Like a captive, I capture rapture wrapping around stakes that matter
Joan of Arc battered
Also tattered but, easily dismissive
Refracted from fractured prominent phrases people play with
Distinctly persuasive and evasive, dressed boyishly attractive, lax stature, dawning armor crafted by absence as if asked about it-
I’m drifted
Protection is principle prerequisite, when fire is lit
I sort of implore your aorta before it’s incinerated to ashes
Dethatched as a habit, with swords or hatchets crafted to singe heartstrings that attached it
While I slash slick Rick as a quick fix,
To fend for pretend pretenses or presumed tricks,
I can’t quit
Cause I hit lips against hash spliffs fashioned with dashes of passion all while rationing fireball cinnamon sips
Martyr to avoidance
I gaze at fabled dazed gossipers galvanizing grips on gritty grapevines while licking warning labels through smoke haze on blurred lines
Capably unstable
Other eyes attending scandal circles able to shout lies and rekindle handed arguments on tables with locked smiles stay boxed in
Avidly amiable
Searching for counterparts when combusted or branded
Toying with matches loses meaning when rules reseed
Those vagabonds claim love is some all end hard bent to mend what the same above can’t comprehend.
Breaking boredom, I pillage pillows with night terrors
And ardent arsonists yearn for flames that churn, turn, liquefy and learn learned thoughts and smoldered feelings
Completely complacent
Melting in one another they are completing each other like two candles tryst true at a wedding day
However later the blaze is severed, smoke sears, and charred black wick stands alone for them.
Aggressive and progressive.
As for me never pleading, fire forever fleets to streets between iron bars I built that cage in deep heat and seep dire dreams once desired
Suppose I’m a skeptic
Roasted or disconnected
Just jaded, just met you
Always over it too soon
Burnt but I’m amused.
I’m useful.

these western leftist,
make us former commies...
look... really really
******* bad...

        my grandfather,
who was abandoned by his
father, spewed by the lies
of his father's brother,
found some stability
in the communist party...

sometimes did jury duty...
the communist party
gave him a house... etc. etc.,
but this, "thing" in the west?
the dissonance conundrum
of creating a collective hive?

it doesn't, and it will never work...
i already said this,
but i'll say it again...
communism does work...
but in only one instance...
post-war countries,
esp. given the plight of
Syria...
                
           it's a transitory period...
so the Syrian baker
can trust the ******* Syrian
taxi cab driver, once again...
communism is not a failure
in that it's applied as
a fail-safe concept,
a rebuilding mechanism,
  
like Poland... 1945...
through to circa 1990...
    it worked...
  **** it worked...
  eastern Europe didn't
receive funds from the American
Marshall Plan...

but Sweden and Switzerland
did...
   i thought they were neutral
countries in the conflict?

communism is a failure if its not
considered a recovery economy,
or rather:
    there's no or other at this point...

in post-war scenarios,
it's the only egalitarianism that works
in the short-end...
this is not English style of
egalitarian idealism...
   (a term i borrow from German
idealism of Kant)...
            no... the English don't know
that their egalitarian idealism
doesn't work...
it's too soft...
the war was harsh...
you're not going to rebuild
the same civic plateau with capitalism,
of a country that was either:
invaded by a foreign power,
or imploded into chaos via
a breach of ethnic-civility...

you can't rebuild Syria with
foreign intervention...
communism is far from a failure
of ideology...
   it was always supposed
to instigate a transitional
period, a post-scriptum...
   a communism can exist,
successfully, for... roughly 50 years...
once the tragedy passes...

and then the free markets can
take over, capitalism can have its
"stage fright", or rather its
wild west...
            but not before the circa 50
years are over...
  a Syrian baker,
   must begin a civil dialectic with
a Syrian taxi driver...
no amount of foreign intervention
will solve the problem...

it's not like you can reuse
the rubble to rebuild the same houses...
sure... the darkest hour
in Poland under communism was
when martial law (stan wojenny)
was implemented by
Wojciech Jaruzelski
(Roy Orbison, no, really,
Roy Orbison)...
food-stamps, long queues at supermarkets
rationing... only white vinegar on
the shelves of supermarkets...
the whole presupposition of war
against the Soviets,
  counter measures to
      avoid the instances of
the Hungarian / Czechoslovakian
occupation / suppression...
   the Parisian spirit of '68...
every time i look into your loving eyes,
one look, from you,
  i drift... away!
    i pray, that you, are here, to stay!
anything you want, you got it...
anything you need, you got it...
anything at all, you got it...
   bay.................................. be!

western Europe received pittance
pay-checks from H'america...
eastern Europe received the hard graft of
communism...
             and it worked...
because it was supposed to work
for the 50 or so years that it did work...
when it stopped working...
my home town lost roughly 20K
   metalwork jobs...
  the metalwork factory was scrapped,
cut up, sold to foreign investors...
Celsa? i believe that's a Spanish company...

some people grew old, retired,
some went on the dole,
some became homeless,
some migrated to other parts of the country,
otherwise took the bold route
and emigrated to other parts of
Europe and the world...
a town dies, the people disperse
if in a dispersing worthy age...

     but i turn on the tube...
and listen to all these leftist lunatics,
and i'm like...          what?!
communism works,
   it works, in exceptional circumstances,
and like i said, before an equal
footing competition market resurfaces,
you're getting ****...
             this is not to suggest that
communism is at odds with capitalism...
apparently... it never was!

         but... you can't rebuild
Syria with capitalism...
  first you have to return to a commonly
shared civility, a counter to what
already exists in the English egalitarian idealism...
best represented as:

a 200m race at the Olympics...
all the competitors walk an equal
pace for 100m...
        and the next 100m?
they do their sprint, they compete!
but not until communism creates
a basis for a mutual trust of civility
between a Syrian baker,
and a Syrian taxi driver...

      capitalism and outright
competition will never solve the problem...
because outright competition
creates nothing more than
an dystopian: post-apocalyptic
mad max: fury road endless cycle of
recurring opportunists...

scavengers...
                      it works... in periods of
roughly 50 years...
what... and capitalism isn't prone
to its own timescales of economic crashes?!
see...
             even capitalism has hiccups...
but like i said:
    communism works...
for time periods, post-scriptum of
the damaging events...
                        under exceptional circumstances
of it being necessarily implemented...
like world war II... the Syrian civil war;
and only then!

****... my grandfather and all the other
school children, actually cried
when news hit the country about Stalin's death...
i have access to an actual ****** source,
what do you have?
  a target of ridicule,
        donning a che guevara t-shirt
who still hasn't rid himself of acne?

There was death and gore,

During the second world war.

Many people died in extreme violence,

Killed before they could call out to loved ones.

Young men were trained to ****,

Often against their morals and will.

So when I see your 1940s weekend -

Your 'war was fun and cosy' pretence,

Your clichéd polyester and fibre glass mockery,

Aiming to re-enact a mostly imagined happy-go-lucky camaraderie -

Forgive me for not joining in,

As I happen to feel it a cardinal sin,

To idealise and romanticise a decade,

Made up of austerity, rationing and air raids.

I've read a little social history,

The 1940s were not idyllic or crime-free,

Just as now, there were heroes and villains,

Among the soldiers and civilians.

Heroism abounded but so did black marketeering,

There were brave sacrifices but also racketeering.

City-wide black-outs were a gift,

To those who would rob and grift.

Your jolly nostalgic tribute is an annual celebration,

Celebrating your own fabrication,

Of a time when the machinations of war and a crazed ideology,

Saw the near extinction of an entire ethnic minority.

I do not wish to be a party pooper,

But don't just step into the fake shoes of a fictional trooper,

Please occasionally remove your rose-tinted glasses,

To remember that beyond your nostalgic narrative of the routines of the masses,

People lived with the daily fear,

Of the likely deaths of people they held dear.

Any brighter and
streams in the ditches
would look like Cuyahoga River
across Cleveland during the 1960's

There is no fire, only flies
who make bright their bellies
and flash for show like the perverts
in metropolitan inner city parks

Enticed to the flies, like moths
to the ceiling globes,
we gather jars and lids
with air holes hammered hard

No walking as we streak
along gravel roads built after WWII
when rationing was lifted
and road speeds jumped

Flies caught one by one
are smashed on white tees,
luminous signals for drivers
alert to the folly of our play

Our madness endures
until Ball  jars become
dim lanterns of joy for us and jail
for the bugs doomed


to die before daybreak
until swept from the garage
floor as we plot our assault
on airborne glimmers along
tonight's roadsides

why is it that you only remember kissing?

or fumbling with plastic buttons in dim hallways, or folding his pants alongside your dresses
or laughing, or heading home to a bed you both could call yours.
why is it that the nights you spend crying in the next room- why does that fade?
you remain always dusty. god, all those days and months seperated by borders and waters you spent rationing these precious packages of recollection, closing your eyes and watching from a distance, as a younger, softer you rested her head on a pair of shoulders that were always there, a pair of shoulders that grew arms to hold you with, and a mouth to kiss you with, and fingers that would trace you and taste you and smudge you. now you know everything about love with nothing to show for it. now the safest place is nowhere near you.

you remember reaching out in the middle of the night, you remember why you quit smoking, you remember how he tasted, how he pulled you closer under the covers on cold sunday mornings. you would make room now when you would never make room before. now that it's too late, now that you are not fine. you remember kissing.

Despair
Trapped under tons of rock
How did they pass those 17 days,
A brotherhood of men
lost like a child’s shoe in the sand?
Rationing a morsel of food and water
for who knew how long
fate as uncertain as the stale air
and then another seventy days
of darkness and despair.

Freedom
The gradual progress of the drill
and all the careful calculations
before the flimsy cage,  
Encapsulated in a tube of rock,
a miracle of engineering,
determination and daring,
birth canal, difficult and painstaking,
a tunnel towards the light of freedom.

Faith
The prayer of a voice
from the depths of the desert,
A scrap of paper
Waved like a banner of life,
A freed miner kneeling,
resisting  for a moment
the magnet of family.
to give thanks in faith.

Joy*
The raw emotion
ore from the womb of the earth
the intensity of pain and joy
in the faces of the children  
as their fathers returned from the tomb;
a world waiting in the glare of hope
a world for once joined in joy.

It’s February, 2015, a Saturday and here I ‘yam.
Back in sunny California again:
The sun shining brightly again
On My Old Hemetucky Home,
Another mutant Stephen Foster tune.
Hemet: Riverside County,
Southern California,
The so-called Inland Empire,
According to the hyperbolic parlance,
Of sharkskin-suited land speculators,
Truly, the last of the
Patent medicine, liniments &
Snake oil hucksters.
Hemet: little oversight & lax policing
Yield a thriving, local
Medical-marijuana industry.
You are comfortably tucked . . .  
TUCKS® Medicated Pads | TUCKS®
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(THAT’S RIGHT, *******: A ******* COMMERCIAL RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ******* POEM!  GIUSEPPI MARTINO BUONAIUTO--SURELY NOBODY”S FOOL—FINALLY FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE POETRY PAY, THEREFORE AVOIDING THE DIED-IN-THE-GUTTER BIT.)
You are safely tucked behind the impenetrable
(www.tucks.com)
Wackenhut G4S Security-
(www.wackenhut.com)
Policed & Patrolled walls,
Of your typical over-55 gated lunatic asylum.
“For Active Adults,” reads the sign,
Whatever that means.
I’ve been thinking about the adventurous young.
What is it these bright,
Wander-lusting whippersnappers
Fixate and obsess about.
Like dropping out & coasting for a while.
Dropping out & coasting:
Not as easy to pull off for 20-somethings these days,
As it was in the late sixties/early seventies,
Flush times for Guns & Butter.
Where is it cheap to live?
Where on . . .
“This blessed plot, this earth,
This realm, this England . . .”
Where on this ozone-depleted,
Global fondue fungus ***,
Can I go to just sit still?
To think:  to make sense of it all?
It’s leisure, Kemosabe.
Leisure cultivates philosophy.
LEISURE:
The very stuff of curiosity and
REACH—
As in: “One’s grasp should exceed one’s reach”—
Idleness leads us,
Gifts us with understanding &
Self-awareness.
You are 21 again, and restless.
You are unwilling to just settle in.
So, where do you go?
Where can you live on savings?
To not work,
But not go hungry?
To just sit still,
Contemplating the state of the wicket,
Be it wicked or sticky.
Today it’s Prague and Berlin—
Or, for the truly decadent: Bangkok.
For us it was Florence or Paris—
Or, for the truly frugal,
Driving our cars to Mecca: Montreal,
"La Métropole du Québec"
Sanctified are the places we’ve chilled.
Shrines & vortexes; each holy latitude,
As Han Solo drolly reminds us:
“It’s not the years; it’s the miles.”
The amount of ground covered,
A blessing devoutly to be wished in Old Age:
But I digress.
Just the thought of hanging out
Some place really cool,
Yet relatively inexpensive--
In a parlance acquired
Over the years and the miles,
Tactfulness learned,
Manipulating the language
For fun & profit.
Common sense is aged in the barrel
And the bottle, rephrased.
Vernacular Viniculture.
Which proves my point:
If you live long enough &
Read enough of the right stuff,
Eventually you’ll discover
A precise, more exact vocabulary,
Appropriate for Old Age inner monolog.
Would Old Age be tedious?
Boring, for those who
Never went anywhere?
Both physically & spiritually speaking.
Are memories our only revenge on Old Age?
And for those hiding behind the barriers,
Safe. Ignorant. Jolly. Dull.
A fast track toward senility &
Evanescence.
Does Alzheimer’s seek out & destroy the
Most cloistered among us?
While those bold & beautiful,
Experienced, still spinning,
Still weaving a tapestry in 3-D Technicolor.
Remembrances of things past . . .
(Get back in your hole, Marcel . . .)
And as the AARP crowd knows so well:
We Baby Boomers really had it pretty soft.
Boom economics,
Conspicuous consumption,
Coonskin hats, Betsy Wetsies & Hula Hoops!
By and large:
FUN TIMES!
No Great Depression,
No chocolate rationing.
A jungle war pretty much optional,
For most of us of the
American bourgeoisie.
We’ve got a lot to remember.
We’ve much to be grateful for.
Electronic media changed everything for us.
Television and movie theaters gave us
Alternative dimensions,
Parallel lives,
Multiple identities.
Experience so real that
To see it on the screen
Was to live it, oneself.
Perhaps those video downloads
Might prove useful one day.
Comforts out on Golden Pond.
Will you still need me?
Will you still feed me?
When I'm sixty-four?
Grazie, Sir Paulie.

6 more cigarettes, she counts,
rationing her existence.
Finding something to need other than sleep is refreshing.
She can hear his voice
through the walls
and she inhales deeply.
She needs the smoke to blacken her lungs
as a small pittance of retribution, reflecting the blackness she  holds in her heart.
And, as she exhales,
she lets the smoke burn
her eye
as she watches watches it coil
and curl away.
Someday
she will display her wounds
proudly
as battle scars.
Bur first she must survive, and heal. 
5 more to go.

a tree did grow
in Brooklyn.        it was June--
our third-- and the summer weather
hadn't turned yet:
school was just out, Prospect Park was never full, and the nights
were still              cool.

it was summer in the city before it comes unglued.
i had yet to resent the F train terminal
or its crowds
or its sweat.  i hadn't grown bored
of 23rd St. on one end of the day
and Church Avenue on another,
or of the cost of cigarettes
or coffee or of the FOODTOWN sign
at the top of the subway steps.
it was a beautiful month
because it was doomed barely to last
its 30 days.

and there were too so many long hours,
sitting                  barely shaded
on your stoop,
fending off the landlord's sister and the bugs and waiting
for the fall.
each time i've gone back
since then i've sat
on those slow steps;
that summer it was no different:  three months to crown three
years,
moving                  so timelessly
by

that next month the heat bore down,
not the heat only of the sun and the air but the wet,
***** heat of the city,
steam forever rising from underground, the oil spills
in the gutters         beginning to boil.

but still it was New York
and summer.  the roaches and rats hadn't yet
eaten                     all the fireflies.  
i grew to love routine
disquiet:  the long car rides to Queens,
the Mets games and their pretzel smell and riding back,
inevitably discouraged,
my homemade tank top leaking Magic marker onto my chest;
the trips to the beach at Rockaway, sullen and determined, and their return
to Manhattan, tasting like salt (and you, once,
like blood) and my hair stiff
with brine and feeling the sand in our shoes grit
against the ***** sidewalks;
those quick walks
from Smith&9th Streets,
sipping Mexican Cokes and rationing our time
by cigarettes:  
all of July was exhausting,
but familiar by then.


in August the tornado came,
first Brooklyn'd seen in 30 years.  we two
slept blissfully through it, woke only
for the aftermath.
we went outside almost giddy, certainly
unbelieving,
holding hands.
and the tree
which had stood outside so
serenly
was uprooted,
having missed the bedroom window
by only a few feet.

[it was June--
cool.
barely shaded
so timelessly
beginning to boil
all the fireflies.]