Wussup, professional Latina?
Diversity been good 2 U?
Water warm enough 4 U?
Shaking down enuf rich gringos
to fund your Non-Profit?
(speak against capitalismo here)
Got time for la Revolución after your pedicure today?
(mention the border here)
still watching Oprah, Abuela?
heard from your third ex-husband recently?
Wussup consummate professional.
(turn on NPR here)
Got nail polish? Got car waxed? Got investments?
(take a networking business lunch here)
Have you streaked your hair enuf?
(mention indigenismo here)
I hope you are caring well for all the nietos
and still have time to be a tiburona
(insert italicized Spanish word here)
How are all your gente ?
(mention mujeres fuertes here)
Hey Latina - when did you move out of the barrio ?
(mention La Raza here)
Mujer Latina—wussup.
how is Gringolandia workin' out 4 U ?
(turn off Univision here)
'cause if the oppression gets too bad
you could always move back
to Venezuela
or Chihuahua
or San Juan,  or...
(mention Trump here)
...Miami?

Dull Dionysiac, ex-Nihilist,

musing on my poorly-played roles now past,

my acts sincere and earnest—but half-assed,

I raved, an irrelevant dramatist.

Misguided former friends and I the cast;

We took our bow, Life stirred, woke up and hissed.

Such hallucinogenic scenes: not missed;

our play a farce, the curtain came down fast.

Recalling useless states I once achieved,

hampered by those intensities once known,

remembering what was beheld, believed,

the trip came to an end; I woke alone.

Frenzy is unsustainable. One learns

to be wary of realms where vision burns.

Reflections on Psalm 97

Good Shepherd? He's more a flame-thrower...
this reaper who doubles as sower.
While His psalms hold our gaze
Holy fires will blaze...
He remains an unknown to the knower.

Though the psalmist prophetically blazed,
some residual doubts are still raised:
the good shepherd and sower
now armed with flame-thrower
both scorches—and leaves one amazed.

Our Lord is a reaper and sower
Spreading light via holy flame-thrower.
While His readership gazed
expectations were razed:
there were less burning standards to lower.

Take an harp, go about the city,
thou harlot that hast been forgotten;
make sweet melody, sing many songs,
that thou mayest be remembered.
                         Isaiah 23:16  (KJV)

Morrison, Hendrix and Janis the J.
(with others lost tripping along the way)
continue to enlighten young stoners,
adolescent existential loners
who hold them as holy and dig their writ
in billows of ****-smoke. Listen to it:
Hendrix and Joplin and Morrison, man
were part of some cosmic, like, master-plan
true prophets—thus sayeth The Lizard King.
High as kites, their disciples hear them sing
suburban anthems to teen perdition
sirens of drug-addled sixties vision.
pockets continue to empty for discs
while taking somewhat calculated risks.
Should vomitous overdose be esteemed
with visions that actual prophets dreamed?
These anointed cherubs of sad excess
can never illuminate, much less bless
a nation of youth who have lost their way
and can't even choose which download to play.
Morrison, man—that dude was so profound
he broke on through to that state where I'm bound...
Moon-struck drummers, now ghosts of dubious name
live on, in pounding out their spectral fame;
exploding dirigibles flown too high
and blown to pieces in Lucifer's sky.
Such riffs and licks and solos and visions
should force us to some unkind decisions
wherein we ask how free we really are
when enslaved to a devil's fallen star.

It was a glass of liquid sunshine
If I were to believe the waiter
My senses would be flooded
With essence of vanilla and
Glimpses of the land.
There would notes of citrus,
Faint odor of old leather
And deep berries would overwhelm.
If I shut my eyes
I could relish the peppery finish
And the buttery after taste.
I would be a fool to overlook
The healthy dose of tannin
Balancing the sweet cherry, plum and cassis.
The wine swirled in my glass
The fragrant bouquet filled my nose
I’d be lying if I said
The anticipation didn’t create
A certain aura of arousal.
Not just the sunshine in this glass
But all four seasons inhabited
My crystal goblet,
And the sheltering moonlight
Was in there too.
This wine surely has character
Like Gandhi or Churchill perhaps.
And legs. What legs.
Slender and vibrating
Long and glistening
I could stare at those legs
Until dessert.
Having passed the cork test,
All eyes were upon me
Lifting the bowl of undulating liquid
To my lips.
I sipped.

Fleece a dream

The man with thin shoulders and a sack
slung on one of them, used to stop outside my house
open the bag and strew a handful of feather light dreams,
and some dreams landed on the window ledge.
I remember she said, be careful don't fall out when
trying to grasp a flake of a dream so easily forgotten.

The man with the thin shoulders has disappeared from
the street no one knew where he had gone, so I went
out looking for him all I found in an empty pond with
a rusty tin of castor oil a product long since in use.
I left the can in the garden in the hope enticing the man
to return with his sack of visions.