Looking for Gumbo  

He had wanted Gumbo, the local café was out
he had to seek a broader horizon at home he couldn't find it.
He took the coach to the end of the country, but no
the further away he got the less Gumbo, he got the blues
and bathed in the river, which was natural for him to do,
moved into people’s home, but they didn't have Gumbo.
At a bakery-café where mostly women sit and drink tea
eat creamy cake and talk about their weight, he found
a lady who had the recipe for Gumbo; followed
her home, she really had Gumbo, but wouldn't let him sit
on her new furniture, so he took the coach home, where
to his surprise, a new café had opened selling what
he needed for free, and he didn't have to pay for it.

At a streetfair downtown
A 5-dollar coupon in hand
We used to buy a skinny tree
Potted up in an old rusty can

It may have looked less than promising
So leggy and light as a feather
Tentatively thought did it have roots?
Our first purchase we made together

We planted our tree in the yard
That spindly gumbo-limbo
But native to our Florida
It knew just how to grow

Just like I’d envisioned its shade
A canopy against fierce heat
Protecting us from that relentless sun
It’s now grown twenty-five feet

Six years have passed us by now
And risking sounding sappy
We’ve grown, too, as has our love
The tree and we are happy

SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist ... in the slow twist ... of the wind.
  
If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the east.
  By this sign
  all smokes
  know each other.
Smoke of the fields in spring and leaves in autumn,
Smoke of the finished steel, chilled and blue,
By the oath of work they swear: "I know you."
  
Hunted and hissed from the center
Deep down long ago when God made us over,
Deep down are the cinders we came from-
You and I and our heads of smoke.
  
Some of the smokes God dropped on the job
Cross on the sky and count our years
And sing in the secrets of our numbers;
Sing their dawns and sing their evenings,
Sing an old log-fire song:
  
You may put the damper up,
You may put the damper down,
The smoke goes up the chimney just the same.
  
Smoke of a city sunset skyline,
Smoke of a country dusk horizon-
  They cross on the sky and count our years.
  
Smoke of a brick-red dust
  Winds on a spiral
  Out of the stacks
For a hidden and glimpsing moon.
This, said the bar-iron shed to the blooming mill,
This is the slang of coal and steel.
The day-gang hands it to the night-gang,
The night-gang hands it back.
  
Stammer at the slang of this-
Let us understand half of it.
  In the rolling mills and sheet mills,
  In the harr and boom of the blast fires,
  The smoke changes its shadow
  And men change their shadow;
  A ******, a ***, a bohunk changes.
  
  A bar of steel-it is only
Smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man.
A runner of fire ran in it, ran out, ran somewhere else,
And left-smoke and the blood of a man
And the finished steel, chilled and blue.
  
So fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again,
And the bar of steel is a gun, a wheel, a nail, a shovel,
A rudder under the sea, a steering-gear in the sky;
And always dark in the heart and through it,
  Smoke and the blood of a man.
Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary-they make their steel with men.
  
In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys
The smoke nights write their oaths:
Smoke into steel and blood into steel;
Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their steel with men.
Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.
  
  The birdmen drone
  in the blue; it is steel
  a motor sings and zooms.
  
Steel barb-wire around The Works.
Steel guns in the holsters of the guards at the gates of The Works.
Steel ore-boats bring the loads clawed from the earth by steel, lifted and lugged by arms of steel, sung on its way by the clanking clam-shells.
The runners now, the handlers now, are steel; they dig and clutch and haul; they hoist their automatic knuckles from job to job; they are steel making steel.
Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces; the pour is timed, the billets wriggle; the clinkers are dumped:
Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land; diving steel in the sea, climbing steel in the sky.
  
Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket, you Steve clumping in the dusk on the sidewalks with an evening paper for the woman and kids, you Steve with your head wondering where we all end up-
Finders in the dark, Steve: I hook my arm in cinder sleeves; we go down the street together; it is all the same to us; you Steve and the rest of us end on the same stars; we all wear a hat in hell together, in hell or heaven.
  
Smoke nights now, Steve.
Smoke, smoke, lost in the sieves of yesterday;
Dumped again to the scoops and hooks today.
Smoke like the clocks and whistles, always.
  Smoke nights now.
  To-morrow something else.
  
Luck moons come and go:
Five men swim in a *** of red steel.
Their bones are kneaded into the bread of steel:
Their bones are knocked into coils and anvils
And the ******* plungers of sea-fighting turbines.
Look for them in the woven frame of a wireless station.
So ghosts hide in steel like heavy-armed men in mirrors.
Peepers, skulkers-they shadow-dance in laughing tombs.
They are always there and they never answer.
  
One of them said: "I like my job, the company is good to me, America is a wonderful country."
One: "Jesus, my bones ache; the company is a liar; this is a free country, like hell."
One: "I got a girl, a peach; we save up and go on a farm and raise pigs and be the boss ourselves."
And the others were roughneck singers a long ways from home.
Look for them back of a steel vault door.
  
They laugh at the cost.
They lift the birdmen into the blue.
It is steel a motor sings and zooms.
  
In the subway plugs and drums,
In the slow hydraulic drills, in gumbo or gravel,
Under dynamo shafts in the webs of armature spiders,
They shadow-dance and laugh at the cost.
  
The ovens light a red dome.
Spools of fire wind and wind.
Quadrangles of crimson sputter.
The lashes of dying maroon let down.
Fire and wind wash out the ****.
Forever the **** gets washed in fire and wind.
The anthem learned by the steel is:
  Do this or go hungry.
Look for our rust on a plow.
Listen to us in a threshing-engine razz.
Look at our job in the running wagon wheat.
  
Fire and wind wash at the ****.
Box-cars, clocks, steam-shovels, churns, pistons, boilers, scissors-
Oh, the sleeping **** from the mountains, the ****-heavy pig-iron will go down many roads.
Men will stab and shoot with it, and make butter and tunnel rivers, and mow hay in swaths, and slit hogs and skin beeves, and steer airplanes across North America, Europe, Asia, round the world.
  
Hacked from a hard rock country, broken and baked in mills and smelters, the rusty dust waits
Till the clean hard weave of its atoms cripples and blunts the drills chewing a hole in it.
The steel of its plinths and flanges is reckoned, O God, in one-millionth of an inch.
  
Once when I saw the curves of fire, the rough scarf women dancing,
Dancing out of the flues and smoke-stacks-flying hair of fire, flying feet upside down;
Buckets and baskets of fire exploding and chortling, fire running wild out of the steady and fastened ovens;
Sparks cracking a harr-harr-huff from a solar-plexus of rock-ribs of the earth taking a laugh for themselves;
Ears and noses of fire, gibbering gorilla arms of fire, gold mud-pies, gold bird-wings, red jackets riding purple mules, scarlet autocrats tumbling from the humps of camels, assassinated czars straddling vermillion balloons;
I saw then the fires flash one by one: good-by: then smoke, smoke;
And in the screens the great sisters of night and cool stars, sitting women arranging their hair,
Waiting in the sky, waiting with slow easy eyes, waiting and half-murmuring:
  "Since you know all
  and I know nothing,
  tell me what I dreamed last night."
  
Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.
  
A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.
  
A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gathering sod and loam.
  
The wind never bothers ... a bar of steel.
The wind picks only .. pearl cobwebs .. pools of moonshine.

The Checkout Line

I wish to speak with you
ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

The words and meanings you carry in your pants, the pick-pocket steals your hopes from time.
and the visions of empty trash receptacles
with their late evening drunken lovers' bouts, at restless end tables. And the bums with their ******* attitudes **** covered clothes, and soiled minds

the clarity of the curbside drunk, picking up shades of filtered cigarettes of twilight scandalous
pickup lovers in their evening best.

And to talk with you ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

They're Green Beret head ornaments
detailing the porcelain platforms of Delft
Lining up for one last line to carry them into another faded sunrise at dawn's forgotten memory of yester night
and they walk their gallows holding pride fully their flags of exalted countrymen.

The republic of teacups of literary proficiency.
Wearing the necklaces of paid tolls to an afterlife they find in the miniscule car crashes of engagement with a grinless driving mate in a neighboring car in its pass into the forethought of turned corners.
Where they befell the great disappointment of failure in the frosted eyes of their fathers' expectations.

Who carried the shame of their mother's incessant discontent through short skirts, and high heels.

Who disapproved of the **** whom wore the sneak-out-of-the-house-wear clothing line, and traveled by night over turbulent asphalt by way of sidecar through turn and turnabout hand-over-hand contracts of lover's affection, and slept in tall grasses of wet nightfall with views of San Francisco, and were trapped in the inescapable Alcatraz and Statesville of unconsenting parents and their curfews,

through trials and trails of Skittles leading to after school Doctor visits in the basement of a doting mother, whilst she sits quietly in her exclusive quilting parties with noble equities of partners in knowledge, listening to Edith Piaf and the like,

All the while condemned to time, trapped in the second hand, hand me downs of the 21st century, decades of decadent introverts with their table top unread notebooks, and old forgotten score cards, and the numbers of scholars of years past,

and to talk with you ten years from now will be my greatest pleasure, for you will be....ten year's behind.


They push the sterile elevator buttons, and descend upon the floor of scents flourishing from their crowded family rooms, only aware of distinctive flavors, in their middle eastern shades of desert gumbo,

Who speak ribbit and alfalfa until midnight of the afternoon, sharing fables of slaughtered giraffes and camels that walked from Kiev to Baghdad in a fortnight,

Who are aware the power is out, but continue to scour for candles in a dark room where candles once burned, where candle wax seals the drawers of where candles can be found. Where once sat gluttonous kings and queens in Sunday attire waiting for words of freedom from the North.

of Florence, Sochi,Shanghai
of Dempster, Foster, Lincoln
of Dodge, Ford, Shelby

Of concrete fortune tellers in 2nd story tenement blocks with hairy legs, and head lice, wearing beautiful sachets of India speaking ribbit and alfalfa.

On their unbirthdays they walk the fish tanks wearing their birthday suits to remind them who serves the food on the floors of the family room fish mongers tactics.

The old men wear gargoyles on their shoulders.

Lo! Fear has crept the glass marbles of their wisdom and fortune, blearing rocket ships and kazoos on the sidewalks of their Portuguese forefathers.

Where ancestry burns cigarette holes in the short-haired blue carpet, where Hoover breaks flood waters of insignificance across hard headed Evangelical trinities.

Who share construction techniques one early morning at four, where questions of Hammer and **** build intelligence in secondary faces of nameless twilight lovers, who possess bear blankets, and upheavals, finely wired bushes of ***** maturity. Eating *** and check, tongue and pen.

Where police caress emergency flame retardants over the fire between their legs, wielding the chauvinistic blade of comfort in the backseat of a Yellow faced driving patron.

With their innocent daughters with their nubile thighs, and malleable personalities, which require elite words and jewelry. Wearing wheat buns, Longfellow, and squire.

Holding postmarked cellular structure within their mobile anguish.

Who go curling in their showers, pushing afternoon naps and pretentious frou-frou hats over tainted friendships with their girlfriend's brothers with minimum paychecks'.

Through their narcissus and narcosis, their mirrored perceptions of medicinal scripture of Methamphetamine and elegant five-star meat.

Who amend their words with constitutional forgiveness, in their fascist cloth rampages through groves of learning strategies. And the closets, cupboards, and coins
with rubber hearts, steel *****, and gold *****,

Tall-tales of sock puppet hands with friendly sharing ******* techniques, dry with envy, colorful scabs, and coagulation of eccentric ****** endeavors, With their social lubricants and their tile feet wardrobes with B-quality Adidas and Reeboks gods of the souls of us. Who possess piceous syndromes of Ouiji boards in their parent’s basements.

When will fire burn another Bush? Spread the fire walls of Chicago, and part grocery store fields of food. Wrapping towels under the doors of smoke filled lungs, on the fingernails of a sleepover between business executives with the neoprene finish of their sons and daughters who attend finishing school, with resumes of oak furnishings,

And I long to talk with you ten years from now,
For you'll be talking ten years behind.

Who profligate their padded inventories breaking Mohammed and Hearst,
laying the pillows of cirrus minor
waiting for the rain to paint the eyes of the scriptures which waft through concrete corridors,
and scent the air with their exalted personas,

With the different channels of confusions, watching dimple past freckle, eating the palms of our tropical mental vocations to achieve purity from the indignation of those whom are contemptuous for lack of innocence in America,
this America, of lack of peace,
of America hold me,
Let me be.

Whom read the letters off music, blearing Sinatra and Krall, Manson where is your contempt?

Manson where is your manipulation of place settings?, you deserve fork and knife, the wounded commandments that regretfully fall like timber in an abandoned sanctuary of Yellowstone,
Manson, with your claws of the heart.
Manson, with your sheik vulgarity of **** cloaks exposing your ladies undercarriage,

Those who take their pets to walk the aisles of famished eyes,
allowing the dorsals of their backsides to wonder aimlessly through Vietnam and Chinaman,
holding peace of mind aware of their chemical leashes and fifteen calorie mental meals, holding hands, unaware of repercussion,

With their vivid recollections of sprinkler and slide, through dew and beyond,
Holding citrus drinks to themselves, apart from pleasure, trapped with excite from sunsets, and in-between.

Withholding reservation of tongue to lung.
Flowing ribbit and alfalfa, in the corridors of expected fragrance.

and to speak with you of ten years from now, will be a pleasure all my own, for you will be talking ten years behind.

They walked outside climbing over mountains of shrapnel, popped collars
and endless buffets of emotion,
driving Claremont all the way to art gallery premiers
and forever waited for plane crash landings
and the phone calls that never came

Glowing black and white cameras
giving modelesque perceptions to all-you-can-eat eyes
giving cigarettes endless chasms of light

Colored pavement trenches and divots
cliff note alibis
and surgery that lasted until the seamstress had gone into an
endless rest
and
empty cupboards

Classic stools painted with sleepless white smoke and bleached canvas rolling tobacco with the stained yellow window panes of feral tapestry and overindulgent vernacular

Like a satiated cheeseburger weeping smile simple emotion
on November the 18th celebrations
and Wisconsin out of business sales

Too much comfort, stealing switchboards from the the elderly, constantly putting gibberish into
effortless conversation.

Dormant doormats, with the greetings that never
reached as far as coffee table favelas,
arriving to homes of famished
furniture, awaiting temperate lifestyles and the window sill arguments from pedantic literacy

Silver shillings and corporate discovery clogged the persuasive
push and shove
to and from

Killing enterprise
loquacious attempt at too soon
much too soon
too soon for forever

Wall to wall post-card collages
happy reminders of the places never visited by drinks in the hands of
those received

Registered to the clouded skies of clip board artists
this arthritis of envy
of bathtub old age
wrinkled matted faces
logged with quick-fixes, anemia, and heart-break

disposed of off the streets
of youth, wheeling and wailing
rolling down striped stairs
of shock and arraignment
holding the hand rails of a wheelchair
suitcase
packed away in a life

Down I-37
into the ochre autumn fallen down leaves
and left memories behind
their green Syphilis eyeglasses

weeping tumuli
recalcitrant
mulish, furrow of beast and beyond

yelling, screaming, howling
at the prurient puerile tilling
of sheets

****** the voices of words
and vomiting the mind into the pockets of the turbulent perambulations
expelled from meat-packing
whispering condescension
and coercing adolescent obsessions
with fame, glamour, and *****

Creeping out into the naked
light of the Darger scale janitorial
closets, carrying the notorious gowns
of red wine spells, backpacks, and pins

henchmen, plaintiff, and youth

All the while
ripping at the incantations of the soul
whispering ribbit and alfalfa
in the guard-rail scars
of the dawns decadent forgotten

Fine living . . . a la carte?
     Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!

     LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
     new Waldorf-Astoria:

     "All the luxuries of private home. . . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
     has turned you down this winter?
     Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
     world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
     mous Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
     Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
     background for society.
So when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry
     ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do you still consider the subway after midnight good
     enough?)

        ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers--
     sleepers in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a
     long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:

     GUMBO CREOLE
     CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
     BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
     SMALL ONIONS IN CREAM
     WATERCRESS SALAD
     PEACH MELBA

Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
     Why not?
Dine with some of the men and women who got rich off of
     your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
     because your hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
     ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
     and live easy.
(Or haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
     ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight before dinner, and get
     warm, anyway. You've got nothing else to do.

Made from ground up leaf of
sassafras

taste like the bottom of the bayou
shrimp boil
smoke and gators

sprinkle it on stir it in
don't cook it or your gumbo
gets stringy-ew
Choctaws knew

FDA will tell you it's poison
like strong words
bad haircuts
keep sipping your KoolAid please

nothing but magic in filé
flavor of down-home voodoo
zydeco iron skillet cornbread
Mama knows what's good for you

no dead birds in the oven
no innards in the stuffing
nor fatty drippings to be scraped and poured

the smell of roasted veggies
wafts through  the wintry air
pumpkin and sweet potatoes
marshmallows  green beans  lentils
turnips  & collard greens
hashed browns & black-eyed peas
quinoa  sorghum cuscus hummus
carrots  leak  broccoli Romanescu
gumbo in southern regions
wild rice dishes in the north
tastily spiced with turmeric
cumin and baked paprika
Indian curry  soy sauce  chipotle
as well as with the usual suspects
of garlic  salt  and pepper
and whatever fits the taste of hosts

in short
a venerable feast to demonstrate
how nature feeds us a large cornucopia
of plants for our delight and sustenance

in short
no need to **** a bird

                * *

There is no night like a bayou night,
the air pregnant with expectancy and
mystery, mingling scents of wisteria,
trumpet honeysuckle and gumbo mud -
a Dark Ages alchemist seeking an elusive
golden fragrance. It's a night dark despite
the nearly full moon, a night in which
fireflies pulsate as so many flickering
neon bulbs and the cacophony of insects
reaches toward an unattainable crescendo.

Mammoth cypress trees line the bayous,
letting fall Spanish moss as strands of ghostly
gray-green hair, and the oppression of dark
is waiting just beyond the searching lantern.
At times the wind moans like a sated lover,
at other times it howls wildly, but it's always
present and always vocal to those who
would listen. There could be fear in such nights,
or there can be a love of the mysteries inherent
with the bayous - I choose the love of the bayous.

I lived in Louisiana about nine years,
and there are many things about that
state I still love - bayous being one of them.


--

I personally
Love food comas;
And cookie periods,
And gumbo
Exclamation marks!
The're the best!
And semicolon pies,
Oh man...
And peach cobbler
Parenthesis,
They're perfect
With scoops
Of delicious vanilla
Question marks
With a drizzle
Of caramel
Quotation marks,
Oh no!
I'm going
Into an
Anaphylactic shock
From the forward slash
And back slash
Layered lasagna,  
I'm going comatose!
Quick! make me some alphabet soup!
© okpoet

Our first date you took me to eat gumbo
At a seafood place
And I threw up.

Maybe it was a warning
Maybe it was food poisoning
Either way, I stayed
Because loving you was not rocket science
But it wasn't easy either.

Our second date you took me to the zoo
And as I glanced at the black and white stripes
That wrapped around every zebra, I thought
Hey. Sometimes you're only black or white
Always seeing
Always being one way or another
And never in between
It wasn't fair to me.

Maybe I should have left right then and there.
In the end, I stayed
Why did I stay?
Because loving you was not rocket science
But hell, it wasn't easy either.

Our third date you took me to the moon.
Metaphorically of course
Not literally
Because.. how could we?
Anyway, you took me to the moon and back
And baby, it was a blast.
Fires raging
Speeds changing
My heart racing as quickly as one possibly could.

The fourth date proved that loving you
Was more like rocket science than it was easy.

By the fifth and final date
Our flames had faded away.
All that was left was black smoke
And a bright, white light that I walked into
Because I knew that it was my time to leave you.

Tubes like snakes
slithered through our
poetry class along with
cliches about love and ***
and loneliness.

Tea time
and crosswords
and cookies
cure hearts.

talk of
gumbo and
deliciously cold
plums will always
bring you to mind.

Everyone’s a mutt in this paradise
adding to the Gumbo: America.
Anglo pure blood and breed will not suffice
To thicken spicy stew’s- Hysteria.
Strength, which each American is made of-
From the poor origins like Plymouth Rock
to indentured servants-it’s not enough.
Like bitter tyranny of slavery’s stock,
And exotic railroad builders toil…
Sweaty brows and every acrid tear dropped
pierced this soil, made this land boil
with every dreamers dream heavy hearts stopped.
We overflow into the salty seas
with ancient roots long as sequoia trees.

YES, the Dead speak to us.
This town belongs to the Dead, to the Dead and to the Wilderness.
  
Back of the clamps on a fireproof door they hold the papers of the Dead in a house here
And when two living men fall out, when one says the Dead spoke a Yes, and the other says the Dead spoke a No, they go then together to this house.
  
They loosen the clamps and haul at the hasps and try their keys and curse at the locks and the combination numbers.
For the teeth of the rats are barred and the tongues of the moths are outlawed and the sun and the air of wind is not wanted.
  
They open a box where a sheet of paper shivers, in a dusty corner shivers with the dry inkdrops of the Dead, the signed names.
Here the ink testifies, here we find the say-so, here we learn the layout, now we know where the cities and farms belong.
Dead white men and dead red men tested each other with shot and knives: they twisted each others' necks: land was yours if you took and kept it.
  
How are the heads the rain seeps in, the rain-washed knuckles in sod and gumbo?
  
Where the sheets of paper shiver,
Back of the hasps and handles,
Back of the fireproof clamps,
  
  They read what the fingers scribbled, who the land belongs to now-it is herein provided, it is hereby stipulated-the land and all appurtenances thereto and all deposits of oil and gold and coal and silver, and all pockets and repositories of gravel and diamonds, dung and permanganese, and all clover and bumblebees, all bluegrass, johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of running water or rivers or lakes or high spreading trees or hazel bushes or sumach or thorn-apple branches or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue eggs shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops-
  
So it is scrawled here,
"I direct and devise
So and so and such and such,"
And this is the last word.
There is nothing more to it.
  
In a shanty out in the Wilderness, ghosts of to-morrow sit, waiting to come and go, to do their job.
They will go into the house of the Dead and take the shivering sheets of paper and make a bonfire and dance a deadman's dance over the hissing crisp.
In a slang their own the dancers out of the Wilderness will write a paper for the living to read and sign:
The dead need peace, the dead need sleep, let the dead have peace and sleep, let the papers of the Dead who fix the lives of the Living, let them be a hissing crisp and ashes, let the young men and the young women forever understand we are through and no longer take the say-so of the Dead;
Let the dead have honor from us with our thoughts of them and our thoughts of land and all appurtenances thereto and all deposits of oil and gold and coal and silver, and all pockets and repositories of gravel and diamonds, dung and permanganese, and all clover and bumblebees, all bluegrass, johnny-jump-ups, grassroots, springs of running water or rivers or lakes or high spreading trees or hazel bushes or sumach or thornapple branches or high in the air the bird nest with spotted blue eggs shaken in the roaming wind of the treetops.

Nineteen twenty ways
to love the same photo, I
remember, it all.

The blubbering moon,
was thumping like itself;
no matter, we go!

We entered the room,
and we became an image,
and drank until full.

Illuminating
hot seat, the material
IKEA, alone,

pristine sounds of loss,
a man and woman dancing
each others eyes, there.

Midnight morning fly,
buzzing flea-like, almost gone.
My window opens.

All the yakking dead.
My porch- old wood and sunset,
smoke diving within.

Suffocate us sea!
If you dare drink what we have!
Our stomachs fit you!

The Titanic floats,
the night swim will carry us,
calmly to ourselves.

Opaque sea-gulls fly;
we are but moon beams seeking.
Igniting ripples.

The taste of salt shouts,
it devours our tiredness.
Running beside us.

Half shore nearing us,
no other bodies near us,
we know only peace.

Inside our madness
there is every dream which wakes
wet steps, standing up.

Skin inked by needle,
below your growing wild hair,
moving, as it stays,

A religious book,
its pages moving in wind,
brown with gentle time.

Negative film roll,
opal, and doused with liquid,
so we are, so still.

Permeating dream
a leaf from burning tree branch
settling in grass.

Sudden flower bloom,
I watch you grow as days change.
Time, can never be.

Holocaustic love,
returning to the swap mind,
nothing stays buried.

The last beggar hangs,
he was a poet, a friend.
Servant girl watching.

Holograph song sings,
she is more awake than words.
I smile back at her.

Doorless buildings shine,
travelling up beyond us,
the meeting begins.

The office suite melts,
only listening to data.
So much for talking…

Peyote smoked.
Old tribes knowing how it goes.
Perfectly happy.

Madigras come now!
Alive smokin drunk street life!
Masks bleeding with ghosts.

Mine, yours, lit by fire.
Lets join the raining parade,
and grab a chicken.

They do it in the ethereal range of our eye’s linking hands,
our bodies swaying to the din of infinite types of drum life,
happy to be ours, enough to fill every street with realms,
packed dead-masked as New Orleans is definitely new my love – - !
the bar door requires a kick from our ripened legs,
it shatters the sweat stairs as we walk down finding the ground
inside leaving the painted parade to flood in on itself,
the chorus is tap tap tapped and stamped by the bar-man ready here
to cool us down and let us choose from any drink we wish.

In thick New Orleans accent he says:

“You been swimmin’ in the big Bayou brotha-sista.”

But it’s enough for us to answer him from the photo behind his bar.

We let him touch us, we sit frozen in front of a box camera and wonder
what’ll happen as the bulb flashes.

I pull ma Creole queen into me, as all galllreees open brotha-sista!

The photo be taken quick enough to ****** life from shotgun.

You’ll just keep on sittin there wontcha ma cher,
while these gumbo ya-ya come down ma stairs.

**** Mardi graaa…

A couple come down the wooden stairs.

Helping each other stand from too much street juice.

Looking back from the photo the barman knows that the couple
heard him talking, they slap down on the bar stools as he kisses the
photo of him and his wife.

“Well they be a truer than you or me cher, dontcha think?”

He says smiling back, more cheer than teeth, as the conversation begins,
undisturbed by the pulsing sounds from above.

Muster and Roll
Imagine time and the continental plates merging
Trust in no one, Enkai or  Snake oil medicine shows.
Gumbo stew trumps the Serengeti ?
Wildebeest hording into the new territory
Manifest destinies assured.

Out of conversation
Stirring moral gumbo
Squint red-tinted as if
Looking through a glass of chagrinadine
In a surely tempest
Grassed at impasse

Mute in the mind's eye
Sifting through hindsight
Every find was a light
That's already burnt out

And once silence is broken
And patience kneels for me to climb up
I pay tribute to the sunrise
The perpetual ripening
Among the sticky-sweet decay

Wandering through the bayou,
wrapped in its eerie embrace.
Mysterious and strange,
a magical place.
Never seeming to change,
even as seasons come and go,
swampy waters ebb to and fro.

Like long-lost daughters,
gnarled courtly cypress trees,
rise from black murky waters.
Draped lovingly in Spanish moss,
swaying softly in the breeze.
Butterflies seem to float across,
as gentle winds ruffle their leaves.

Bouquets of wild hibiscus fill the air,
mingled with sweet azaleas blooming there.
Bullfrogs croak and crickets chirp,
the bayou is awash with soothing music.
As dragonflies flit the cattails, elusive,
water moccasins slithering at your feet
or lurk above you in the trees.

Just as, the sun begins to sink low,
comes the faint sound of a fiddle and bow.
The gator comes out of hiding,
rising from the dark waters below.
Looking for his meal and smiling,
with snapping jaws, a deer is caught,
then taken below where he will rot.

The moon rises high into the night,
as fireflies glow in the twilight.
A voodoo queen slips into sight,
with gnarled hands, she rolls the bones.
Whispering cryptic words, she softly moans.
Tenderly she caresses her snake,
wrapped around and about her neck.

A ****-hound whoops it up.
The gnarled trees cast spooky shadows.
Is that the ghostly apparition of Jean Lafitte?
Who managed to escape prison and gallows.
Did you bury your treasure in the water or weeds?
As the wind moans softly, time to turn home,
where you can fill your belly with spicy gumbo.

ALesiach © 10/12/2014

Jazz music and drunken slurs,
Passing streetcars turn to blurs,
Bite off more than you can chew,
Seafood gumbo, thick brown roux,
On shoulders sit sons and daughters,
Ferry ships, Mississippi waters,
Dancers dressed like voodoo queens,
Clad in purples, golds, and greens,
Yell, "Throw me something mister!"
Flying beads barely missed her,
Pralines, king cakes, and beignets,
Maid of Muses smiles and waves,
Rex, Zulu, Endymion,
From Decatur to Bourbon,
Floats, masks, a feather boa,
Sweet iced tea, jambalaya,
Big Easy on Fat Tuesday,
Lent is just a day away.

Mud bug Stew, Black beans and rice
Collard greens and fat back boiled up Nice
Nothing like a Bowl of Fila Gumbo
Boozoo Chavez play the Crawfish mombo
Blind drunk Betting, and Letting Dollars go
And he blew it all on horses and **'s
Boozoo got a taste of Cold Cash And Cadillacs
Clifton Chenier in Lake Charles too
Snook right past ole drunk Boozoo
His accordian tunes Ripped right By
Boozoo Chavez who did not Know
How Clifton Chenier became
The KING of ZYDECO

Gumbo the sprat reminds  you he has
no place to go,
away from the night shoals
swimming mid stream,
he dithers if the pier should burn down,
could he bear if the anglers drowned?
yet he's not too axiomatic
knowing right from wrong.
but again theres no pretense
only a presence
swallowing this illusion of depth.

Make the skies eternal limits
I'm shooting for a paper moon
A thin white line disappears
The Crescent city blooms

She rises from the river
Without the sky's inner inhibitons
She commands all her passions
Painting exhibitions

There is no distance
Between each and every line
She is my perpetual lemming
Flung from from the cliffs of time

Dark haired Creole woman
Body damp with sweat
The gumbo boils in desire
You're my "Day-glo" dash board saint

Kissing white moonlit *******
That dance with each and every ******
C'mon shakedown the stars
Ashes made by burning lust

It ain't no mountain high-__++
enough heart stickers 2 pluses
But----she's beat like someone's
playdough high setting
diamond in the rough
High level of mercury felt tough
Like the good will hunting

Let's fulfill our dream with
less talking
More snorkeling high hopes
Big escape important titles
Such a Sperling report high crime
she got high hopes
A kiss is not a kiss
Casablanca
Piano many riddles

The delicate mood became the
Joker her low jeweled belly bottom
He could just pinch her
His paint when smoke gets in your long
Eyelashes the temptation her eyes
of infatuation
How he can move
her schoolgirl crush

The mountains
The holiday sweet baked sun cookies
He was lady looker starting
fresh like a rookie

All loving to the end of her earth

The painter Gogh the fine feather brush
Could lift smiles like hot gold rush

Way below I see something
My eyes became the hidden lake,
My body got exposed to the shining light
The Knight high tempo until the daylight
But there is a high price that's all
I could take almost my blindsight
Her body elevated

She sighs the law and order
The highest authority constitution
the movie camera high action
Higher force of her revelation
Like her Crescendo Moon
Hot body stimulation
But she became to see the
lower state of mind taking the
Xanax route

High hopes she touched the
Goddard

The Searching her lips
piercing she losing her grip

What a hot Australian dude swap
Kicking around in his boots the
  rain puddles of love hurdle
The high raft of the tortoise turtles

My heart lies the crescendo
Such a high tempo she screams

Opening up high five
my exclusively yours
Hot five emails to find got
so excited until etc--

A mountain of broken hearts
Luv her favorite journey high
living totally fab
Those hubs and cool London pubs
On the edge of ecstasy but my dark
midnight pup labs jump up the vibe

The earth stood like a still life
The darkness and the red moon
Everything I thought of came true
bleeding
The high sounds of the clock
Striking at midnight
I felt the coach driving up the
Godmother not the fairest of Bees
They were swarming high seas
And left me on my scared knees

Some leftover Crescendo of honey
His chinny chin Big Foot beard-man
High waist lady gold bonds
of money

Howling wolf complex mixture
of her body curves too many

Symphonies playing
Like something never failed
Seeing the beauty rainfall
Mermaid Tail

Like the crest of
Tsunami all the selfie's
MeMe high tea hours
100 feet he could
of very well
wanted so much
to kiss her high-cheeks
But finding the treasure
lips curved-low

Italiano tempered the wicked concert
Concerto higher up temptation
High tempo hot soup
Louisiana red hot tabasco
 You gotta have her gumbo

Going to the Mountaintop
Mr. Concerto meeting
the computer
Mr. Dumbo what an
Mc Jumbo
burger the "Clicker Bar"
The stars eating away
The greens of her eyes
Living in a hut spitting
pits of olives 
 
Spicy ladies of pimento
In young and restless town
Sacramento
She was sitting her name Sofia  
High rise body elevated
The wicker chair (Loren)
Contemplated
Hearing a sharp squeak
of his shoe that is his affair
He was walking
toward her

He fired out pool shark
Like the Crescendo cafe all neck
out like giraffes to dusk at night
Two heads are stirring
better than one smooth
spread Jiffy butter
Enjoying their cappuccino
the flamingo dancers the bodies
sway together to be engaged
Licks of her envelope
He kissed up to her first sip
Hot mouth expresso

The Pacific high tempo soprano
the mountain can be terrific
Be more specific

That girl Marlo with the
 higher latitude in St Thomas
it won't bring back
a love quicker
Our minds get slower
Using her useless hair blower
"Pacific Crest Inn"
Mind controller
Bathing on sun worshipping
What a star turning point

But lower and deserted on an island
Like smoking the sun up with a joint
the Apennines Italy like pennies for
her thought
The lust crest of her waving high
Surrender my love (Silverback)
Glitter silver high tent

Rainforest of Gorillas
Monkey *** swinging and surfing the
High society ladies what a fly-by event
High Apple Martinique the computer
Felt flooded like she could use a drink
Yes we have bruised bananas and
horn-blowers those outfitters
out of their minds towners
They never leave the crazy freeloaders
Shell be coming around your mountain

High tempo voice meet
Tatiana of the  black crow plantation

Feeling the soulful E-Harmony
Coupling eyes of tears Seattle
Cows and sheep all stacks of hay cattle
Right now her salvation she needed
something lighter not exactly higher
The Sierra Nevada crest she looked up
She went back to her Mediterranean villa
Looking at her pearly white teeth
And said what is with all this crest
I have the best hours with
my crest toothpaste lower teeth
being brushed to the higher height of
my top mountain teeth
That crescendo
was my new birth

From branches of lilac, the roots of the apple tree, swinging on the tire swing.
Always a square peg in a round hole in the eyes of my papa,
An artist in the eyes of my mom.
An adventurer in the eyes of my grandpa, he’s been navigating the universe for me
all the way from the stars when the cancer took him years too early.
A free spirit  in the eyes of my Gramma, picking apples from the trees and climbing too high.

My GG called me beautiful girl,
then a more beautiful version of herself after the brain stent went in and she forgot how beautiful she was when she was my age and could only tell the same story about the milkshakes in her prom dress.
It’s one of my favorites.
My grandma Wheeze grabbing my cheeks from her walker while lizards crawled outside her house slightly further in from the gulf.
Gumbo and rice in the kitchen, a separate pan of buttered shrimp she’d sneak to me while my siblings were not looking.

The whisk in the drawer where it sits unused since that winter sunday morning walk home.
The tiny clock on the shelf, nostalgic off tempo click, Minnesota evenings. It broke on the move.
Cat Stevens on the ride across the state and into Wisconsin, Bob Dylan on my papa’s guitar in the hot kitchen and the broken clock on the counter.
Gnocchi for dinner, cafe au lait on the porch.
“Basta” mom would say, yet never enough.
An early caffeine addiction.

A tabby cat and an unfortunate end in a risky fight with a squirrel, “Basta”, but never enough.
A calico replacement, a companion to the present.  
Protector of the house when we are away,
Mardi Gras every year, beads adorning the Christmas tree, shifting to the epiphany.
God protecting the house.
French Quarters and VooDoo protecting everything else.
In my blood, I have both.

Somewhere over the rainbow still makes me cry,
Death doesn’t make me cry, only the fact that someone is dead.
Sometimes I don’t see shooting stars and I don’t see the fireflies and I feel abandoned by them.
A broken white chair in the corner of the yard from a night of not feeling enough, “Basta.”


Tire swing no longer on the apple tree, run down trampoline, a broken leg, I never came out to my
GG, she was on her deathbed when I went to tell her and I couldn’t do it.
My grandpa was on his when I feared death last. I’m sorry.

Anxiety coupled with success doesn’t feel like much, maybe that’s why I drink too much coffee.
I’ve gotten better, a family of champs. Loud, passionate, winners.
I’ve stopped living for someone else, I live for myself.
I transcend. I’m Mr. Brightside, I am that chick at that concert, hand on the barricade.
I am a future world changer, I am a drum major, I am an artist, I am love.
I have love.
I am in love.
In this cage some songs are born, I am Bukowski before the alcohol.
I am inside the inkwell of Poe.
I am the verse rewriting itself in Whitman's lines.
I am Emerson when I say good-bye to this proud world.
I am the dew on the edges of Walden within the pages of Thoreau.

I am a poet and every poet all at once.
I am an artist and every artist all at once.
I am positive film, I still keep the negatives, I still develop.


I am a prism, I am a bearer of light.
I am everything.
I am nothing.
I am.

There's a space
     the size of space
between your heart and mine
     but I don't know who put it there
Maybe we're supposed to grow
     antlers and dance
away, prance
     like princes and apologize
Distress was the name
     of your misery mistress
Gumbo is the noise of
     our heart and our faces
All I could tell you is that I'm not gone
     I can't even leave yet
There's a pact for us to finish,
    you agreed to it too
We set our shoulders square,
     angling our elbows to fit into
That box at the bottom
     of the glittering acidic pool

and we jumped
missing our ways of unlocking each other
and we meant it
I never expected
to be anything (besides being myself)
before I met you.

It all turns into you.
The daylight
promising me
magnificent ability
to make anything real of the hour
for I was aware of our talent long
before I met our power.

The moon does a better job than you
I crystallized the cuts on my hands
then I dripped them
on your back
How could you believe
we're supposed to stay
on one track?

Maybe I'm not as natural
as you helped me believe
But I do match myself
consistently
And I fit into people like
a circle in a square
while you are too much like
me to even enjoy the air

Generally
I think we crave
otherness

They say attention sells
Are you paying?
Good buy
Watching as the sales
Catch wind
In the distance
The omnipotent lurks
It hurts from afar
The closer it gets
Sedated the pain drifts
Internet viral infection
Your subjective objections
Nets more views
They say attention sells
Are you paying?
Opinions gumbo
A snowball effect
What's erected briefly
Affects the aura
Dispersed in seconds
Long lasting knots
Tied in infinite temporaries
Life of
is short like Februaries
Long cold and quick
They say attention sails
Are you paying?
To stay afloat
Drowning in free money
Purchased for nothing
Flailing
sinking from the
Whole within
Anchored
In the middle
Of an ocean of sand
With water on top
They say attention sells
Did you pay yet?

A White Man’s Prayer

Lord send me a champion
inarticulate as a mouthful
of scalding gumbo, smart

as two left shoes, windier
than a kettle of my Uncle Larry’s
chili, one who talks

tough around the silver
spoon in his mouth
sane as an *****

grinders monkey, a real
Yankee Doodle Dandy
plenty handy with the girls

honest as the day is long
in Lapland in December
an hombre who knows

how it feels to be top rail
at breakfast, bottom rail
by bedtime, big hearted

to his legions of lessors
his betters nothing more
than vicious rumor, Lord

knows my first choice
Yosemite Sam
is also a cartoon.

Before the murky waters came
Life was different
Maw-Maw’s red-bricked house sat at the back of our dead-end road
The ever-welcoming glass door with the
Faulty hitch opened up to a two-step stair
Leading down into a living room
Encompassed with the smell of
Cajun cooking
And basked in the essence
Of Family

After the murky waters came
Life looked different
I remember the water whirl pooling into the tops of my
rain boots
As I trudged next door to my aunt’s water-lined house
To comfort Maw-Maw, who lost everything
Her tears falling into the stench-infested puddles at her feet
And jumping right back up in a splash as if they too
Were hurrying to find shelter

The heat of the sun held the
Stench of the monster
That had us all in its grip
Patches of brown grass mocked us
Where the water had decided to leave early
And accumulate somewhere else

Piles of our lives lined the driveways
Mildew fogged up the windows of
Miscellaneous cars and trucks
Which still held secrets that the murky waters left inside
What could be salvaged
What remnants were left
From before
The murky waters came

Floors were ripped up
Walls gutted out
Bricks broke easily under the weight
Of demolition
Our hearts broke easily under the weight
Of the water

I once watched a documentary about horror
Which was described as something that simply should not be
but somehow
is
Horror was the bulging, black molded bar in my kitchen
The scattered furniture in my living room
The stench that took over my senses at the opening of a door to go inside or outside; fresh air forgotten
The fact that my bedroom looked normal in spite of the soggy carpet and the
Drooping painting hanging on my wall,
Clothes strewn across my bed in an effort
To survive

After the murky waters left
Life was different
Life became “before the flood” and “after the flood”
“Hey, how are you,” became “have you heard from FEMA?”
“What are you up to” became “are y’all raising or demolishing?”
Three mountains of bricks down my road became
Trailers on pedestals
The trash, our former possessions, was eventually gone
New replaced the old

Now
life is life
We are thankful for what we have
We still sit on that wooden swing in the shade of the afternoon
And we reminisce of a time before the murky waters came
All the while appreciating the
Now

And we still laugh together
We still cry together
Up in that storm-safe trailer
At the back of our dead-end road
Gumbo is cooking on the stove
And we’re basking warmly in the essence
Of Family