Native Sons

Three fisher's sons

sailed to the east

where the sun would never rise

instead they found

the thunder's sound

and lightening in their eyes

then the waves rose up and wound them

in a trap net not their own

and the lake leaped up

to grave them

and so save them from growing old

No, not just boys

but brothers

wrapped now in cold water's folds

Seined salt warm

from the same father's veins

today they would be still living

never walking on water unforgiven

had the judas sea not betrayed them

to become a fisher of men


AMORTE

con

FLAGRANTE

The usurping season

where leaves seize the

yellow fever of the sun

and failing to warm with

quick, deceiving colors

fall

dry as the brittle porcelain smiles

of tripped women who promise

painted feelings from empty brushes

Oozing a studied heat

that belies the coming bite,

they combine all colors to white

with an underlying kiss of winter

So, eager to be fooled,

we shuffle agape through once dazzling piles

of such wasted messengers listening to their induced whispers

watching pirouettes of the now brown

wind puppets

descending into futile pyres

sacrificing themselves for warmth in numbers

begging new flames for faded flamboyance

while our acrid eyes

watch earthless wishes

eddy up

in null

smoke


The persian pawed,

soft-furred passage

of glacial legions

Each unexampled flake

scented by

reactions of chilled minerals

frore and skirr

flurrying before

their own collective exhalatations,

and pause

imperceptible in

their descending

purity


A locus of occurrence

in the mind

with no words beyond

Nonentified, illucid

Checkrein of razors

and uncarved quietude

Adumbrating, emprising,

aeneous

Adventitious to thought,

but not being


and ironic deflation of communism. This red drama had degenerated into a hasty footrace by the educated and intelligent toward the relative freedoms of the west, while their martinet managers were busy being marrionetted on the stage of their own black comedy. Those disimprisoned were not technically dispossessed. Their previous lifestyles eschewed materialistic accumulation to the degree that nothing was worth bringing along.

Oova typified his fellow dwellers by exhibiting an oxymoronic spineless arrogance. His noble, if profligate, ancestry profiled by a prominent Hapsburg lip was unfortunately undermined in an atavistically receded chin. His incongruous features further admitted of an emaciated frame combined with an overcompensating loutishness. He was the chief mechanic at the Cold Bowling Centre by day, a position which allowed all the respite needed by a nocturnal bar keep.

Juan, called "Joe" in deference to the meager pronunciation skills of his Germanic employers, worked in the long afterglow of a 60's pot head. He would eventually be deprived of status and deported for mixing his mestizo heritage

THE BRINGER

Berlin is full of low sub audible sounds reminiscent of continental walls grinding upon each other or of subways deep underfoot. Such tectonic stress manifests itself in typical tunnelled, Teutonic fashion. The big cats in the Zoo endlessly pace. Their language is a distorted echo of the guttural grumbling of a displaced populace whose space is continually and glacially eroded. Slugs, disturbed by the continual vibrations are dislodged from their subterranean bunkers and ooze bewildered through parks. While basement bowling lanes blast out Van Winkles ten pin symphonies to pass the time, restless Guardians of Freedom in green confined to the quarter slots chimp between machines, conditioned to respond to rolling bars and cascading coins.

Berliners facially reflect this aural aggravation with the bulging watery eyes and drooping lips of grumpy gold fish. Now West Berlin at this time was a city in ferment. Refugees were sieving by the thousands through a rusting and rent iron curtain that served no longer to cordon out decadent western ideals, but more as a dramatic backdrop emphasizing the sorry


with schnapps and demolishing a German elementary school. He was earnest but laxidasical in his unimaginative job as day stock supply clerk responsible for ordering packets of ketchup and other condiments, as well as prepared fast foods such as French fries, canned hams, and burger. Needless to say, there were always inconvenient shortages.

The blimped bevy of loutish, loud black girls loosely in charge of the concession snack bar continually complained about the new boss, Don. He was a sallow caricature of Humphrey Bogart gone to seed. Polyester plaid pants, sleeveless cardigans and thin dank hair. He was burdened with a continually hunted jackal personality. Ron, his Uriah Heepish assistant, aspired to his position but, as those overly ambitious and without prospects for advancement are wont, resorted to regular wheedling to ensure his chances.

Robert, short order fry cook/ Doctor of psychiatry seemed to need the escape from his own demons boiling oil.

Slim was the pencil thin non-male manger of the sporting goods outlet who catered more than bowling balls to a

roulette of preferably black players.

The star in this lack luster operation was Claudia. She, despite a recent spate of hard luck with a rather juvenile husband who had left her with two very young boys because she didn't have "big tits," was an amazingly striking woman: petite with green eyes and tawny hair and movements. Feline without the aggression of a lioness, she was recovering from the bewilderment of rejection to realize that at 25 , her early marriage at 16 had left her ill equipped to provide for herself, let alone a small family. For a time, her drive would have to suffice in lieu of the more extensive education and sophistication she desired.

Into this melange of misplaced persons, was hired an "intermittent mechanics assistant." He was new to Berlin and was eager to explore the character of military life and its privileges. His job was to empty the dregs of beer bottles, ash trays and garbage containers ( kitchen and otherwise), to drag/dust the bowling lanes, to spray deodorizer and fungicide into returned bowling shoes and "all related duties."

Obtaining this post was really quite a coup. For though the labor is menial, the


hours inopportune and co-workers incompetent, the privileges of an I.D. card holder in a martial city are magical. Working through the paperwork of a tripartite military system is an Augean task at best. The experience and credentials one brings to the position count for naught. What is important are virgin, unstamped passports, host country work quotas, whimsical Non-appropriated fund administrators and a burning desire to get another job. For, it seems that unless one starts at the lowest dollar paid job for a minimum of 3 months, they are ineligible to apply for the employment for which they are actually trained and suited. In other words, artists, teachers, lawyers, nurses, psychiatrists, all must intern as waitresses, recreation assistants, cooks or intermittents before actualizing their chosen occupational opportunity.

Bringer subscribed to the oriental philosophy that being fluid and transparent is an inherently more desirable method for effecting change than fame or power. To the others in this immediate scenario who subscribed to the latter forms of influence his involvement was a frustrating enigma. Each personality offered its own face as

value even if its owners were unaware of their real motivations. Bringer accepted them all and brought each their voiced desires; not to use or manipulate, although this was sometimes they only way they could inadvertently repay him, but to fulfill them. No job was demeaning for him, no problem too grotesque, no emotion taboo. After all, it was they, in the end, who asked. He was a tangible mirror, a sounding board.

Because he had spent years growing up in Detroit, the black girls took him to heart. Boisterously singing soul and talking trash during the cleanup times they would infuriate Oova who frothed about the "schvartz nigers" being lowly forms of human antecedents and "how could one who aspired to being a full time mechanics assistant exhibit such behavior?" But Oova's affinity for Bringer's mechanical aptitude with the delicate pin-resetters over came his prejudice and he enjoyed the time they both spent in stocking feet, crooning fifties ballads while meticulously prepping and polishing each lane in the alley before the brigade-wide tournaments.


Bees in the mead

pester churls at churn

watching earls in armor

tilting by turns

Abbots in habits of

earth brown and ermine

dispense indulgences

with fervor and frowns

to sack clothed serfs

from walled in towns

In halls smoked

with rush light

luted airs fall

on ears dulled

by feasts of

roast meats and beer

Ballads of damsels

distressed and fair

minstrel's lays

of lances

and princes' valiant

dancing swords

Jesters in patchwork

jape and caper mocking

sorcerer's gestures and

wizard's spells

An age, though seemingly

so dim to remembering

can never be harkened

as dark.


WOMAN AT THE WELL

WISHING FOR THE ECHO

OF UNSEEN RAIN

TO JERICHO DOWN

THE CANYON

CRUNCHING SWEET

AS PASSIONFRUIT SEEDS

SLIPPING DOWN THE MOUTHS

OF ARID ARROYOS

SCENTED WITH JACKPINE,

MANGO AND MUD

BUT, EVEN UNLACED

LEAGUE BOOT LIGHTNING,

HOPPING FROM BUTTE TO BUTTE,

CANNOT FLASH OR FLOOD

THIS WATER WOMAN'S WELL


Pagan pavanne

a forest of orgies and

Ungentle pageantry

drawn in fawn's blood

at dawn

relish the raw flesh

the struggle and chase

with the glee of the goat-horned

the baseborn, unchaste

no eyelight hinders

the keenings of lust

at the sight of the hind

worrying the throat

at the back of our mind

that keeps us from seeing

ourselves as we must


ON A HIGH BLUE

AND OVER WINDED DAY

FALLEN BLOSSOMS

FORM A SILHOUETTED SHADOW

SETTLING, PASTELLING

TREED ROOT FEET

INTERRUPTED CLOUDS

PUFF PAST LOUD AS

SNOWED SMOKE

SPOKEN SIGNALS

AUDIBLE BAUBLES

SYLLABLED BUBBLES

SURPRISE LULLABIES

AND WELL TRAVELLED

WORLD WISE BALLADS

FOR~SOOTHING THE YEARNINGS

OF EARTHLY FOUNDLINGS


Au pair

with relations tidal

bathed by waved aubades

of emotion

always at sea

but beached

ever above

the levels of

the night before


The spinnaker moon

ballooning through

the midnight blue

soon to fly

a full circle sail

then strike

the brigadoon veil

on your pared nail

ship


Boys waving at the train

same train same time

one thrill a day

who cares from

where it comes

or goes along the way

Don't need to board

just feel the rushandspeed

Now-men waiting for train time

try to flag it down

too late left behind

only one a day

sidetracked

missed the chance to play

Conductor or engineer

brakeman or Pullman

all a head full of steam

Can you drive the train?

IthinkIcan IthinkIcan

Can't you whistle for a stop?

Can you pull the weight?

or will you hop a freight?

or ride the rail rolling

only rolling

only straight


London Derriere

fruits demure

you are much the merrier

when winking less than pure


I took his toothless wisdom

and fanatic eyes advice

"SEARCH OUT THE BAZAAR

AND CHANCE THE SPICE"

overfilled sacks spilling

saffron and oozing frankincense

incense voiced vendors

drowning common sense

reOrienting, insistent

twisty, tugging hands

night soil, new blood, silk,

old milk and myrrh

all murmuring:

"amber ambergris amber ambergris

here, touch this, hear, smell this"

amid the hiss of royal cats and eyes of Horus:

oiled innocence

old, pyramided

in myriad, unkiltered passages

roiled, in a Niled maze

where nothing is worth

its first perfumed price

"Buy excitement for your wife..."

He appeared later again

(I think by happenstance)

saying: "I see you heeded me"

but I did not need his urging, burning glance

so lost was I in life

by chance


Naples:

skinned dead goats hanging before

neon outlined shrines to Gesu infanta

butchers playing life threatening cards in store fronts

heaps of garbage in the labyrinth streets

walls of fallen stucco patched with layered political posters

volcanized

THE BIRD MOUTHED BOY

BURBLES

"I"ING THE WELL LIT

NEW WORLD OWLISHLY

AFTER SCREECHING A BETRAYED

FIRST EXIT BREATH

FROM THE WARM CORDED

TUNNEL OF LIFE

WHO? WHAAY? WHO? WHY?

TAKING A TWO FISTED

INSTINCTIVE GRIP ON LIFE

LIPS PURSED FOR LAPPING

THE KINDEST MILK

HE SIGHS,

THE CURIOUS CONTENTMENT OF A

FEATHER MOUTHED CAT

WITH A BIRD'S EYE SEAT

ON THE WORLD'S WELCOMING ROCKER


The stereotyped sterility

of winter

the dwarfed depressing days of

blankety blank

where went the heartsong

the happy art of thrashing off

the swaddling coverlets of

the self laid bed

and finding the trade off

sleeps fitfully in the money made

The high upsky moon

crows Clock-a-morning

with parallel light

under bird wings

and on horizons

Blow like crazy

blue/red Daylily dawn

glowing over

slow-shouldered comber's

seagull epaulets

and butterfly bed beaches

with all the wisdom

of babe's breath


Hissing, the tide

neaps the beach

with clear cappucinoed

kisses

while plovers puppet

for coquina plunder,

egrets stilt

to stiletto

invisible kill

Tang me too

sea breeze zephyrs

until all my silent talk

is rimed with salt


Matching the evolution

of mare's tales to

the williwaw dispersion

of minnows

Watching the

creative flashes behind

the low brows

of backlit anvils like

lake agate lace

capable of conceiving

a second thought

blizzard waltz

ballet alembic

lyric, distilled

inuendoed idioms

deeply woven

polyglot gavotte

parfait tapestry

double tempoed

wooed and willed

ill-timed intemperate

endured entendre

crocheted cackling with

a coven's covenant

turning the

phrase lathe

til the word wood

shapes


Falling birds

follow flocks

of leaves

all their

fluttering breasts

daubed with

life's last color

a valley of

V'd voices

lament the lack

of choices

between instinct

and extinct

When each finds

another's piece

perfectly puzzled

to their personality

it is fitting that

the indistinction

leaves no room

for argument

in their married minds

duetting their

caduexcius compliment to

enduring Love's entropy


I am not myself today

past acts no longer

define me

fleeing dreams

to be where

eyes march

not succumb

to the long-toothed

hounding

whiz dumb

begging for time

from those on

watches too long

who I am now

has no consequence

the question is

who shall I be

for nonsynchronous

tomorrows

Serrated premonitions

fawn suspicions

of a Superstition dawn

shawled in

rare rain and

snared fog

earringed in azurite lightening

scarved in scudding thunderheads

each range

ranked with pointed questions

inverted summits

or upturned cups for rain?

small spired doubts

soon evaporated by

the clarifying sun in

boxed watercolor canyons

draped with folds

of ruffled rock silks

hats for hoodoos


curlicue horseshoe bends

serigraphed steeples

aspired peaks

see sawing for dominance

in the balance of distance

a lost art that cannot end

Lost is the lilt

the stately cadence

of melodic epics

the elation of oration

obliterated by gray

arrhythmic rote recitals

monotone monologues

catalogs of mundane

dilettante details

a wishing for possession

by association

nun's clappers knelling

to hell's belles

over earnest repetition

simplification

of poetry's

power and passion


At sea

she

softens the sheets

full winds the sails

stays the spar's

unbending

curves the prow

to the waves curl

and stern to wake

easing each strake

over breaking foam

toward home

What calls us away

from fall to fall

drawn to the southern drawl

by shorter days

wild coroneting fowl

following unharvestable leaves

lost to looming moons

all green gone

mown sent to seed

feed for the glacial greedy spoon

careless ice lace

curtains interlaced limbs

winter's crewel work

accruing light

in minute increments

toward the elipsing eclipse

until the constant comet

relights the planet's orbit

faux thaw

where understudied leaves


impostor sparrows

in the wings

uncued actors

waiting for the

cold curtain call

past grass thatch

braids with the

garlic of wild leeks

Sun ups the flowers

sky highs the birds

all of us warbling

palindrome words

champagning promises

of Spring

the oriole's

chanterelle bosomed

chanteuse

shashays singing

among the box elders

disguised by branches

swaying brazen

as her breast

clear as a bell

she taunts the ball

of the tanager sun

who glaring envy

sets

snaring summer

from us all

startled south

scatter shot starlings

catapult from the corn

as the seasons somersault

waves of Fall's

summer assault

serif well-muscled

cloudscapes on the sand

the singsong of children

mingles with signals

squalling gulls


the goya sun foreshadows

our elongated steps

toward the

automatic scarlet carpet

Frostfire

lights the forests

crisps, crackles

and falls

discriminately the

deciduous trees

Fog Masques

as smoke screen

over the fraud inferno

of girlish birches

golden locks

grayhaired hills

grieve for

leaves lost

to the scalpel frost

numbing their

barbered skulls

ice bites with

tonsured light

longing the nights

toward

the inverse of

winter white

no longer

embarrassed in bareness

limbs embrace

candied landscapes

of cottoned woods

ermine muffled firs

mantled maples

caped and capped

in drifted wraps

sugarcoated to quiet

for the long

silent night


The last of the maple's

dry winter tonsure stirs

with the robin's chirrup

the dawn alarum

of morning doves

cooes us from sleep

the bud's prick perched ears

and champagne jejune green

shoots whose shouts

summon the sun

gunmetal sky

trespasses the rightful green

and the insidious lake's

forget-me-not sprawl

under the inversion of summer

storms thunder

twists the leaves

matte reverse

insisting autumn

on the anniversary of July

gone with the geese

whose quick release

from numbered days

is regimented in

wavering 5th column ordinals

fallen Romes

and Spys from traitorous trees

away with out leaves

rooted in defeat

their turned coats

scorch the earth

but offer no warmth

to succor summer

from her seasoned enemy

she suffers rooted in

returned defeat

Pencil yellow willows

stencil April

on artery red alders

old leaves are impressed


into snow molds

by the still cold sun

as sketchy trees

charcoal longer days

in melting light

a coda of shadows

soons to Spring

Under a waterfall's insistent

glove of pressure

that incessant crushing

inundation of deadlines

will the cascade's wordspray

ever pond us away

to pool our thoughts

pondering beyond

the deadfall deluge

to a placid surface mirror

before they join

the millrace

where rivers never wait


Clock a morning

up sky moon

light under bird wings

parallel horizons

slow shouldered wavelets

butterfly epaulets

blow like crazy

bluered daylily dawn

The standing stones of Cullerie

menhirs of imposted mystery

the circled cairns

buried cists of burnt Celts

bronze age cremations

celebrations of past calendars

hallowed beds

of flint eyed

brazen heads


My seven sea soup's

been simmering

the billion year boullion's

aboil

salted with earth

and a universe worth

of Brownian mirth

the celestial stove keeps it aroil

the first course

crawls out

for a first breath of day

the appetizer is fresh fertilizer

for the forthcoming entre

By centuries of seance

the cactus corralled

and miraged

the mountain spines

mensating moonlight

serrated the range ridges

repossessed the mesa

and butte tops

while the just desert

quenched all the thirst

for time


Don't order the universe

with words or art

Don't start it with a single spark

blacken the blank spots

or confuse the stars

with dots connecting constellations

the formless to the familiar

There is no loss in chaos

nor honor in exploring

theory for the Laude summa cum

of a science which abhors a vacuum

cheapening by saming

only proving human thy vanity

by naming

Bucking the cross currents

in the Passage Key Channel

between the influence

of self-made oceans

and the confluent riptide of emotions

I watch as birds

cross the moat the easy way


A mortal comment

a morbid commentary

that none inhabiting the planet

has the requisite modicum

of internal velocity

to escape the terminal

immobility of our

eternally mobian orbit

As we comet upon

the milleniary anniversary's

multitude of dwarf suns

here a quantum mechanic

or the odd sonneteer

but no one rising star

worth preaching

none reaching a second coming

all deemed unworthy

and unbecoming guides

It is unseemly

to have whispered away

our big bang

to have evolved to a void again

embarrassed by our

gleaming visitor's returning

to observe only personal apogees

weak apologies for the dearth

of novas need to unite the earth

the zero sum

of all that is human

at the bimillenium


Ursa Major couldn't bear it

her satellites dismembered

and in the red

Twin Lenins are confused

in all the comrades heads

The cult of Stalin

is remembered

for its poorly recorded Marx

and the Kremlin's over capitalized

with loaning Western sharks

every "ism" ends a cataclysm

Well I prayed when I woke up this morning

Jesus give me a light to see

But god he must a been sleepin

so I had to turn to me

Lord I never been handsome

never been a good lookin buck

when it comes to women

I rely on natural born luck

Well we all got a spirit

a piece of work to behold

unfold it and mold it

don't let your soul get cold

Hot damn

don't let your soul get cold

If I having lived

this heaven died

all the having pleasures tried

and found them sweeter

by your side

All those treasures gladly given

my soul lighter so unladen

by trading wisely

without for within

not what was for

could have been