a sign shoved in the dirt
identifies the hamlet you've just entered.
each crop is a town spread over the fork.
years ago, inside their huts,
algonquins traded wampum, trembling in the ice age,
popping their corn to the beat of the glaciers,
exiled a ****** from mattituck to cutchoque.

now we smoke our own peace pipe
on the sands of the tranquil sound.
the only algonquins left are huddled in the bed
of a ford, laughing in the sunlight.

i walk down to the cemetery
i walk down to the train tracks
i walk down to cooper's farm
and they all climb into me through my ribcage,
and hide my poison under the grey
stones scattered through love lane.

some people built houses they only visit in the summer,
but they've never seen the inside of the broken down valise.
some people like to ride the carousel in greenport,
but they've never rolled down third street,
smoked blunts under the halfpipes,
picked crystals off the bay and eaten them for breakfast.

i tell the people that i know
about the great big world outside,
they nod and light a cigarette,
they speed faster down sound avenue.

some of us ended up in boston and some in manhattan
some are still battling the current, trying to escape,
but let's face it:

your graduating class parks outside sevs every morning
the men here have paint on their knuckles and black dirt on their boots
the streets are not spotted with lights,
but you know how to weave through them as
fast and blind as the blood knows your veins

when you step foot here, it's like a magnet grabbing your toes,
when you drink your cheap beer and
complain that your neighbor knows your business,
just remember that at least you've met your neighbor,
just sit down there and listen to the crickets in your veins.

Hi Gibson, of Algonquins table. i want to accept that your comments are elderly and full of  scholastic charm. I have been appreciative to you in each and every situation. I still promise that i will listen to you in the future.I have looked at your photography it shows you are an elder. in this perspective an intellectual elder and an elder in the global community without regard to race and geography. you are the age of my father and thus i am bound to respect you as my father.However, i am intellectually emboldened by both logic,reason,ethics and wisdom of the times to differ with you on a few factors in relation to my story poem humanity of Jesus Christ.First you over focused on my grammatical and typing mistakes in relation to English language  and also on the issue of whether Nazareth was in the colony or it was a colony.By this selfish focus you failled to remember that my inference of Nazareth as a  colony was simply my employing of a poetic tool of synechdoche.I can use one to refer to all or all to refer to one.Just like the same synechdochal experience we have in the bible where Jesus was referred to as son of David , son of man, son of God, and so forth.My in ability to use  written English which can impress you should be  seen as an intellectual anachronism. I am not a chauvinist of English language. I have my own native language which is more mature than English. i don't have any motivation to treat a deficient language like English with any earnest. Secondly i wanted you to see the point of Jesus physical deformity, afilliative relationship with Mary Magdalene and the experience of his mother in the bombazine. you have not seen this.When his brothers slavishly laboured for  Joseph of Aremathea and Yude his last brother slapped him you have deliberately refused to see.
There is another problem i want to point out,i was responding to Theodore not you , but you came out in full combat armed to your teeth with drones of your academic superlativity. Here you are wrong. You lacked the virtue of intellectual humility. Why are you always joining Theodore and his foot soldiers to attack other participants on this table ? or you want me to forgive you by concluding that all Americans have a burden of proving to be Americans and hence this tempo of cliffhanger civilization ?
The references you have mentioned in your riposte lack the element of universality. Most of them are published in north America.These preceded by a current world quagmire that usually in every social , political and intellectual situations North Americans fail to have behave publicly by wanting every thing to look American . And even their social researches have always been skewed by a bias that the results must ring an American tone.You have not quoted any work written in french language,Russian language, Germany language nor Arabic  only not mention Yiddish. You have displayed an avoidable limitation.Kindly research again into humanity of Jesus Christ for the benefit of those who depend on you intellectually.

Thanks

Alexander k  Opicho
Eldoret,Kenya

The Little Black Dress


The concrete city summer-heat will beat
most men into a state of distraction,
confess their sins w/o waiting for Miranda,
to warn them of their foolhardiness,
to warn them that silence is golden.

Some men will torch, not touch,
themselves to gain relief from city street heat,
Their loosened ties look like used nooses,
that have done some good hanging.

but not you babe, not you.

Sleeveless,
your shape shifts
effortlessly within,
a cool container,
your black sheath,
and what's underneath,
a knife in the heart of
most mortal, immoral men.

Black is the color of choice,
of les femmes fatales,
in the summertime, when we drink,
on rooftops, in search of a breeze,
and the lassies order silly drinks
with silly names, looking refreshing and
fetching, in their little black dresses.

Manhattan, my beloved, misshapen,
fingerling of an island-city-fortress-playground,
named such by the Algonquins,
the original poets-in-residence.

In a city of stone and brick
gets so **** miserable hot,
Good Humor melts instantaneously,
and the toasted almonds taste fried,
the papers report of Poets suffocating,
unable to exhale their own fiery breath!

But not you babe, not you,
in your Little Black Dress,
you suggest all is well with world,
perhaps I should try one as well

We fight the temp rising with
white linen, white shoes,
straw and seersucker,
not you babe, not you.

Black silk that rustles,
Black silk that mocks the sun,
Stirring up rustling in faint-hearted men,
observing your languid promenade across 57th Street,
we the idiots, panting, tongues extended,
standing still like Frozfruit bars,
cry out in unison, I have been released!

Contradictory miracles still occur,
disbelieve me if you want,
from June to August,
this isle ruled, by tan goddesses
in a uniform of a Little Black Dress.

May 28, 2013