1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body
were not the soul, what is the soul?

2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself
     balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of
     his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist
     and knees, dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the
     folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the
     contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
     the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
     silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the
     horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open
     dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or
     cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six
     horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, *****,
     good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown
     after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine
     muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes
     suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d
     neck and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s
     breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with
     the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3
I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and
     beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness
     and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were
     massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal
     love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the
     clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he
     had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had
     fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
     you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of
     the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit
     by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round
     his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I
     swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
     and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
     all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what
     was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response
     likewise ungovernable,
Hair, *****, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
     diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
     and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
     love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the
     prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born
     of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the
     outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the
     exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as
     daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
     sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is
     utmost become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to
     the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes
     soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the
     laborers’ gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as
     much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has
     no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and
     the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?

7
A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized
     arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,
     aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in
     parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
     in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
     through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace
     back through the centuries?)

8
A woman’s body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and
     times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
     than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool
     that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
     nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the
     soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and
     that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,
     father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or
     sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the
     jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
    ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
     finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-*****, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
     or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, *******, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
     love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and
     tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked
     meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward
     toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the
     marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of
     the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.

We remain
perfectly
perched
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now
we keep
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward;
yet
thankfully
remain
distant
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of
this epochs
movers and shakers,
a veritable
rouges gallery of
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist
confederates,
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

Statesmen
boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing the impact
of stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys roll up
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with hand held
sextants of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirées
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of a
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox
of reconciling
discoveries of
perverse voyeurism
with the sanctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
of Baba Amr.

The ****** of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on treacherous roads,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
marking sights
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a sadists
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
beholding
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5.

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance,
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizingly close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women
of Homs scream prayers
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as my
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the power
of love and marshal
truth to speak with
the force of
satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

6.

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness.

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness.

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked,
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.

Selah


7.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops.

The deadly jinn
indiscriminately
inject the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their ****,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


8.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


9.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the depleted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

10.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the adhan
of screams
the silent
voices that echo
the blatant injustice
of a people under siege.


11.

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


12.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum,
a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of ravaged streets.

The swirling
chorus of
mourning
joins my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with the
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


13.

From my
safe window
I heed
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
the black
plumes,
lifting from
the scattered bricks
of the desecrated
city.

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
stones of
desolation.

14.

From our
safe windows
we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
eying
falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of disheveled beds.


15.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
our words mock urgency
our thoughts betray comprehension
our senses fail to illicit empathy
our action is the only worthy prayer


16.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my little palace,
the crack
of a ******
shot
precedes
the wiz of a
passing bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.


17.

From my
safe window,
my palms scoop
the rich soil
of the flower boxes
perched on my sill.
I anoint the tender
green shoots of  the
Arab Spring
with an incessant flow
of bittersweet tears.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgment

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm

Gemini in seasonable  evening,
serenely swirling in Septemberous
ferris wheels
reeling in the vast domain
of lonesome leviathans
and witch-fires;
nowhere bound in the boundless fecundity
[ the feral joys of creation... ]
twins
meander in gravity's
well of souls,
swollen with unknowns and proteins;
golden rods in pointless foam
brewing the elixir vitae
in the Dippers cup. the Milky Way,
a wayward gush
from an ancient Mother Goddess,
plump and shameless, pumping teats
to nurse worlds
infused with divine rays of gamma and x...
why set dark apart
from firmament burning
spheres?

dragons
must clutch eggs in the void
as much
as fork tongue white dwarfs.
of course, the Source
unfolds
as  Love does. it's purpose,
in thrall of fearless veracity,
spinning yarns for glad garments
to clothe the naked dread
of such fearful symmetries
as roam the wild delights
of the infinite
meringue.

the Pi
on the window sill,
tempting the circular frame of reference
to square with the sublime Will.
another Fibonacci in your
bedpost,
to better hobnob with
broomsticks.
everything annihilates hatred.
from within,
we sojourn to sovereign super-continents
of opulent peace.
profound realities surge serpentine
with Meaning.
we are outdone on the inside by small minds
and farcical
hearts.

so at night
look up.

Love's Tongue Is
Love's
Word.

God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid

In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.

But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door

To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot

For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling

In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must

Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,

Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat.

But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled

Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape

A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent

Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.

Sustenance for friends and clients;
state your case – come one, come all.
The matron arms of Social Service
will not let you fall.

Food stamps make our nation stronger,
licked, then stuck on the public roll.
Social programs last much longer
adding recipients on the dole…

Like the Ephesian Diana
many are my benefits!
Mine the matriarchal manna;
latch and suckle at my teats.

Yours the client’s right to nurture.
Mother will supply your need;
Child, you must not fear the future –
feed, my baby, feed.

Call me nanny, call me Lord
just make sure you’re calling on me.
Mine are the gifts you can afford
they’re taxpayer-funded, worry-free!

Once you are latched I’ll keep it flowing
like an intravenous habit.
Keep that ****** situated
where your will can never grab it

Let it never cross your mind
that there’s an end to all lactation.
Cloward-Piven have refined
this titillation.

Love me.  Need me.  I’m the State.
Your well-being is my affair.
With your consent I’ll dominate,
because I care.

KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.
  
Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.
  
Other faces rise on the prairie.
  They are the unborn. The future.
  
Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the skyline
The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One waits.
  
In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion eight o'clock June nights ... the dead men and the unborn children speak to me ... I can not tell you what they say ... you listen and you know.
  
I don't care who you are, man:
I know a woman is looking for you
and her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a south-west wind.
(The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust, is calling the cows; he will form the letter X with crossed streams of milk from the teats; he will beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin pail with X's of milk.)
  
I don't care who you are, man:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are gray dust working toward star paths
And you see them from a garret window when you laugh
At your luck and murmur, "I don't care."
  
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know a man is looking for you
And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn-tassel.
  
(The kitchen ******* the farm is throwing oats to the chickens and the buff of their feathers says hello to the sunset's late maroon.)
  
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are next year's wheat or the year after hidden in the dark and loam.
  
My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio, Indiana. My love is a redbird shooting flights in straight lines in Kentucky and Tennessee. My love is an early robin flaming an ember of copper on her shoulders in March and April. My love is a graybird living in the eaves of a Michigan house all winter. Why is my love always a crying thing of wings?
  
On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I have asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach?
Is it only a dog's jaw or a horse's skull whitening in the sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes? Is the flame of it all a white light switched off and the power house wires cut?
  
Why do the prairie roses answer every summer? Why do the changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the sky rock new babies?

it wasn't your hair I fell in love with whilst ignoring your smile..
it wasn't your clothes I fell in love with whilst ignoring your style..
it wasn't your mind I fell in love with whilst ignoring your heart..
it wasn't your poems I fell in love with whilst ignoring your art..
it wasn't your letters I fell in love with whilst ignoring your tweets..
it wasn't your **** I fell in love with whilst ignoring your teats..
it wasn't your knowledge I fell in love with whilst ignoring your quirks..
it wasn't your presence I fell in love with whilst ignoring your pause..

it wasn't a woman I fell in love with whilst ignoring her soul.. it wasn't a girl I fell in love with but a human whole..

I know full well, you're as silly as you're sensible..
I know full well, you're scared of our journey uphill...
I know full well, you're afraid you won't satisfy me..
I know full well, you have left your heart with me..
I know full well, in you I can trust..
I know full well, there's God n he'll be just..

I do hear you cry.. I  do feel your pain.. I wince when u ache.. Babe, i promise... This won't go in vain..!

it wasn't your laughter I fell in love with whilst ignoring your tears.. The day we're together as one, is not far, not far, for it nears..

~ D.

Have you ever come to my country to Russia?
It may be nay or yes, but Russia is a strange country,
It is people are funny and lively, with strong sense for success,
Those from Moscow are tall and confidently walking in a bounce,
Those from hinterland Russia often display inferiority on the face,
But conventional Russian has a keen nose for property and success,
A scientist in Russia is a beacon of interest like a pastor in Africa,
All Russians are somehow intelligent with humour and strong success motive,
Like once the case of a Russian barren woman, in the city of Moscow,
She was a Muzhik by class disposition, but proselytized into Bolshevism,
By the then Bush fire of Vladimir Ilyanov Lenin through his song of workers,
She was thus a dear comrade or comradess? Her Name was Sofia Ludwickfna,
She had been barren, o no! Childless for generations and generations,
Her marriage had been on-off and on-off due to this misfortunate pale,
Of inability to bear a child at most a son to be name after Lenin,
Every Russian man condemned her after a short while of marriage
To public distaste whenever it was discovered that Sofia was barren,
As usual, Russian men hinge their love manners on the native wisdom that;
Bogy Vysoky Tsar Dalyko; meaning God is far a way but the tsar is near,
But one day when Sofia had celebrated her menopausal day of 40th birthday,
She realized that something like a lump is felt in her tummy,
She rushed to the medic at the high street Moscow
For clinical service lest the lump grows in to cancerous tumor,
But to her stark surprise; the medic declared her pregnant,
In fact two months pregnant, and nothing else,
She asked if the pregnancy carried a boy or a girl,
For she feared to sire a boy as it was only a peasant,
That mated her in the fields during the previous full moon,
But the medic declined a comment, as his technology was not fit,
To establish the fetal gender, may be she better tries America or Germany,
But any way, she walked home happy, whistling her best lyrical
Perhaps a sonnet to the revolution and Vladimir Lenin,
The ninth month came, and Sofia delivered peacefully,
In fact a bouncing baby boy, with strong jaws like a Moscow Muzhik,
It was a moment of her joy as the gods of Russia had remembered her,
The baby grew and developed so well, it suckled and swallowed with sound,
It kicked nicely and waved its spatulate hands; a young son of Russia,
And indeed the joy of the baby made Sofia to grow fat and fat,
She named the baby four names; Tsar Alexander Tolstoy Vladimir Lenin,
On one warm after noon, Sofia chose to have a nap under the jacaranda tree,
To feel the breeze as her baby suckled, light slumber over took her nerves,
Then she fell into a deep sleep, the baby was on her teats suckling and waving,
Making soft nice sounds of thaa thaa thaaaaaaaa!
Sofia began dreaming; she saw a very huge African man,
Utterly naked with bush hair on his deeply black ***** skin,
He was not circumcised; he came unto her making stupid sound,
Like wild Russian swine chasing a rhino, he came straight to her,
She began fighting and kicking the ***** away,
She kicked mightily in the style of Russian woman,
But the ***** was strong; he began biting off her *******,
One by on, he was biting and making gnomish ***** abracadabra,
She jumped at the *****’s kneck, she began strangulating him,
She pressed tight and tight, the ***** began making stupid sounds
Like a chimpanzee, again and again as she pressed hard into his Adams’ apple
Finally Sofia managed to **** the *****, and then she woke up from her sleep,
Only to realize it was not a ***** that she had killed, but her baby, it was dead!
She was a arrested by the KOSMOSOL and taken to the judge, accused for infanticide,
She recounted the ***** story on her defense, the judge and all Russians were agog,
They uniformly blamed the misfortune of Sofia on the increasing number of Negros in Moscow,
The judge ruled that all Negroes to be thoroughly beaten and chased out of Moscow,
To be confined in a more remote bushy area in the hinterland beyond the prison of Siberia.

From a distant village, where forest lining the edges, where nature dancing with wild rhythms, where human existence have usual conflicts with minacious wild life, I bought an unparagoned cow.
superbious gait
she glimmered in bright spotlight -
wild domestic breed

In that romantic night, where moon shy to pop out from behind the murky clouds, the queen in the cowshed spend her first night with the howling songs of dogs.
croaking frog's sonnets
blended with loud fearful barks -
greeted the new guest

As the symphony of greetings continued the night and the night after, I was puzzled and forced to look around to meet a vacant sky and under it the haunting darkness.
predawn darkness stood
a veil to my eyes hiding
mysteries of night

Unable to squirrel the burden of anxieties of my quizzical mind, I decided to stay awake to watch the cowshed and my cow under a splendid moonlit night.
mask of truth divulge
laurels stirred in fiery force -
a fine leopard leaped

My abstentious legs dragged back the fleeing heart, and I was rooted trembling as a pole left alone in a cyclone eye.
watchful twinkling eyes
stem the course to silent cow -
fearless mother licked

Astonished to saw the nonchalant cow, licking the beast same her calf, I decided to rend the skies for the jewels of truth behind this precious spectacle of love.
beast lost his wildness
under legs of licking cow -
Leopard lied there low

I took an assiduous journey back to her previous owner with the imagery of a leopard cherished by their benign cow, where I was welcomed by the most baffling story of motherhood.
the truth rushed at last
shivered reminiscence –
fed curious mind

Once a female Leopard lost her way to the erf of human dominance and suffered a pitiful end in their retiform, but before she touched the sacred stream of serenity, a baby was born to the hands of her pursuer.
crying cub was fetched
from dying womb to the barn -
cow turned loving mam

Until the baby Leopard transformed to riotous youth, the halcyon mother cow fed him directly from his teats of love and then one day he was transferred to a faraway forest as an avowal of the law of land.
objections obliged
mother and her son parted -
but distance was dim

Hither to, on every darkest hours of silent nights, the different son visited her foster mother to share his adventures in the distant wild and to cherish the beauty of motherly love and it continues even the mother was transported to another house as the uncouth son followed her to her new abode.
trembled with pleasure
flower of truth opened soft -
fine fragrance of love

be my second chance at life,
be my sun,
get into my orbit,
crash into my atmosphere,
let me paint your teats on canvas,
let me be the hot water in your bath,
I don't care if the metaphor is broke,
just get the **** over here,

the distance is inhumane.

Gunga peas calypso
Madly
in my cooking ***
gradually I pour canned coconut milk
into the swirling flavors
of cilantro, garlic and onions


Staring into the rich brown
stew
I can see my Mother grating
coconut meat and hand squeezing
the milk like teats from a cow
(Too much work for me)
creating a traditional coconut rice and peas
dish


She was raised on a farm in St. Elizabeth,
Jamaica
early hours, rugged, hard labor were natural
for the family which included nine siblings
Pauline was a kind big hearted Soul
with ample soft *****
perfect for children
to lay their heads upon
and skin that always seemed
to smell of curry


Burnt sienna Indian complexion
wavy black river hair
and colorful patois accent
painted a portrait
cavorting over the dandy, rolling
goat hooved hills of
Jamaican village peasantry


The Moravian church of England formed
beliefs woven inextricably through
the fabric of her simplistic
innocent existence
our Mom instilled a love of
God in us that was pure and hearty

"Sonya stop your daydreaming"
my Mother's clarion voice interrupts
my avid reverie

"Bumba!" I cry aloud
"I haven't had bammy in eons"

Quickly my fingers Google
Another tasty native recipe

chock full of memories
and cassava root

She lies patiently while her babes drink from her body
She is calm after eating the meal delivered by her mate
He sits in front of her protective of her and his young cubs

She bats almost playfully at a blade of irritating grass that
Has been tickling her ear for what seems like a long time
The pups now sleep their tiny months still on her sore teats

She is calmer now for the run is over but inside something
Stirs maybe her female ancestors showing her new patterns
A new way of understanding almost forgotten by the others

She looks at her babies and softly purrs in her proudness
They **** absently in their sleep twitching in new dreams
She is relaxed serene could almost be sleeping herself

But do not be fooled by this white lionessfor she is strong
And she will fight to the death for her family her clan and
Her pride they are her reason for living her reason for being

She gently licks each of her cubs heads being extra careful
To avoid touching them with her huge sharp teeth thinking
Best to leave me and mine alone it's best not to try to hurt us

The time has come to hit the road,and
make some tracks
in shutdown mode.

It's easy to be put upon when you're just one and have no heart to fight,right or wrong it's so long chaps
we've had our laughs and there's no more to come.
I have spun new shoes to fit these feet and now I'm heading off to greet what's in the next face that I meet, I fear the milk of human kindness has run dry,its teats are shy,my lips are parched.

You'll find me underneath the arch that runs beneath the viaduct,****** or not,shutdown's what I do and one day you might do it too,'til then when Big Ben strikes the hour at nine and I dine alone chilled to the bone and when you find me,be kind because I carry a weighty load which make more tracks in the shutdown mode.

They call me the deaf reaper,
The not-so-slim teacher,
You want a lesson?
Here ya go, let me beat ya,
I'm the best, I'm the worst dressed,
Ill fight you over your address,
I got arguments, I've got lies,
I ain't hearing your *******,
I'm making my own, and I Direct,
I do not listen.
I scream, to others but not to myself,
I'm half as great to me, twice as awesome to you,
I pity no fool,
I look at ignorance with a mixture of disgust,
And admirance.
I wanted to be a leader,
not a professor,
But profess this, my dearest,
queer hater, oh not gay,
Just weird and unneeded.,
Who will follow, A modern day ******,
Living for greatness, for evil for death,
no matter what else has been heeded.
Who can scream with the anger and the authority,
Oh, that is me, the deaf reaper.
Grim, grim!
Oh, but what a grin,
Smiling oh so devilishly,
Too deviously,
that even in his now once brightly lit din,
now on the road to recovery, through the death,
of his dearest emotions, friends,
family and hearing,
Only now can he see the vision,
But the vision was sent a year too late,
How cruel then, is fate?
Now, left with one penniless gift,
Lovely, quite irate.
Poetry, boys and girls,
Like what you feed to the dogs,
regurgitated meat,
infused with vitamins and
milk straight from the teats,
of an unwanted *****,
come here, a little closer,
if you dare meet fear,
Ill eat you, oh i'll eat you,
and lick up all your tears,
until only one fluid is leaking,
and your lips then smear,
for me all for me,
For I am not myself,
Only the images and lies,
Of beings far incompare,
what does it mean,
what does it mean,
oh Ill tell you little bean,
bean bounce bounce for jean,
look at her eyes, lustily,
She is a hand, the hand on the face,
watch it as it shivers, just out of place,
still in control, if only she could see,
Her hearing clouding her vision,
Of the demons in me.
No, no, for ever devoid,
take away the rest,
of these worthless toys,
You call feelings, given to me,
To ruin my intellect,
And degrade my being.
I will not let the good win out,
Oh I hate the light.
I will change the definition of good,
I will give death real meaning,
My own.
Listen, listen closely,
Listen to my tone.
It is the whispers, the whispers,
of the subconcious untold,
That part of you, deep inside,
that when seeing the hero win,
Says "well it woulda been cool to see,
the villain preside."
So give me the world, mind control,
and more. Oh look into these,
deep blue eyes, these,
fragile snowflakes,
these *****, *****, charms.
Feel my pain and agony,
As I disregard them,
Legion, consuming evertly,
Yum, Yum, I say with a sway,
But it is not food that I eat,
Nay, Nay, for the Deaf Reaper,
It is on another soul, another mind,
Another worthless human body,
That I PREY.

i became the jumpin' jack flash in november '77.
there was slush in new york city and the bums at the piers
still burned trash in metal barrels you could see from over on coney island even.
just like kerouac said.

in the daytime foolish kids picked weeds in central park
and called them flowers. they got laid by stringing charming words together as they gave them
to the thousand daughters of manhattan's old monied men,
the wall street hacks hanging from the teats of the
great & frenzied cash cow of capitalist interest. the milk
came slow that winter.

one week, early december when the slush gave way to furtive snowfalls
i took a bus to patterson, NJ
for a few days, drank a lot of awful coffee writing obscenities in my journal but speaking
them aloud in the restaurants and bars and so
was deemed just like everybody else in patterson, NJ.
drunk & high, helicopter tours, stuffed with bread and half-truths.
and when shortly my irish luck ran out i raced back to the big smoke
in a drop-top mercedes driven by a man whose thick accent i couldn't quite place.
whose only serious question was whether i knew anyone
who had good coke.

in the city it rained for three weeks straight and
david byrne, in some bowery apartment wrote a song called 'flood'
which was never released on any talking head's album
but lingered in his brain as a reminder of the three weeks
he spent cooped up, eating saltines and dancing to the rhythms of the thunder and rain outside.
totally alone with his mind & a bass guitar. tina weymouth, naturally, was furious.
the bass was the last thing she had left in a band she half-started. and david had stolen even that.

but that was tina weymouth, that was new york.

there she sat licking her paws
and her teats red and raw,
pondering, perhaps, how four black
and white kittens
happened.

There in a laundry basket
four little kittens mewed,
wondering where, their momma
was, all they knew was
hunger.

Finally settling together
all curled around each other,
all given spent in their mews,
they slept one white
and black furry
cute.

Until momma cat, her name Panda,
finished grooming her tenderness,
returned all awaking their
mewing, again.
And she licked them.

The time numbs. I want it raw like it was.
Like ******* and ******.
Something powerful and honest.

I let lies continue.
Fantasies I tease myself with.
I never follow these potential trails.
I’m terrified of not having blissful reverie.
Closure haunts me. I’m scared of definition.

I live in a time that never ends.
I breath the exhaust we know but cannot see.
The world spins upon my shoulders, I pass it on without using my hands.
People die, it’s distant.
Life doesn’t mean much.

I live here in a puddle.
I love all the potential I have to waste.
I don’t know what I would slobber on without it.

I want something raw.
Something abrasive, without some sort of superficial veil.
If I brush back another thin facade just to uncover a clearer image of *******.
I’ll slump the world with my bear hands, and whatever blunt object is abreast.
The ensuing postlude or coattail if you will, is gruesome and redefines the word genocide.

Life passes by because it’s not cut with iron anymore. It’s chiseled away with fantastic stone and underlying hopeful chimes of music. A method to which leaves reality unclear, and insipid. Quite literally dull and un-vitriolic.

The time jingoes tore babies from teats, bounced sore bosoms, and buried John Doe’s in mass graves beside schools. Is long gone.

I live in a butterfly massacre.

I guess it's
Been four years now
She turned up here homeless
She was old
Even then
Those used teats
The grey on her jowl
Lonely. So loving.
She's followed me
Like my shadow
Ever since
And don't believe
A dog can't smile
In my absences
She'll sit by the door
Until I come back
I'm 60 now.
Just had a birthday.
And this black Labrador
Beauty gave me the honor
Of crawling up next
To me as I went to sleep
She rarely has done before.
And it made me wonder
How I want to die before her
I don't think I could stand
Losing her
But thought
Of what would happen
To her
If I went before
And this isn't poetry
It's a love story
About two lonely orphans
Who found someone
Who loves them more
Than life itself
And how
Much love
Can mean

All God's children,
resting on both their
knees,
doing whoever
they
please,
thrusting boredom away,
dismantling the moonbeams,
dissolving the winter wind,
with a pitiful howl.

We suckled teats,
we dragged our feet,
now we *****
black comedy,
and pace perpetual in the valley.

All God's children,
lifting their hands to the plasma screen,
drinking their own blood,
and feeling
perfectly
guilty
for it.

This might be the Real
Transmission Mechanism

The niggerly water
lubricating a Trickle
Down

Greens in Rich hand
gets miserly saved

Yet earned on Poor back
miraculously makes it Rain

Washingtons fall
a few Jacksons scorch
land in lap

Even a Benjamin
swallows Trick Dollar
to **** a positive cash
flow

Bills stick on teats
just enough to buy

a comfort Doritos
bag a Brand name

snack for her little boy
So he'll grow up knowing

What value-added Marketing
taste like.

Silent tears bewitch my mind
Icy fingers caress my soul
Sickening thoughts consume me
A faint pulse they stole
Evil desires taint my logic
Through my desperate quest
Striving for deluded perfection
A reflection I detest
Golden curls disappear
Tired eyes dominate
Companions nervously enquire
"How much have I ate?"
Obsessions take control
Forgetting about all that I care
Procrastinating with anxiety
What do they think, why do they stare?
Guilty actions and fears dictate
Participating in deeds I regret
All the pain that I caused
Oh how I wish I could forget
So let this be an example
When your bones begin to show
When your hair starts to thin
and your face lacks a youthful glow
It is not worth the pain
It will never be worth the lies
It takes control of your will
Shrinking your withering size
When you see your mother's teats
A gaze of father's sorrow
Just remember one thing
Recovery is as close as tomorrow