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CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l
Alessander Dec 2016
Even to an untrained eye
One can spot layers of foundation
Caked into her face

Is she a victim
Of some historical imperative?

Is she caged
In some arbitrary matrix?

Some fun-house of mirrors
While a mustachioed ringleader
Overcharges, shouting

“Come one, come all, bedazzled spectator
Behold, the distorted woman
Transmogrifying before your eyes!”

Or maybe she’s just vain
Or betwixt the two

Somewhere, a boy drops a sixpence
It rattles in the dusky jar
As he enters the dark show
whatever comes to mind as always
clumsy trip up the 17
steps to the paisley sheets
me behind you and
saying the same thing
with a new twist
"hey, know whats trending?"
"your sweet ***"
or
"you smell that?!"
to which you reply
"farts is trending"
no able to erupt
in the uproarious laughter
necessitated by turning
a tired line on its head
i cover my mustachioed mouth
with a sweaty palm
to cover the guffaw
that would most certainly
awake my roommates
you always in the lead
giving *** for tat
the style of humor
i searched for yearningly
and never found
that is
till you released wind
and then told me about it
this poem is about **** jokes...sorry
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Marines call to say hello,
impress. I'm over 35 but my boys
19. They could go: Hide!

One moment spent tying a shoe,
another dying, gunshot wound or poisoned food.
Events in their mere chronology
                                                      ­ make no sense.
And the details of yr dad's life don't either.
                                                         ­               Late night
quiet cigarette smoker. But next day,
the butts cleaned into the can. Who does that?
Lady in a skirt or overalls rolled up - cigarette smoke.
Now it's yr dad.
                            Yr dad who
                                                 watches for war.

Even if Uncle Sam disbands, dissolves
we the people will still be here and stay involved
with North America. The purple mountains majesty
                           and shining seas
little people, big people, brown, red, and white. Addicted
                           to action movies.
Perhaps there is no choice. One must sit, sitting still
                           as a buddha, sitting bull.
I can imagine myself and all others - drivers, voters, runners -
                           little fetal muscles
at first. Metastasizing. What's it called when the cell
                           at the tip of the *****
or organism, divides, and the ***** grows? It's called
                           ******* a bicycle.

I find I make no sense. Her ****, a practicality to her, is
                           delicious to me
a miraculous sea lettuce or snapdragon. You've heard it before.
                           A moral dilemma
wrapped in robes and silks and odors. Yet, come close,
                           and business beckons
work gets done, life goes on, hair grows in, we go on
                           vacation
the Marine Corps calls, desperate for new fetuses to teach
                           purposeful workmanlike killing
I'll do my own killing, thanks, when violence comes to the
      neighborhood
                           if I've got your back
your back's gotten and if I'm on point, the point's taken.

One world under God invisible with liberty and justice for all who
                           Art in heaven
what the hell's his name.
                                          Nemesis.
        ­                                                  Hysterical.
The small war of an especially inept empire. The world's too big
to swallow as the Krauts and Nips found out. Empire
is self-correcting. Them dark-skinned mustachioed *******
who can't fix their own electricity seem to be kicking our *****
pert good. As did the ***** before them. All to the good. A
good lesson to know and then we all become friends following
the brawl. We apparently cannot skip the fight. It must
be fought, and **** the girls.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
david badgerow Nov 2011
In a dream I was a battleship
and you were France's foreign shore
Or
I was a mustachioed American soldier
and you were a 25 dollar French *****
Either way
I crashed into you
I was stranded
I slept on your beach for days
Starving & thirsty
But you fed me in other ways.
You sank my last desperate battleship
And as I drifted into water
as deep and as blue as your eyes
I couldn't help but to miss
The comfort and warmth of your thighs.
I don’t remember the first mushroom I had.
I can’t remember the last time rainbow stars weren’t falling
from the sky, why I’m addicted to jumping on flagpoles,
or why I shoot fireballs after eating flowers.
I’m addicted, but it’s not a problem.
I think.

I can see flying turtles with wings.
They keep throwing hammers at me.
I punch bricks
hoping coins come out of them,
because I somehow got the idea
that if I got a hundred gold coins
I could buy myself a new life.

I want a life with a steamy
red hot princess
in a flowing pink dress
living in a bourgeois castle
where the smell of peaches
breathes life into every fiber
of my mustachioed being.

Sometimes I think my brother is green
with envy, when all he really does is pick daisies.
Why should he be jealous?
He’s taller, slimmer,
and he doesn’t have to work as tirelessly as I do.
But, I’ve always jumped higher,
reached further, and punched harder.
It’s not my fault he chooses to stay in my shadow.
That little *****.

I sometimes ride on a green dinosaur's back.
I’m a baby floating away in a bubble,
and that dinosaur saved my life
far too many times to count.
He’s my best friend.

Sometimes I like to put on my blue hat
and pretend that I’m invisible.
Sometimes I put on my green hat
and pretend I’m as hardened as a mafia gangster.
I am Italian after all. It’s in my blood.

I want to quit, but I can’t. I don’t need to.
I’m doing fine with these mushrooms.
I feel larger than life with the red ones,
and the green ones
resurrect me.
Westley Barnes Mar 2016
Each time I attempt to conclude
this equation,
I arrive at the same intersection of doubt,
as if fate sees me coming.

1) Highway ****** Crash
2) The Evasive Goings-on in The Puppy Court
3) A Picture of Susan Howe in a Man's Grey Overcoat

These sequences of event all appeared to me in dreams. The same dream, repeated, over a succession of winter nights. The first few sober, the last an alert blur, wherein the images seemed to make the most sense.

All I can be assured of is this:
because the police officer in the dream was a police officer
Not a garda síochana or police inspector
the dream was definitely set in one of the Midwest United States
where I've never been, yet oddly interests me more than Canada,
where the same applies. It was definitely  freezing
(perhaps the blanket had been pulled off me in sleep?)
and the police officer definitely spoke English and said
"Highway" Hence: American.

The first night the dream arrived
It was that time of year when the night sky
subtly tricks you into believing that
morning is imminently about to break.

Those nights
A reminder that nature
was the first coy tease of suspended disbelief
the first pay-per-view special that took its time
getting going and then ended all too soon.

Two trucks had split in two a mid-size saloon-
That was the first of the dream's episodes-
But a voice arrived like a roll call of ice before an avalanche
-whispering that it was "a setup"-
which I presumed meant "collusion."
So I had a ******, at hand, in my dream-
speaking to the mustachioed Midwestern police detective afterwards-
as mutually understanding as if we had been in the same all-boys Catholic secondary school.
He had the suspects-so we then presided unto-

"THE PUPPY COURT"

Which was-yes, a court whose racial make-up consisted of young Dogs-
(This being a dream ; Dreams which are often the dictionary definition of Surreal and often don't mean anything)
The more I consider it, the Puppies were also most likely Puppets
Acted out by humans who had fists shoved up their *****.
Perhaps this court was a speculative court-it was, most certainly,
A "Kangaroo" court
With no justice being presided over, as such.
Heckles sounded throughout most of the exhibits,
A sternly yapping Yorkshire Terrier banged the gavel to no avail-
He was consistently rudely interrupted by a cocksure Golden Retriever-
who seemed to have as his boyos most of the bench and the jurors.
I never did find out who was responsible
for the horrific collision that spelled the end for the saloon driver,
as at this point I would usually exit the court in disgust
and for some reason found myself reading a poem in front of
an audience of one-
the acclaimed Irish-American L=A=N==G=U=A=G=E (that's how they spell it..) poet Susan Howe.

Yes, she was indeed wearing a Man's gray Overcoat
Resembling herself in the picture I held in my hand
Next to my own text
And as I looked toward her
The room's low lighting seem to reflect
the sparse "Black and White" filter of the photograph
and she was also wearing what looked like
the same Man's gray (Houndstooth maybe?
She Looked ALL filtered through "Black and White")

So the intention seemed to be that I was reading,
or perhaps presenting, maybe even pitching?
to Susan Howe. ("And how!"-might have been the before-or-after gag I might have used to anyone who new how it was going to go or how it happened-what gamey fun, these puns be...)
Susan looked on with penitence, as if prematurely unimpressed...
I look down to the poem I was expecting myself to read, and realised...
why the ******* did I choose that?

It was a poem I had written several years ago (well, if several means seven, lets say six)
Its subject was a young Canadian (possible Motorway Crash Link? Perhaps I misremembered her as midwestern?..) Muslim student whom I had shared a class on Hellenistic philosophy with back in the first or second year of my undergrad in Dublin (oh the hedonistic, sunsplashed, affordable Dublin of those days) and whom I had shared a flirtatious rapport with, innocent enough of course but always backdropped by a underscored leitmotif that instilled the threat of a problematic outcome across religious and possibly less so cultural divides

(Breath)

Nevertheless, she laughed at my jokes and self-deprecation and would squeeze my arm tightly when particularly amused , would hug me enthusiastically at the end of every class and although I never saw the full profile of her under that headscarf her ****** features Vogue beach fashion shoot stunning and after the module ended I never saw her again oh but how rare and strangely puritanical the lust...

Regardless, the poem began as such:

A Stir in Yemen/ must have been the catalyst for the smokey condensation/ in your gaze/ the mocha swirl in your pupils/ and the vex in your smile/ alluding to double meanings/innuendo that treads together like an Ernst canvas/ a blessed triptych/thrillingly

This poem was typed onto a model of Nokia phone which I have been made aware has since gone out of fashion, like it's producer.

Max Ernst-the surrealist painter, of course. A manual in style for most of us.

In response to my reading, Susan Howe merely nodded silently, seemingly all knowingly, as if she had thought the poem written for her or contained an interpretation that I had unintended (or, if asked by the real-life Susan Howe, would pretend to have intended all along.)

And there the Dream Triptych always ended.

As I said at the beginning I dreamt it twice more that same week, once intoxicated. It always followed the same sequence, and I don't read books on dreams so I have no idea what it meant, why it had three distinct parts or whether if most likely it was all a bit of nonsense. But at least it was INTERESTING.

Make the rest up for yourself.
Militantly mustachioed, at least in my mind's eye, and
Invincibly attired toe-to-wing in sterling silver, he
Commands legions less scary than our mechanized monsters, but
Hell's soon-to-be tenants are awed enough to scurry. Swords, not
Angelic in a cherubic sense, wilt Lucifer's pride, and
Exiting those gates, the now-Dark Prince howls his lament. I picture
Laughs on Cloud 9, Michael sharing beers and war stories with chums.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
anmey Aug 2014
there’s something incredibly annoying about it all, this urge to be better than good enough, the columns of highlighted plans, battle strategies for a eclipse that’s unlikely to happen, picturesque visions of murky scenery; as if we’ll be here in a century or as if it will matter what lips skin eyes we had or the number we got on a test in junior year. it’s all sinking by so fast and you and i both spend the better of it worrying our insides raw and closing our eyes, preparing for the final blow – as if that hasn’t already whistled by with the christmases. they tell us to get our numbers up, they yell to have fragile figures and stand out be different, as if that’s even tangible now in this phoenix cycle where 98 percent is the new 2 percent and different is the norm so to be different would be to be the norm and all we can do is shrug our hearts up to meet their pleas. but it’s so so hard in a world where everything wrong and wicked is romanticized by screens and statistics are emphasized by angry mustachioed men from behind beautiful architecture and our skeletons groan under the weight of it all, as if as if. you and i are stuck in this fork between dusted roads and they know it, they say they were there, but how is anything the same three decades later when it’s added to this spider web of standards? so we are lost until the new sands come and when they do we will already be in the next desert over, spinning in the next yellow kaleidoscope until the day we mix with the sand ourselves; and do you see what i mean: numbers and pictures and this is our life.
A Mareship Oct 2013
Fossilized
Bed frame in the garden
Picked bare by the vulture of rain.

Analyse.

Mustachioed archeologists
Will dustily brush
Its slatted ribcage
And wonder how many years it suffered.

“This ornate four poster,
This mahogany rollercoaster,
Was used to aid in sedation and
Sensation.
To the best of our knowledge
It seems to have broken
Under the weight
Of a boy's imagination.”
Marshal Gebbie Mar 2012
An ode to my long and satisfying relationship with the product of Portugal’s Douro Valley.

Golden amber, smokey smooth
Rich with pleasured bite
Spreading warmth to ample girth
The brandy’s fine tonight.

Dustless, standing on my shelf
Bathing in half light,
Golden highlights shadow deep
Paints Douro Father's right.

Born amidst the hills of schist
On vines that root in rock
In patterns neat and quite arcane
Of ancient grappa stock.

Old men sit by river barge,
Mustachioed and wise,
To argue politics and sip
God’s amber nectar prize.

Tepid sun is setting low
To throw long shadows tight,
To bathe the vines of soft green tones
In liquid amber light.

Golden spirit, smokey smooth
Glows with silken light
Satisfaction’s spreading warmth
Paints Douro Father’s right.

Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
Sipping a tumbler of amber warmth in New Zealand’s Autumn sunset.
26 March 2012
Jo Nov 2013
Watching a sunset
Splay its colored body
Against a hollow, indigo sky.  
Her children,
Lost glowing specks
Of iridescent dust,
Peek out from behind their
Empty, lightless blanket -
Shy and blushing.  

Tongue and tooth
Clicking together,
Tickled by vibrating
Chords hidden in heated
Throats.  
Stories slink
From one mouth
To another,
Tickling their
Deep limbic systems
Until every nerve
Is laced with
Oxytocin.  

Laying in grass
More brown than green
With stomachs to the sky
Are bodies with connected
Palms.  
Formless dinosaurs spin
In shapeless teacups,
While amorphous cats
Shift into mustachioed whales.  

Bodies curl around each other
Like clay
Fusing into one piece
And two colors,
Both a shade of red.  
A chest meets a back.  
Its fluttering heart
Crashing through
Two sets of ribs,
To rest with another,
Both bleeding in tandem.  

Love is
Not some byproduct
To gather dust
While writhing, undulating bodies
Coat the air with sweat.  
Love isn't made,
Nor is it preformed.  
Love is
SN Mrax Jun 2012
It's spring and I mainly feel morbid,
dark, in my bitter little room.

Watch, the blossoms are falling from the trees again.
The year cycles through another series of imperfect moments.

Outside open mike night clubs, each evening, the young mustachioed hobos
hobnob in their fine tight pants.

I stride past them and wish that I wanted to know.

I pretend there's some kind of north star
and I have pasted an invisible face
on it,

but you won't go along with my play pretend.

I could be sitting in the center of a web,
with a long cigarette and my lips dark red,

but there's no devouring mouth at the end of my promise--
I just want them to want to know.
One Andean Sky Feb 2023
Hey baby, give me your sweet lovin’, hey
A bucket of sugar in my latte
Hey sugar, give me your sweet candy kiss
Your mustachioed lip **** Fizz

Your sweetness hits me high
A baked cheesecake ricotta pie
The more you give, the more I crave
But diabetes? I don’t wanna have

Hey darlin’, your lips are sweet candy
The first hit and I am Ghandi
You always leave me wanting more
But all this lovin’ drops me to the floor

Hey baby, shoot me your jellybeans
Pants bursting their seams
A sip of coke, a swig of soda
Caramel fudge and a Sambuca chaser

Hey sugar, I kinda need a hit
But so much sweetness, my jeans don’t fit
Lets eat our sherbet pops aloud
Dipping dots with amplified sound

Smokin’ high on chocolate cigars
Spill crumbs on coffee stained guitars
My appetite for the sweet stuff grows
Will diabetes take me? Who knows.
The lights are switched on, a bit like me although it's been said, I am dull.

The jubilee line train is starting to fill and now it's full.

This is the early show for those in the know that the early bird catches the worm.

It's eyes down in the smart phone town where contact is just an adhesive.

A mustachioed man much older than I am
playing candy crush
slowly.

I've seen
those what sniffs
some with quiffs
and them what whiffs
of wintergreen.

I sit here taking it in
can't hear a pin drop.

Terminating at Stanmore?
well
I won't be going there.

Unlikely,
but mustachioed man
looks a bit like
Blakey!
on a bus man's
holiday?
on Tuesday?
unlikely.

Some guy just got on
he smells of
Old Spice,
I wanna say nice
but
I won't.
david badgerow Oct 2022
Dawn breaks on the quiet countryside.
The nightlife ghosts shuffle away to their daytime hideaways.
The strand of oak, bough of pine,
crevice of cypress.
The final inhalation of night.

The early bird janitorial crew wakes and makes sounds
to each other as the sun spreads across
the quivering Bahia yard. It drinks up the dewdrops
and straightens the fenceposts with kindness as it finds error.
The sun finds me, too, naked again, on the porch
and seeks to stretch my skin taught against my frame.
I scrape a toe callous across the brick of the porch step.
It is Wednesday the nineteenth.
It is 6:27am and I am grateful to be here.

As the morning mist unravels in the exhalation
and the crows set to work aerating the soil,
my attention drifts to the breeze and how I can nearly taste October on it. A red-tailed hawk observes this scene as well,
unbothered by the fettering mockingbird,
patiently waiting for the over zealous rabbit
or the confused field mouse to make itself apparent.

The girl in my bed routinely suggests coitus
on mornings such as these, with crispy autumn leaves drifting down outside the window. Which begs to be painted, white chips peeling in the dry fall air, but she says leave it --
she likes to pick them out of the flowerbed
after we ram the bedframe against the interior.
She likes to keep them.

Instead, this morning she’ll settle for bacon and eggs without much complaint. Although she will leer at me murderously
from behind her mustachioed cup of creamed coffee. She won’t tolerate my advances afterward, either --
insisting on her lateness, or mine,
or the cat pawprints
on the hood of her car.

She’ll hum through my comments
about the sunlight, the dew, my personification of the hawk.
She looks over the top of her phone when I mention ghosts, but happily returns to scrolling when she realizes I’m full of it.

And so, then, off we go.
Each with a bushel, and a peck, and a hug around the neck.
The quiet morning has been ruined. Although I tried, I failed to grasp it in its totality, failed to convey to you its extreme beauty.
It lies at our feet in shreds.
I know I will never have
a morning like this again,
not exactly like this,
and I’ve let it slip away.
Blair Gowrie Jul 2017
One day there came into the club
a stranger causing a great hubbub
with his soldierly, swaggering, uniformed figure,
and short black hair and moustache a-quiver,
and with him aides and associates ten,
all muscular, military, mustachioed men,
and looking around with disdain he decried
not a table there was which was not occupied,
and noticing a nearby noisy group
of diners spooning up their soup
at a longish table seating twenty
and laden with food and drink a-plenty,
he called the captain with this demand,
“Give me that table, it’s my command.”

from The Adventures of George
©Blair Gowrie (Roderick Macdonald)
This is another excerpt from my narrative poem, The Adventures of George and this character is based on a real-life person - can you guess who?
Travis Green Sep 2022
So mentally enchanted and confounded, I am
When I come into contact with your flashy radical galaxy
When I stare at your magicalness
Your biteable and inflamed lips
Dopely mustachioed and soulful Romeo
I clasp to every fraction
Of your fantastically surpassing immaculateness
Scrumptious bang-up thugness

You scoop me up in your rugged, vigorous arms
Give a new lease of life to my entireness
Be my freshalicious fantasy flex
Enrapture and ravish me incontrovertibly
Feel your absolute smooth fluidity of movement
So silkalcious and slickalicious
Take me beyond reality
Into intensely dreamy and splendorous wonderland

Let me burn for your flourishing and immersing fuel
Lead me into gleamingly limitless limits
Where your hotness pops in the spotlight
Exalt in your marvelously glossy and olive skin
Incomprehensible manly pleasurableness
Bright butterfly blue eyes
So relaxing and invigorating to gaze deeply into

Your splashiness is a fantabulous canvas
Of amorous, creative, and self-made art
A loving and showstopping charmer
A mind-blowing and prizewinning centerpiece
A paradigmatic mantastical rarity
A heart-filling, flabbergasting attraction
An emotionally charged and boundary-pushing profoundness
An expressive, psychedelic, and visually stimulating engagingness
Onoma Apr 2020
drills shrilly nosed into plywood

as storefronts were shuttered along

the walkway.

hazy tapwater sunlight diluted the

dogwood tree planted at center.

as a patch of pigeons were thrown

above it, whose wings became black

sticks across its white blooms.

frantically searching for the old man that

would normally feed them.

up ahead that brolic, mustachioed Puerto Rican

street vendor has been unstapled from the

sidewalk--his unheard cadences hustling the

numbers off watches.
Travis Green Oct 2022
Your stylish summery strikingness is
So especially spectacular and cherishable
Tender touching lovingness
Unforgettable, heavenly, and fresh-cut lover boy
Playful, tasteful, and creatively breathtaking amazingness

Your machoness is a dope kaleidoscope
Of marvelously astonishing wonder
Your sensational-worthy hazel eyes
Are a flaming language of all-embracing
And amorous enchantment

Your lips are a contagious flavorous wonderland
Superabundant in very extraordinary
And enjoyable wonderment
Your physically prepossessing physique
Renders me speechless every time I check you out

Such sexually attractive beard hairs
Showy mustachioed Romeo
I love the way your swagger shines bright
How you move and position
Your ideally bewitching, unyielding limbs
You are an entrancingly dreamy and manly delight
I concede to your deep endless stupendousness
Travis Green Sep 2022
I am driven to distraction
Every time I come face to face
With your immaculate debonair attraction
Run my eyes over your ravishingly rare mantasticness
Smoking mustachioed Romeo
Aesthetically pleasing and silken beard
Like a thick and luxurious carpet
Fraught with highly distinctive and fantastic art
Like an extraordinarily royal and seductive invitation
To a surprising and gratifying wonderland

Memorable, mandorable, and venerable
Stellar, stylish, and shredded powerhouse
Industrious, lustrous, and rumbustious
I lose my way in your invitingly
Fiery and exciting maze
Radiating with flaming, sparkling elatedness
Enjoyable moist alluringness
Your hot creamy skin enamors me
Your amorous and exquisitely engrossing lips are so biteable
Adventurous as a thrillingly sensational amusement park
Fragrant as a boldly colored and mesmerizing flower

Heavenly, impressive, and treasured city-bred flex
I hanker to catch the light by your side
See your soft sublime smile
Let you electrify my bright enticeable framework
Splashy magic man, full of flavor, sagacious
Artistically aware, intoxicating captivation
Poetically pleasing marvelocity, aesthetically expressivity
You are the one for me that replenishes me
I am
an American
******

Cruising the waves
I cruise
aside a brunette beauty
in tanned glistening nothing
with lips that taste of
nicotine and Dentyne
and portside ***
and her

Whales breach starboard
majestic and grand
Other whales breach nearer astern
aflail french fries and ranch dressing
oppressive and loud
always half dressed
in too little

Two too young girls in too little still
stride the decks
all peaches and cream
catching lecherous gazes from old men and dried ketchup kisses from
little boys
blown
astray

Breakfast at noon dinner at six
coladas and beer every half hour between
and pizza by the plate after **** drunk
*** 'n' Coke
sing alongs with Lizzy to
Billy J. and the Eagles

Santiago
Captain of the salt stripped
El Pablito
shows us where
the Pacific and Cortez
****
amid sea foam
and sea lion ****

No gracias
echoes
down
the
shore

¿Maybe some mota señor?
or
¿Candy for the nose?

Aboard
Tomislav serves teeny 'tinis to
mustachioed **** in
sport coat bravado
smoking ****
dropping the ashes
in their
frosted glasses
sipping slow
waiting
to dance
or sing
or both

thinking

about this
Miracle
we cruise
Travis Green Aug 2022
I savor your fragrant captivating radiancy
Your intoxicating tatted-up freshness
The way you cajole me into the closeness
Of your glowing ****-hot dopeness
Engrossed in your deep spellbinding smoke

Utter unadulterated sensationalness
Striking and tasteful art in my sight
A dazzlingly brilliant sunshine
That shimmers all around my open space
A splendid golden lover boy
Abounding with blazing hazel captivation

I desire to dive into your untamed fiery wildness
Feel your prominent game taunt my domain
Twist me into your igniting flame
Of compelling blood-red passion

Allow me to slide my fingertips
Over your full fresh lips
Allow my feminineness to speak  
With your delicious exquisiteness
Magical mustachioed rareness

You are an indescribable prizable gift to my soul
I live in the astonishing moments
Where I can bask in your earthly fervency
In the stream of dancing words
That rise romantically from your mouth
Travis Green Sep 2022
Dreamy, legendary, and ungovernable lover boy
You are a heavenly body of untouchable luscious hotness
Radical ungraspable attraction, masterful luxuriant beard
Smoking mustachioed royalty, my alluring hot boy
So flawlessly and sturdily sculpted, hot tasty sensation
I need your impassioned and refreshing sweetness

Feel your honey love roaming in my heartland
Blossoming harmonious charmingness
Falling in your massive sinewy arms
Locked in hypnotically heart-stirring
And overpowering ecstasy
I feel your perpetually intense
And triumphant enchantment all over me
Seductive, passionate, and poetic smash

You are too deliciously appealing and glistening
Ultimate masculine dream attraction
A pie-in-the-sky, top-seeded, and superheated slickness
An extra special treasure of high quality
So artfully atomic, so cosmically out of this world
You hold my senses spellbound
Pleasure my inner world, ****** my queerness
Stir my sensations, make me dance
In your contagiously exhilarating wave
Radiating with freshalicious mesmeric etherealness
Travis Green Mar 2023
I crave to cram down a case
Of his radiant captivating encahntingness
Become drunk on his overbold smoking manfulness
Carry his charismatically immaculate and magnetic presence
In the subliminal limits of my dimension

Smooth my hands over his badass rugged beard
My poetic mustachioed Romeo
I await with anticipation to kiss his electric devilish lips
Cherish him like a royally rich and enjoyable cherry pie
Like a chocolate-covered strawberry sundae

Survey his gleaming tourmaline eyes
Take in his dreamy sweet-scented sienna skin
Lure me closer to his manly valiant chin
Cast a spell on me, set my homosexualness aflame
Embrace and enamor my imagination

Encase me in the pure revered warmth
Of his treasured sculptured charmingness
Press my palms against his rigid, unyielding abs
Feel how he makes my entireness come alive
How the extent of his stupendous shimmering structure
Charms and comforts me indelibly

He is like smooth wax fusing with my flesh
I melt into him like an indulgent refreshing mocha milkshake
Like brown sugar brandy ice cream
I hanker to swim inside of him
Capture his starry rocking hotness

Pervade my dreams with vivid visions
Of his irresistible rhythmical unbeatableness
Strum his nostalgically magical
And radical song on my lush plump honkers
Grab hold of my emotions

Run his fingers across the pages
Of my harmonious headline-worthy poetry
Render me breathless and helpless
Caught up in his sinfully sensuous flame
He makes my temples tingle

I am so into every inch
Of his tempting supereminent immenseness
Lost in his intense succulent content
Burn for the utter seduction of his immersiveness
Lay cocooned in his groovy feel-good hoodness
Arlene Corwin Jun 2020
Dear reader,
     This is a long one. Though it was written in 1995,  I’m including it because the inexcusable and inhuman Floyd phenomenon      
demands answers of some kind, human beings seeming to have a need to exclude; itself a discreditable phenomenon.
Have patience and read to the end, please.
Arlene            

             Inclusive/Exclusive
 
I heard them talking.
Back and forth they talked about the universal;
Secular society’s exclusion of the concept evil.
Focusing on genocide, race killing pride.
They harkened back to World War Two,
To Pole, gay, Gypsy, Marxist, Jew –
When one mustachioed-crazed face
Decided to **** off a race that never was a race.

“How does it come about, they asked.
-And how can we prevent it?
There was rabbi, priest from West and East.
“How can we **** the killing beast?
Turn killing to a feast and peace?”
They were erudite all right.  Not right, bur erudite.

One said, “We teach the whelps. Education is what helps.”
One said, “we cannot burn the seed. Punish those that do the deed,
Chase the villains, make them bleed;
Justice must be served and seen.”
The cause was man alone.

But where was God, I heard me groan.
The priest and rabbi, smart but green,
-Oh, God was there, but cause was man.
The cause was man?
How can the cause be man when God is absolut-er than
First cause and seed, the first split second all decreed,
All that stems from filling need.
Plainfully clear, it followed as the night the day
That even murdered masses stay
Within the scope of God’s good meaning.
(from which one ears oneself screaming)
If God is, and still they die,
There’s meaning somewhere in the sky
And meaning must be dying’s seeming,
Any other meaning dreaming.
(Let’s let that specific theory by)

Back to rabbi and to priest:
Back and forth they sought solutions.
I could see a key, a yeast
Which, when expanding, chokes pollutions:
Heres the  final codicil:
                            
Leave the club that says “Exclusive”.
Join the club that says “Inclusive.
It’s not easy not to hate,
Include the ‘yids’,
The blacks, the gays; yourself. the kids.
But it’s a gate.
We are geno-of the-cide.

By taking God on this queer ride - or ethics or morality,
A good way to begin Is make a circle drawing in
Someone whose eye you catch; who happens to fall in your patch;
Who chances near, or seeks your ear;
In short, who forms the batch of living skin.
(Include the wretch you are, as well,)
To make a heaven out of hell,
And feed the world with perfect food,
Tell, yell and ring this perfect bell:
Include, include, incude!!
 
Inclusive/Exclusive 5.23.1995 Definitely Didactic; Our Times, Our Culture; Defiant Doggerel; Arlene Nover Corwin  (revised 6.9.2020)

— The End —