah.

the tyranny of the white, white bread, the white, whittle ya down screen, couture-cold water from tap direct, neck bent, jugged to try and fail to wash down that lumpen ball of dog fur brain drain clog that’s backing up the paper words, in a stomach churning brine holding you back from reaching the top of the Mt. Everest,

rite Normanative?

Normanative.Oh yeah. Son of Norma and Normally.
It’s in the bibell, look it up!

she-he is my pooka, (nope, uh-uh, look it up) a six foot tall rabbit,
climbing up my brain stem, strategically strangling my words like
a flea killer collar round my neck, one that actually visually works,
my flea bit words fall to the floor, to live with the dust mites descendants of the ole south, drafts and rejection letters, all whose blessed memory may never die etc. etc.

that was the condition of my normanative condition when I dropped in (yup, look it up),

Norman sarcastically asking, how’s the weather up there,
any rain in that-northern-brain, down here it’s as dry as an southern old dog porch panting in Jewlie, breathiny out summer hottie poems, write out like it’s crazy going out of style, oh yeah, forgot
you don’t speak dawg that well.

so I don’t know nothing about your drry spells, just climb into
the hottest hot tub, staying all the summer months if necessary,
reading old poems about busted hearts, old dogs, unrealized loves that can’t be forgot, promises kept that one never made, other curses,
battlefields of yore, sweatin’ out the toxins till r
sends along a new one, rocking my toenails to my disbelieving eyes,
for I’m a mentally patient person,
whose never seen a drrry spell so long, that was not worth
wading thru, waiting for, till something busted out and
another thunderstorm of a literary good one, errr come along

like I said, I’m a mental patient man, still crazy after all these years...
(yup, that too, you could look it up if ya made this far)