Hiccups is gastric CUBISM.

on hot summer days
he'd prance through the sprinklers
this lonely boy, unto himself
and rush back to his apartment
to look in the mirror
at this glistening African Prince

Watch how the sun will  slowly sketch it
in charcoal, then lay on colors, then give full body
to what, a few minutes ago, was
the thinnest apparition...

The Ruckus That Led to The Ridiculous Trials

HE, their male object
THEY, legs crossed wrong, sat flirting
IT rose, pitched big tent

trump believes in climate change
(think on that and weep)

Tad Cummins
Elizabeth Thomas
A beautiful ****** odyssey

We need to re-think our rights of ****** privacy and society's ****** witchcraft.


We need to re-think our ri

We send messages as bombs
We're the new terrorists of the moment
What horrors might this foment?

burgeoning geniuses of rhythm and song
hugging the blues with their guitars
on street corners or in ghetto blues bars
that cry forth clinging laments, soulful chords rising tolling
ancient sadness, exquisite madness
musicians finding their identity
as troubadours of the anguished heart
by way of a beggar's cup
a little luck
and those shouted encores worth more than a million bucks

such fast moving clouds
as if fleeing my craven
need to poke a stop

the birds of last year
are here again singing clear
i sneeze - spring fever

The Muslim woman is perhaps
the most enticing female on the planet
with her hijab (head covering)
her burqa (outer garment enveloping most of her body)
her niqa (total veil)
Such strict apparel floods our mind with curiosity and fantasies about what is so hidden
Hence the covered Muslim woman is  a reenactment of every woman's beauty, power and numinosity
a veiled vision that inscribes itself across our mind
and inescapably through our libido

ICE
freezes
lives
upside
down

he loves to hear the joyful whistle blowing clearing his mind of dark despairs, loves to breathe in the scented whoosh of the halting wheels as he stands on the platform and watches a train arrive, and when  he waves at the engineer or a porter-it makes him feel so alive

it's the arrivals and the departures, the clickety-clack refrain, the pageantry and majesty of it all that so quickly enthralls

at first little squeaks asserting...(you thought nothing of it)
you wanted it this way and did your bit

bit when tiny fingers and hands started the gotcha grasps!
you were defenseless against the kickings and a sudden lash

how you dreaded those crazy boundings from side to side
that made you think you were in for a rough ride

and today fists pounding madly with fierce blows
as if a future dictator were warming up in embryo!

i

She strums her graffitied mandolin
shakes her leaden locks about her Spanish head
takes a while to begin
her now crone's song of melodious sighs
lamenting world's false equations and cruelly-veiled lies.
--surreal woodcut of Joan Baez

So vain is she at ninety-nine
every time she looks in the mirror she calls herself "fine."
Tonight she awaits her Valentine,
a suave gent of only eighty-nine
whom she knows will jiggle her huge implants into youthful prime.
He loves those ***** so firm and big
and her every new color of ***** wig.

Wherefore has this unspeakable evil arrived in our midst?

Even at 5 years he was haunted by a restless beat
that fused into a narrative
that went fetching for words to rhyme
to make complete

His voice a kind of squeaky twang
that leveled into low and high registers
he couldn't seem to tame
much to his parents' shame

He'd stalk about the trees in his backyard in Duluth
like an urchin on a mission
hugging his inventive rhythms to himself
and exulting in their satisfactions

Choiring sometimes with the mourning doves
he thought made a beautiful rendition
his blowing sweetly his imaginary harp
while other birds joined in with very few flubs

though often he'd roll in late for supper

Awesome animal
Magician with your amazing sleight of neck tricks
Coat of tawny spots a perfect artist painted
Your wondrous balletic grace lends mystery and eyeful daze
as we look up to you with inexpressible sorrow
aware that one day you might vanish from our smitten sight

countless darnings of minds'
explanations
on that spermy night of drab renown

pernod of licorice spilling
over her thighs of chance
our unsettled merriment never knowing where to land

our silly ripostes
demanding a touch
a look

not the whirr
of sparrows across our barren heaven
or the finality of a sibling's dry kiss

i am walking towards sunset and gower in hollywood, california

an aged man tap dances for me in the echoing garage of a foreclosure

a bug is sleeping between the quick and the dead when a raindrop falls on it, jolting it flamboyantly

a small boy with perfectly combed and pomaded hair, and carrying a briefcase, follows proudly his mother (?) down the sidewalk

a ***'s heavy load is thrown over his other shoulder in a bright spank of sun

a rare yugo parked in the driveway of a duplex, egg splatter drying across taillights and rear window

the crass bebop step of an old ******* nearing the ***** section of the sidewalk newstand

a sudden gust of wind flattening the fur of a standing collie

a silver/gray tourist bus passes slowly, the voice of the driver unintelligibly droning energetically

i open the screen door of roscoe's house of chicken and waffles, and see a vacant table by the window

an ice cube wearing a tiny paper life jacket
is left in a saucer on an open windowsill
of a Palm Springs mansion
by a child's dark hands

somewhere

someone is without shoes
somewhere

someone hasn't eaten in 4 days
somewhere

someone lies dying for lack of medical funds

Meanwhile

the main anguish revolving around the zealous candidates is who groped who or who didn't ***** who, a comedian's tired shtick if ever there was one, all said with bitterly serious faces in this Great Election Year Mystery of The Groping Hands.

it's the uncertainty at the edges which flavors everything
the stalking on a tightrope
a life of ciphers amidst the grandeurs
wayward furrows in quaint directions
quiet shapes with open mouths
of crisis ad lost contentment
or do you see through your own eyes
a hidden yearning to meet the level ground?

A raindrop falls on
a sleeping bug who's jostled
quite flamboyantly.

Careful, the naked woman in the
bathroom mirror stands behind you
as if she has something in her hands
she finds difficult to show you.
Does she want to turn you to yourself?
But what would you find that you
do not want to know?
Or is she about to suggest again
a couple months separation?
That 3-day no speaking moratorium
did neither of you any good.
No, you don't look at yourself
only at her through the mirror.
Careful, do not ask the mystery
of her distant downcast eyes.
Ah, just as you are about to
snap off the lights
to end this little scene
she holds up the busted TROJAN!

i wander along the walkways
where the tame animals are fenced
and where the loyal crowd climb
up to the big top
i'm paid a pittance
to put on a little show
before the big one starts
i never tire of
petting the elephants,
the tigers, even the
tiny black spiders
that crawl along
the picket fences
my hat is a paper mache affair
that keeps coming loose
till it looks like part of my hair
i have shoes too big for my feet
and most days my smile
is only half complete
people see me
think i'm a good **** for their jokes
let's taunt this
doddering, nerdy bloke
nobody laughs at me except
when i cry
it's like i'm back in school
the poor picked on guy
i'm silent like Keaton
quiet no riot
though sometimes i fear
a bully might sneak up
and give me a beatin'
but bravely i forge on
happy when i hear
the roustabouts warbling a song
or an elephant yawning in
the early dawn
i don't complain much
though i hunger occasionally
for a tender touch
i think of my lost loves
but that just makes me cry
i pull out my hanky
and daub while
the people get
a good laugh passing by
my life is here
but one day will go
and people will then say,
"you don't mean THAT poor Joe?"
and maybe the band
will strike up a tune
and maybe not
fame i have never sought
luck or no luck
life's just the way
the cookie crumbles
so let the acrobats tumble
the trapeze artists take
their flips and the
lions roar at every crack of the whip
i remain a clown
of no renown
who rarely hears the clapping sound

huge black hulk of sunken sagging bedding
his armchair has seen its better days
his mousy derelictions from society's dictums
have born a wastrel with feet of clay
a bookworm hiding from the birds of prey
a lover unloved except for that long ago kiss on a Paris quay

cigarette burns and sudden coffee spills
scarce paper and broken quills
tribunal assaults on ambition's embattled frays
he holds fast to this chair
through many a  disorienting maze
holds fast to this comfort flop of better days

canaries mourn the demise of his old dog lassie
while johns down the street rejoice over their ******' chassis
and the ice cream man takes a breather on the Santa Monica sands
listening to the far away poet
wrap up his film in the can
for video night at the local poetry slam

milk wood meetings in slumberous afternoons
enforce the guilt of absent attractions
though grateful bon ami erases
evidence of the satisfaction
then often leans back in his chair
falling asleep on a half remembered line of Poe or John Clare

awakening wishing once for a computer
though he thinks them a crime
a luddite at heart
neighbors revile him for being an old ****
yet sometimes he sinks deeper into his chair
imagining taking the big step if he dare

burp me mrs sweeny pleads
to her lover who raps her on the back
2 or 3 times and a fourth for FOOD luck
as on the bachelor's chair they commence to ****
though after stepping into the morning's widowed wind
all seems bleak and commonly thin

but both he and she kept the loss of a sedentary promise fearfully within

He loves to hear the rapturous whistle blowing clearing his mind of dark despairs,
to breathe in the scented whoosh of the slowing wheels
as he stands on the platform watching the arrival of another train.

Coast Starlight, Sunset Limited, Southwest Chief, each with a name.
He joins the other watchers standing there without shame
to greet the wave of an engineer or porter, sunshine or rain.

It's the pageantry.
It's the arrival and departure majesty.
It's the impromptu theater soothing a soul's troubling pain.

There are times he books a Pullman berth, its pillow he snuggles
to lose all the world's cares and struggles,
while rocking so blessedly to the clickety-clack refrain.

One such morning enthralled by seeing America's historic prairies
outside his window, he sets forth prancing through noisy unbalancing vestibules that make him even more merry!
till he reaches the car where like a king he'll reign.

Breakfast in the sun-splashed diner, pancakes and ham,
joking with the headwaiter, and being lavished with free side dishes by the cook, and smiling broadly like a suitor when a lady blushes
from a compliment he makes on her gams.
Though never too busy to sneak a look at the lunch menu where he decides he'll order later the hot meatloaf sandwich with gravy on a wheat bun of  7 "healthy" grains.

Late afternoon in the club car, a Coke by his side
he asks the guy opposite, "Enjoying the ride?"
"You bet! Beats the hassle with planes."

The stranger continues, "Going far?" he asks.
"No. Here and there. Keeping active since my wife passed."
"Ah, nobody wins the life game."

"Honey, the kids want a hamburger"-a stunning blonde stands over the guy who rises, shakes hands and says goodbye.
The train watcher feels a loss he can't explain.

But the lulling vistas of farmland and the soothing whistle blowing such pleasing keys
soon abolish all traces of unease.
He knows when arriving at his destination he'll be the first to ride back again down the all-healing railway lane.

He keeps a flute in his boot.
Plays it for strangers, listens for little crashes of loot.
Sleeps on a stone bench near the ocean.
Sometimes he gets drunk , hollers, causes commotion.
Some days he ***** about
in his loose oversized castoff suit
looking as if he might fly
or cry when the sun shines blindness
across his two *** eyes.
Passersby know not
that once he brought the house down
with Ellington in a jazzy joint in Harlem town.

Hear the eee eee eee and the eee eee eep!
black sheep gathered on a curbside street
to blow piccolos from cavities deep
to let jaunty tunes fill the skid row streets.

lacey sea foam tossing through windy air

aging man with walking stick and poet's mop of gray hair trudges through sand...
halts, leaning on his stick , observing an old woman with shriveled body
and age-riddled skin stretched out on a giant towel trying to get a tan

[Title Card: Maybe this man, old tattler, esteemed former laureate, is wondering if he could make a sonnet out of this sight. ]

he walks on, stooping to pick up a conch shell near his feet
looks at it, turns it clock and counter, peers into it

holds shell to ear
starts slow meditative amble towards mist-waving distance

[Title Card: Doesn't it seem he might be hearing humming of every thing's destiny in the brittle pink alleys?]

air
not
breathed
nor
folded
hands
feel

Today she wore curlers in her hair
looking like cannons staked out ready to blare

Her lipstick and powder
like bouillabaisse chowder

And when she demanded a goodbye "peck"
I said "No way!" to the wreck

Which made her rear back and bray
"Go home then and kiss a stingray!"

She cackled and cackled
raising my hackles

Thinks she is the second Joan Rivers
but she only gives me the shivers

Soon I was fearing another fight nearing
seeing her witch's eyes evilly peering

And when she rose in those clumpy army boots
I heard an arpeggio of loud flatulent *****

Forcing me out the door needing fresh air
and away from her threatening glare

But one day I'll be back
once I can align myself on the proper son-in-law track

an astounding sounding guitar
in its fall against
a plump porcelain pig
brings thumps
from three goldfish
squirming on newspaper
about to be dumped into a bowl
of fresh water and faux flora
by the maid in a cute yellow taffeta cap
and strawberry red shoes
lifted on toes

at splash