"And Beautiful Times We Had"*

—*Sappho, from poem #94 


We were young and not 
Yet old enough to know 

When black wolves start 
Descending 

The white mountain 
Slopes in early spring, 

It’s too late to lie 
In wait, low 

In the valley still 
Acting like sheep.

All That Jazz, And Slam Poetry, Too

Hey, man— 

You be cool now and don’t 
Be such a drag—I tell you this 

Ain’t no waste of our time—no way— 
You just take another toke and look back

At what all those wiped out long gone 
Hepcats that came before us done 

Drug in. 

Four-eyed Doppelgänger Before The Treacherous Looking Glass

The last time 
You looked, you looked 
Twice and kept 
Rubbing your eyes 
At the spectacle 
Of seeing

For the first time 
An aging 
Sold out poet
Seeing his 
Younger double
Crossing double.

Metallic Elephantine Yarn Full Of Medallions

The verdict’s out
At last, you fools—

The moon’s ravishing
Green cheesecake

Now belongs fully
To those bright yellow

Jawing dervishes who keep
Insisting they live on

A glorious whirling
Silver platter replete

With leftover wishbones
Riven from the heads

Of bloody adjudicating asses.

Cerberus Redux, Neighborhood Hellhound

Oh, I know what you’re thinking 
That was eons ago and a myth at that 
But let your fancy stray a bit 
And he’s still there, this time 
Serving time in a postcard-sized yard 
And chained to a post just outside 

The entrance to his derelict doghouse, 
Barking what sounds like 
All his three heads off 
Day and night and fated to 
Never leave his post, not even 
To stretch his cramped muscles 
Or take a well-deserved doggy dump 

Or piss somewhere save right 
By his stinking house, all the while 
Giving us the grotesque but not so 
Far-fetched impression he’s not 
Guarding the premises after all, 
Just making sure the subhuman 
Residents of this pit of a hellhole stay 
Put forever there.

The All For Naught Brief: An Airtight Case For And Against Impeaching A Fantasy World

I hear that 

Something is definitely in 
The air out 

Of the ordinary 
And is not 

What you think 
It is. 

Below Zero Calisthenics

O 

little 
winged 
chirping 
critter 
lightly 
flitting 

from bare branch 
to bare branch calling 
out your defrosting
morning workout— 

glory be to all those
huffs and puffs of heart- 
warming breath pulsing through 

your twiggy breast straining 
to melt this 

all too frigid air! 

A Poem Should Be (19)

Like that almost 
Imperceptible small white 
Thorn in 

Your palm’s life- 
Line that stirs now 
And then and keeps 

Needling you when 
You think it has gone 
To sleep. 

Point Nowhere Man

Wandering this way and that 
For who knows how long, 
You’re finally at the point 
Where nothing points the way 
To nothing anymore. Where 

Does this leave us, you’re tempted 
To say; no doubt those 
Closest behind you now jostling 
For pole position will soon be 
Wondering that as well one day. 

Haiku: Weeping Low Hanging Tree

willow plunging limbs 
in too polluted thickly 
choking slick black creek. 

Cur Dead To The World Of Love

Wake up and hold that cowardly 
Peace of yours no longer, Corazón— 

I’ve eavesdropped on you 
All these years and never once 

Did I hear you skip a beat? 

That Same Old Song And Dance Coming Soon To Your Neighborhood Theater!

Where each new spectacular 
Episode of sunset presents 

Something different for everybody 
In attendance and all end promising just

Another twilight zone. 

Classical Greek Winter Sun With Figures Of Speech

Moving lazily across 
A seemingly endless cloudless sky, 
Its welcomed teeth biting deep in-

To meet the warm, torpid under- 
Belly of the corpulent body, it seeks 
To cut to the bone and flesh 

Out all those lolling 
Do-nothings who love 
To slip in and out 

Of ancient daydreams and sleep. 

Down In The Dumps And In Need Of A Pick-me-up, I Stumble Upon A Famous Last Line Of A Poem By James Wright

Like so many things 
I’ve sheepishly forgotten, I don’t remember 

Talking to myself when I was too young 
To go to school, like a lot of kids did or still 

Do, like our granddaughter did 
And still does 

When she thinks she's alone and begins 
Reeling off adventure after adventure 

Full of unreal characters known 
Only to her, and me 

Eavesdropping in on the hope 
I can pick up on that priceless, 

Uplifting gem of a germ 
She’s so infected with, 

Though I suspect all too well 
It’s no longer catching— 

Have I wasted my life?


 

Cogito, Ergo Cogito Sum

Just when you think 
You’ve thought 

Everything through 
And left—as they say— 

No stone unturned
Behind you, guess who 

Turns up unannounced 
And incognito, affecting 

A pronounced stony silence 
And turns everything upside 

Down on his return. 

Traffic Management For Musing Pedestrian Poets

On soft 

Little black 

Cat’s paws 


White spaces


The words

Cross the page 

Accordingly.

Confucius Say Still Not Enough Material Kindling To Make Mankind Great Again

Though no dearth 
Of consumptive homeless 
Hearths flickering on and off,

In dead of winter gathering feeble 
Stacks of splintered hearts 
More than enough 

To consume them.

Besting The Great Equalizer

I don’t know how 
You did it, dude, but 

No more are you 
The fool 

You once were, 
You’re also wiser 

No longer. 

Enter Stellar Radio Active Cosmic Conundrum

Hmm—if it's true
The world turns 

In silence, why 
On Earth 

Are we static? 


 

A Poem Should Be (18)

Indestructible, lasting almost 
Forever, like that ludicrous 

Prickly pear cactus poking 
Its barbed head of fruit through

The toughest thick slab 
Of concrete, even after being 

Through thick and thin, fire 
And water or, believe it 

Or not, crushed to smithereens 
By crazed bulldozers hell- 

Bent on erasing it 
From the face of the earth 

To make way for some new 
Abominable, transient 

And quite prickless, 
Construction. 

Parting Ways

The fickle winds blow 

                    The clouds this way 
And that way before you 

Hear the silence.

Fatal Attraction

When one goes where one has to,
What’s the use of asking why? 
---Huuklyeand Cinquor 

Like it or not, let the poem 
Walk away scot free 

And it will take you with it 
With no second thought. 

In Defense Of Minimalism Per Se

Brevity in poetry doesn’t mean 
You have little to say, it means 

You have everything 
In the world to say 

And too little 
Time to say it. 

Right There

Yes, in the end this is 
What it means to be free— 

The world feels right 
When you are so, 

And that’s where 
You should be.

Late Autumn Mystery Unfolding Under Plane Tree

Not just the startled 
Cackling of the murder 

Of crows lifting off 
At the sight of our passing,

But the crackling also
Of burnished gold swirling 

Leaves letting go. 

Should A Poem Be Or Not Be Like You Want It To Be?

For the sake of this 
Poem, let’s go out 

On a limb and say 
Ferocious— 

A scurvy feral 
Feline tensing it- 

Self to scurry up 
A budding 

Tree, all set to seize
The moment

A carefree song 
Bird alights on 

That nearest now quivering 
Thin green limb for all 

The innocent 
To see. 

After Archilochos: Unconditional Surrender

]mischievous [those] 
] 
] 
]lascivious girls 
]
] [ ] [ ] [ ] keep
] 
]coming and [all?] us 
]enamored 
] 
]of [our] armor[ed] [dick?] 
] 
]heads can do 
] 
] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 
] 
]with [our] spears 
] 
] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] pointedly 
] 
][blunted?] 
] 
] [ ] [ ] [ ] is 
]
]run 
]           run 
]                      run . . . . . . .
] 
] 
]

Seriously Jilted Beau

I told you back then—play
This muse for a sucker once
Too often and you’ll find me
Doing—with a new twist—
That old song and dance you
Thought you knew the motions to
All too well, the beguine that begins

I should have known better 
With a girl like you, 
That I would love 
Everything that you do
And I do, hey, hey, hey,
And I do. . . . . . . . . .

You say you got the hots for me
Still but with all your screwing
Up, your never-ending Hoochie-
Coochie with you, you, you--
Hey, hey, hey, guess what
Doggerel licker, no longer
Do I for you.

Organization Manunkind

“Progress is a comfortable disease” 
—e.e. cummings 

Fly-by-night well 
Wishers and deep in 

Shallow thought thinkers 
That abide by laws that suck 

The down-and-out 
Body even deeper in. 

Future Eulogy For An Unknown Elderly Poet

Poetry isn’t what’s written
And then left to wither unread— 

It’s the rose you picked still
Fresh in the dead of winter, dedicated

To the life you led.