Amur leopards
Blue-green eyes, soft sleek spotted fur
Amur leopards
victims of man's greed intrepid
to show off coats for him and her.
Stop the hunting, help save for sure
Amur leopards

Metaphysically speaking, computers are straitjackets of the soul.

Another definition of sadomasochism is golf.

Melodrama is when you are allowed to laugh at tragedy.

"Time stampedes with ease
No paradox."--
the wristwatch of hard knocks

If you've got a cold you can't taste it
But you can WEAR it in your mouth
You'll love how it fits and feels , makes you want
To parade it against cheeks and jowls and
Anticipate the imminent, soothing avalanche

a pleasant anticipation they give to your chafing taste buds
for that taste once sampled is forever craved

their shapes beckon visually to
keen designer minds

and their ancient blessings go back to 2000 B.C.
much later, their nutrients American Indians praised

they give veggie hugs to those most in need
of a psychological boost or a tooth's soft sink

when you sit down to dinner and before you gleams their pale green
a smile might open your mouth for the tasty taste of a ....  ....

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

I've got the computer blues.
Where is a live human being?
Where is the touch of a warm hand?
Where are eyes I can look into and trust?
Gotta lose these computer blues or bust!
Once folks talked Windows of the Soul
Now it's Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 9, Windows 10
More high tech to make us nervous wrecks.

I'm ruled by a tyrant's silent commands:
Click here, click there, double click, go back
Click again,  go to tools, , click advanced settings,
Click here, click there, ( hey! why the blank screen?)  click yes, double click
(hey! where did advanced settings go?)click, double click help click! click!
But help isn't helping, not a bit.
Not even in the quick digital "information age."
I whirl away in a rage!
Gotta lose these computer blues or bust!

I clear my throat.
Dare I speak?
WHO to speak TO?
I scream at the silent screen (unheard).
Much easier to talk to a bird.
Gotta lose these computer blues or bust!

Where is a live human being?
Where is the touch of a warm hand?
Where are eyes I can look into and trust?

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

Half-sane near the Seine
with my Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum
who lifted her skirts
to give the lie to the Oriental Lie,
I thought it apposite that an insane
clochard stood a speaker's distance
and masticated franc notes like portions
of ****** "pain" while he ogled
the impenetrable ideogram of
The Beast With Two Backs penetrating

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

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

Quaalude Bill I'm called
'cause to many hot ladies
I slipped a pill or two
then each lady
I shamelessly balled

I loved every one of them
in my own way
but deeply regret how
I went off the track
with my mad zest
for ***** crack

Oh, they did flash  me a bit
egged me on
but that's no excuse
for my despicable ruse

I don't ask the ladies' forgiveness
What's done is done
I rub my tired eyes and try to calm
my uncalm  heart, ask
might we not walk a little again
under the ancient blessings of the healing sun?

Let us
seriously consider
bringing back
the horse
as a
means of transportation
in our cities.

Menopausal women gather under the tall elms
in a green sward of cooling breezes
Nearby the rushing river is so a-tonally melodic now
As they forgive their ignorances, their mistakes
Their dilatory dreams, their half-steps that backlashed

Their quenchless unseen fire now
the consoling measure of their days
of their secret songs
knowing for those who need,
nothing dies

annihilations
annihilations
annihilations

Paris, Paris, Paris, GIANT SURVIVOR!!!!

buttered noodles O stay hot you quickly cooling wrigglies!
and you, naked geisha
sing me to sleep-
but disobey your decorous caresses

Some women serve up their ******* in coyness
under blouse, purposely delineated.
Others serve them up in boldness
rolling them out and hoisted to
their lips or ours for pleasure.
Still others serve them on the half-shell--
a teasing delicacy, but are they FAKE OR NATURAL?
Alas! Sometimes it's a ****** tough job to tell!

dilapidated memories of
porters holding luggage
pointed north, south, east, west
till above greasy lighted seas
a semblance poses:
broken windows hanging in
melancholic cadences of
dank repair and
doors of half remembered cabarets open and
close on treacherous gardens seething
tiny bones of lost dreams
a lover's whispered kiss hiding betrayal
a ballerina's advent through billowing pink clouds
a yacht moored to the docks of a mansion
slow winter sunsets kindling false yearns
naked summer skin now
expanse of cautious smiles and tender smokes
beneath the azure skies of
answered praise and fall
to each gathered day

skyscrapers
multitudes
midgets

LOST IN NEW YORK

All good deeming and
all good seeming
casting gold
upon the dark
and the dross
in ancient kindly gleaming.

the butler
brought in
the tray of libations
and it seemed
her ******* were
thinking me as
I thanked him
and wondered if
I must choose
between his
unfamiliar hug
            or
her gaudy ****
so I moseyed
over to a
corner and
tried to
explicate the
dinner gong
tolling across
the mansion's
badlands like
strident
smacks
ringing
out of a
*******'s dungeon--
I could almost
hear the ****
Piper getting
paid or asking
to be--
Well, I guess,
after all,
she was holding
my tray,
wasn't he?

I do think, darling
If you fixed me deviled eggs
Such work would show you loved me.

Despite your sorrow, your grief,
your smile stayed sweet
giving warmth as you
maneuvered through the world,
a solitary, inner orphan
since that awful time a few years ago

The heavy pain you carried
that wouldn't let you be

The unanswered conundrums that
resisted parsing for one so young

Yet all along, there was the inherited voice
lying quietly within you

like a sleeping bird's
awaiting the dawn

desiring to sing again
in splendorous tones

a new day's joyful awakening

February 3, 2015

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.

harsh  wind
barbers rows of sunflowers:
yellow carpet laid

A racist highway patrol trooper by name of Brian
loves to see how all these black folks are dyin'
Is much maligned for his own terrible ruse
that recently put a black woman in her noose

Is anything quite as peaceful in city life?
All that world of water and quick glimmers of fish.
Or gleefully finding pollywogs wiggling through the shallow waters along the concrete shore.
And if you listen carefully you can almost hear the sun singing.
Unpack your suitcase of dreams.
There's no one here to bother you. Time stands still
like the water lilies and the rose bushes serenely undisturbed...
while in the middle of the pond might be a statue of a cherubic angel
smiling down its happy blessings.

Former Presidential Candidate   Adlai E. Stevenson II (Democrat--circa 1950s) was spotted reincarnated as a young trappist  Buddhist monk in a monastery in Saint Croix, U.S. ****** Islands. In the early evening hours he can be seen enjoying himself swinging in a hammock in the monastery's garden while making 12-mile inhalations on a marijuana cigarette and meditating on the possible dire encumbrances due the 2016 election year, though the balmy tinctured breezes thick with naughty **** often dissipate such fustian concentrations.

Don't skim those keys
like your fingers are feathers,
Press down the loud pedal,
Lean in earnestly and
Do beat those hammers;
Break the glass of your voice,
Croon wooden lines from an
old folk ditty if you must,
but jump on it!
That fin I gave you
nestles in your pocket
and all I hear are a piano tuner's
pick...pick...pick...
Lift this shroud of night,
Be God,
Open the heavens--
your fingers bouncing aflame with
the apocalypse of daylight!

Obama struttin' with
some barbecue?

Ain't nobody's business
if he do!

To draw a comical square, simply refrain from closing one side, leaving the line open at a wide angle. Caption your drawing with the words "The Square as Comedian."

when they have become
all but non-existent
flaky leather fastly flaking
into ungraspable dust

one day you might
notice on a path or
piece of land how an
errant playful wind
is whirling some dust
round and round
now imagine a jovial tune
hands clapping in accompaniment
as your feet cut a step to
the whirling whirling whirling
of the lonely dust dancing

O dancing dust!
O dancing shoes
In whirling dust incarnate!

In this world where some people
have turned their backs on beauty,
on the right to human dignity,
on the very breath of life itself,
there are men and women of peace and vision
who exhort us to hear the music of the spheres,
to feel true heavenly light
in the renewal of Earth's daily light,
to sense divinity in the mysterious darkness
upon us every night,
the moon above a guiding light.

The people who stand deaf and blind
to the destruction they rain,
unaware it shall backfire
on their own kind--
to them a message:

smell the flowers
walk the shores
undress beautiful women
fill your hearts with humbling sights
read the ancient poets
take a deep breath for the gift of life
STOP THE KILLINGS

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 old guy he die
he old guy who once sat in the sun
he had a cocker spaniel who sat in the sun
and soothed like custard the old guy both die
he lived for plays drama actors
many entrances and exits
now where he be
in the not to be

spotted only by our mind's bright light

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.

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.

The painting opposite the bartender
hangs him every night.
It's a portrait of his ex-wife
who owns the joint and
holds the mortgage on his rotting future.

He tells his regulars it's all the way
you look at things, or you can make a
case for truth or untruth about anything.
What's your pleasure?

But always some vagary
will collide his glance against the portrait--
and it's then he feels himself twist
a
little
creaking
millimeter
more...

You're intense as Einstein
as you brush that brush to
make some fanciful line
You're one of my ancestors
and I am proud of your kind
The designs you find
come directly from your mind
Designs garishly entwined
Shapes pleasingly sublime
You daub and lob
-a ******* intact-
While we observe with awe
your very talented knack

One time I dreamed Aphrodite rose from the sea...
All naked and glistening was she...
"Why all the clothes?" she asked of me. "This earth and sea are made for the free."
So I shed my shirt and trunks and into the waters blue I sunk...
Then felt an arm embrace my waist as she led me o'er the dunes in haste...
Toward an island of leafy trees and greenery where naked men and women frolicked through the scenery...
A land without cries of war...
Just a lovely waterfall's roar...
Quickly she took both my hands and we danced to nature's gentle band...
The merry breezes whistled and birds were brightly singing...
Yes, one time I dreamed Aphrodite rose from the sea and showed me in naked splendor how to be free!

Stygian moods bring us out
Our crude passions lulled
in the soft wind meeting our waists
as four ingenious match sticks patter
a rhythm in the clean air
and the jingle of a polished silver bracelet
garnished round his furry neck
flouts depression's tight leash

Sprightly songs I hum to keep me sane
These lonely afternoons as I
Loll in broken shoes, ripped pants
Once bespoke by Cardin
O much changed am I!
But my sad smiles
Artists love,
Nymphets
Kiss

The crazy weatherman
was sure he'd soon be
a billionaire with all that
climate change
jingling in his pockets.

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