the smoke of my cigar enveloped
my body as if it were a ghost,
i felt you by my side, outlining
one of your smooth smiles and i turned around;
you carried two history books, a bottle of the
finest wine and a pack of marlboro cigars.
"these are for you," you said, "because you
always give me flowers but i never had the
chance to give you something,". i turned my eyes
to our vase, where your yellow wallflowers lied.
i smiled as well and nodded slowly, redirecting
my eyes to the window as i continued smoking.

the wine bottle, which now looks like a rotten nectar,
is sleeping in an eternal dream on the edge of the window,
along with wet tobacco and moss-filled history books.
i don't touch them, i won't, because they still have your essence.
the wallflowers wilt over time, and i grow older with them.

I like to sit down and watch indie films
Just to see how others view someone like me
The star that tends to be a loner
But eventually comes out of their shell
Due to love and support from people around them
I realise now that
I came out of my shell
A long time ago
With a wild woman at my side
A best friend who is quiet but strong
The attention seekers who have a lot of love to give
The wallflowers that are too shy to speak up
I knew them all
I was the star of my movie
I may not have a love interest at this point of the film
Or even in the end
But it is nice
My life is an indie film

You're a  wallflower
Let your brittle petals
Fly through wind and rain

we gathered in a lighted tower
of a lower Manhattan promontory
seminarians listen
to discursive ramblings
of bank industry experts
on the finer points of
Basel II
Tier Three
op risk

towards a better better
best practice
we pique our ears to hear
the critical
dispassionate annunciations
of expert expertise

a panel of practitioners
a panoply of knowledge
networking opportunities
and hands on insight
we are granted
institutional affirmation
nesting warmly
in a corporate cocoon
13 flights up
off West Street
10 bucks a seat
30 for non-members

we settle
in soulless white rooms
divided by long
horizontal wall panels
bleached of all humanity
visualizing phantasmagoric vistas
of changing regulatory landscapes
in strait backed chairs
resembling the blanco armor acrylics
of Imperial Stormtroopers

on watch for Black Swans
the panel's moderator incants
if one appears
we told you so
if one fails to materialize
risk managers
have earned their dear keep
seminarians chuckle

the dais backdrop
a massive SONY plasma screen
stares down seminarians
with ruminative bleakness.
no digital blips or power points
will convey any meaning
turn a clever phrase
sprout a statistic
paint a pretty picture,
just the plain spoken word
of highly credentialed
speakers with bios
many paragraphs long
confers license to speak

the screens blackness
a perfect counter point
to a rooms spare whiteness
and pedestrian furbishment
save a day glow Warhol Print
of the heroic MTV moon walker
and a predominant majority
of Far Eastern attendees

questions from the floor
drizzle the panel
tied tongues
use tight selective language
of lexiconic colloquialisms
speaking a queer vernacular
of erudite bombastic bunk

questions are mumbled
with increasingly greater acuity
dancing around bank meltdowns
and global economic catastrophes
with a self anointed smug absolution
and poignant failure to acknowledge
a failures paternity
pink elephants and 800 pound gorillas
remain dance hall wallflowers


to be sure language evolves
the moderator instructs
as regulatory guidelines converge
to address market flux.
Is everyone comfortable with
the current acronyms
we devised
to describe our
present situation
best laid plans
and timely initiatives
to safeguard capital adequacy
and institutional solvency
right here in our own
little tower of Babel?

My tie is too tight
to clear my throat
I can't ask my question
of apples to apples
dust to dust
and oranges to tangerines
while the halting speech of others
is broken up
by timely ring tones
from Jeopardy
and Gene Autry's
Don't Fence Me In

every once in awhile
a chuckle is raised
we laugh about the score
in this inside baseball game
of capital requirements
regulatory Nexis
and smart *** traders
plying bold arbitrage strategies
blowing us back to Basel I
after the global bank implosion
oh the hilarity
of credit crises and crashes
the jokes on us
the joke-sters R US

some begin to
urgently finger blackberries
sending confident commands
to be dutifully carried out
by young back office minions
impatiently waiting
hanging on every word
of unintelligible texts
eagerly biding time
to take
the solid senders warm seat
in these cold blanched rooms

Closing the seminar
the moderator's summation
offered the thought
that her fondest hope remains
scenario analysis,
stress testing
and the new
emerging paradigms
will become
embedded in
risk management
best practices
and that fewer regulators
will be needed to regulate
and we will continue
to be employed
(nervous chuckles)
clapping
reception for networking
to follow
questions
and
cocktails
in the next room

I move quickly
to fill my plate with brie
English tea crackers
and a smoky tangy cheese.
A fellow seminarian
approaches me.
He smiles and asks,
Whats your name?
What do you do?
I tell him
and ask the same.
He says he is 50
and unemployed.
He sounds unsure
and frightened.
I bite into a chunk
of exotic cheese.
******* crumbs fall
onto the lapel
of my freshly pressed
pinstripe suit.

Music Selection:
Miles Davis
Red China Blues

jbm
NYC
03/03/09

Tonight
I feel convex,
breathing wilted air
into deflating lungs.
Easing into oneself
is kinder on the fingernails
than hugging empt.
Wallflowers bloom
into streetlamps;
peripheries
maintain order.
Bowling ball bumper lanes
are immortal.

+
Suppose the North Star is flickering
at the end
of
it’s
wick.
How many men have set out,
machetes in hand
into frontier lands
to push back the darkness
stirred within
by the wonder
of their hearts,
only to become lost?
Then that luminous stain
on night’s curtain
is drawn
and north
finds them.

A five letter word
that beckons all sense of direction
when mixed
with a fireball
light years away
that may
not
even





exist.

So strange to think of how nothing
can save something
when we give it a name.
Strings of ones
flying out of zero.
A mathematical ideal
Owed to the lines we draw
between two points.
Spatial binary
                                                       for the unsuspecting dancer                                                          
­if it could be said that you exist
well here it is
Zero
 one
one
until you fill the ballroom
with wallflowers
then
tw
o



and their bodies finally know how to make the world move.

Anticipation is like a former actress who eagerly awaits a future prospect, where delicate wallflowers hang with certain fortitude.
Similarly, our medieval ancestors played the harpsichord, whilst later English Baroque flaunted her chauvinistic flamboyance to those who fluttered their eyelashes in the name of socio-economic harlotry.
I am pleased to meet your acquaintance, my friend of gallantry.
However, the roots of Portugese expression are conveyed in the aristocracy of our heritage.
As purity is the laughing stock of assumed independence, and pride is buried in lascivious presumption, we must remember that the classical piano shares an Arabesque flavour which stands in juxtaposition to our Saxony.

This is for the prom queen

This is for the prom queen
who wears her crown of insecurities
with shaking knees
and sees
her body as disgusting
always adjusting
lusting for perfection.
It's for the kids who seek affection
or attention
and can't tell the difference.
It's gonna be okay

It's for the kids who always sit in the back
It's for the "Test tomorrow panic attacks"
It's for the kids on the fast track
to unsatisfying lives.
It's gonna be okay

This is for the kid with dreams set before him
that bore him.
Who wants more than
a marriage and a mortgage.
It's gonna be okay

This is for the over-drinkers and the over-thinkers
and the ones who hope one will stop the other.
It's for the mothers
whose daughters are sinking,
thinking they have to be
drinking
in order to make friends.
It's for the sleepless nights that never end.
it's gonna be okay.

This is for the kid with the bad complexion
and the invisible girl who hides her scar collection
under her shirt
amongst the hurt,
***** looks,
And her favorite books
It's okay

It's for the boy that's abusing
and the girl that's confusing
it for love
and because of that
does not see she's beautiful
It's gonna be okay

It's the for the friends we lose
and the poisons we choose.

It's for the kids that wake up late
the ones that can't wait to graduate
and for the wallflowers trying to participate
It's gonna be okay

It's for the monsters under our beds and in our heads
that wake us up at 4 A.M
And for the all stupid things we've said
It's gonna be okay.

It's for the kid who sees his face foggy in the mirror
and does not have the means to make it clearer

It's for the kids who have it all
and the kids who see their life in a ball
It's for every single brick in the wall
for the ***** words on ***** stalls
and for the brokenness inside us all.
It's gonna be okay.

It's for the kids who wear masks
made of broken smiles and empty laughs
and crack a little more everyday
it's for the way
we smile and say we're okay
It's going to be okay

It's for the skinny girl starving to be a model
and looking for love at the bottom of the bottle
with a magazine cover for a role model
it's gonna be okay.

It's for the fat girl whose proud of who she is
because she knows that beauty lies within
it's for the holy kids so afraid to sin
that they forget to live
It's gonna be okay.

This is for the kisses under the bleachers
and the schoolboys crushing on their favorite teachers

This is for the kid who drinks tears from his beer
for the football stars
and the closeted queers

It's for the late night phone conversations
for the vibrations
of infatuation
and the sensation
of summer vacation.

It's for the chronic liars
and nervous first-timers
the cancer survivors
and the poetry writers

It's for the lives we've been given
the cars we've drunk driven
and the shells in which we live in.

And it's for the normal kids
It's gonna be okay.