I found ribbons where others found nothing
Peacock feathers lying on the ground
I know the name of your father, I know your name
The soul of you inside my own soul
As we passed each other in the final round

What country is this?
Not mine,
What kind of people allow its people…
What kind of bigotry promotes this
What color is blood?

Your gun is shiny and sticks out of your pants,
It rubs against your *****
and fits perfectly In your hands
The sweat in your palm
Is made of gunpowder and ***.

Jizzle juice monsters
Preying on our streets,
Spraying your ball-bearings
over baby carriages
between the eyes of grandmothers
silencing the singers who only want
to sing.

Can’t you all go somewhere?
Meet somewhere in a desert where
Your bandanas can fly
High on poles of braided bones
With skull dust and snake bile
and maps meant to lead you to
the utopia of your sick wet dreams

There,  Jizzle man, you can have it all
Blow up your rivals and your friends
Bleed yourselves into the rhapsody
of bullet holes and death.
And then
let the rest of us
move on.

When I was 15, I remember buying singles like
The Lion Sleeps Tonight,  Louie, Louie,  Wild Thing,
I Got You Under My Skin…
I remember buying 45 RMP plastic speed adapters for pennies-
pressing them into the center of the records
hearing them click in place.

They were a part of my youth,
little plastic things that popped out of the pockets of my jeans
whenever my mom did the wash,

invaluable, necessary, plastic discs that appeared everywhere -
inside my jewelry box, on top of my dresser,
even in bottom of my black & white, catholic saddle-shoes…

incredible, magically, musically endowed, little middle plastic things,
like guitar-picks,

strumming radiant sounds in a back-yard universe
across the beams of a basement winter's homily
inside the space-lined ears of a bleached blond teenager

whose heart & soul
were permanently scorched.

Just as the goodness gets caught in the closure
The doves are driven from the sky
Blackness bores down on the heated stems
of the dandelions
the lions leap once before they die

I thought of you on that river
Your faded flannel shirt tied to your waist
A broken oar in your left hand
As you paddled lopsided to the dock

I knelt down to meet you
brushed the salt stains from your face
caught the smell of ****** on blistered lips
inhaled the kiss off you –
then let it go

will you be there when the waters meet
when the last sparrow circles west
and all the skulls of all the kings
have bullet-holes as they’re laid to rest

You knew the season, the changing wind
The way the storm clouds hovered low,
You sensed the ending, the deluge coming
the river unrelenting,
swirling round your small wooden boat,
your ******-clear eyes

and broken oar.

…For Now
the people I know are talking taxes, the price of heat, ******* food!

The people he serves
wipe their spoons on silk napkins, slap each others’ shoulders
take each others’ wineskins, corkscrews in their eyeballs,
walL sT. on their grins

The people I know get up in the morning, every morning,
everyday (in every possible way) to get to work,  
work all day, then come home tired,  a bit more afraid

The people he serves are out of his league
truly rich men with swash-buckle needs
avarice men with bundles of greed
to lay upon the stooges who desecrate the dream
who pick up the court jester and let him play lead…

we fund them both – the rich man and the clown
dress them up in emperor clothes, bow down
to their blows, we take it all and plead for parity,
wipe their smell from blistered hands
cuddle in cameraless work-cells
with a smartphone or a podcast jam

The people I know talk about the government
the inequality, the lopsided way it’s rigged,
the unfairness in squeezing every dime
tell each other things like – ‘chin-up’ ‘don’t give up’
‘nothing we can do about it anyway’

The people I know,
talk

How Much Gets Me On A Bus?  to the City?
          (I live 30 minutes away)

more than this ever will - POETRY
I’ve been writing ‘poems’ ever since I remember
ever since 11 –
reciting these phenomenal words of wisdom
to any and all who would listen
forcing family-members & friends

that’s the thing about poetry,
it makes you feel like it’s important,
makes you think the words you sling together
aren’t really yours
it comes to you, through you, needs to come out of you,
and when its over you’re just as amazed
as they should be.

but they’re not, I mean
they like poetry, admire it,
even enjoy it sometimes,
but they could honestly
give it up in a heartbeat,
live without it.
You know what I mean?

I’m like you
like all the people who come here
I'm part poetry as poetry is me
A Dodge Poetry Attendee many years –
my arm once around Gwendolyn Brooks,
cried in a church with Lucille Clifton
talked Newark to Baraka –
know the honorable Slammer, Patricia Smith!

I’ve sat many years with the Lords of Literature - my professors
who all seemed to know “whose got it”
the intellectuals of American prose who seem to be searching for a rookie,
the next best troubadour college-student that will grace their faculty-doors…

The poetry I read here is incredible
Some of the best stuff on the net,
poignant, painful , honest, raw, sensual, serious – provokingly real

words I read here startle me, stun me at times
so clear in meaning, well-crafted, chosen words
unusually strong

They’re the kind of words the got-it people have,
the poet people (probably all people have)
poetry is just another way of finding an infallible song –

(I still say we should go sing it on the bus!)

Today is Donna’s birthday –

All these many years later
I still remember it –
several times today I thought of her
and gently waved hi

Donna was the name of my first baby,
(short for Donald, my ex)
my girl baby who lived for 4 days
and then changed her mind.

She was a summer baby too.

When I think of both Donnas
I see tiny, Italian angels
petite , pretty little things
with brown golden hair.
I still see the dimples on their faces,
and the bright black light shining in their eyes…

Tonight I hold a candle in their memory
Tonight I drink to the summers of their birth,
Knowing that their lives will always live in me –

Both Donnas,
One, who came to me in childhood.
magically fused by friendship and something more –
and Baby Donna,
whose fragile body held such sweet life

Both Donnas,
who have been with me
through so many changing skies…
inside of me
where their faces are etched in crystal
and their wings
form a door.

Game hour  
chicken breath & big blue’s
beer spotted moon