9 Lives

Three places turn me down
Three women hid their hands in marriage
Three times in a drunk tank
Three times I embarrassed myself so bad I nearly wetted myself
A cat has nine lives
3 is enough for me

Someday [Dox Inspired]

Hard Earth
Stony Ground
A poor boy rises

Ghetto Streets
Guns and Gold
A poor boy rises

Sanctify the Fighter
Toilers of the Gym
Everlast Dancers
Sparring poor boys, black and white, skimming tassels on a blood red canvas

"You're going be champ someday. You just wait." They Say, but they know.

A poor boy rises
A poor boys rises, too

One wins
Another loses
One dies
Another lives again

Sanctify the fighter
Bury him in hope, the Everlast Dancer

He'll be champ someday, you just wait
A poor boy rises

Evening Sky

It was early evening when I was nearly strangled by a sunset. The sun beat like a giant reddish ember--its rays like deadly octopus legs trying to strangulate my pasty white neck. Luckily I had a small mirror to hold up to the twilight, turning the dastardly solar strangler back onto itself.

As can be imagined, I made it to the safety of my home with some speed and hid myself away in a black basement closet. With the hours gone by I moved with trepidation back into the night and was relieved to still be at peace with the moon and stars. My quarrel was with a setting sun for reasons I can't ascribe. I'm going to assume it was a case of celestial mistaken identity and that by tomorrow evening it will have been corrected to my relief. If not, I will make myself famous as a bat researcher, a kind of modern day Bird Man of Alcatraz. Best to always keep busy, no matter what sun comes your way.

Waking Dream

I got up this morning and left a dream where I was alone on a deserted island with only dried strawberries to eat. My days were spent watching black and white re-runs of Ed Sullivan episodes with its jugglers, jazz dancers, Beatle singers, Borscht Belt comedians on one liner highs. "A really big shoe," I'd repeat as my late evening mantra as I skated along a sandy white beach on wooden skis.

My awakening was accompanied by an empty belly so I went to my cupboards and found what was left: a single dented can of coconut milk and cellophane bag with a small serving of Captain Crunch cereal. In despair I picked up a shiny aluminum pan and saw a face reflected back to me: sallow skin, drooped flesh, grey eyes once brilliantly blue. Only if I had money to buy DVDs of The Ed Sullivan Show. I'd watch them on a large TV in order to cheer me up, to keep me sane. But there were still the dreams of Borscht Belt comedians, a last laugh to keep me from falling to pieces.

Beans and Musings In the New Year

I open a yellow can of navy beans.
One spoonful is enough.
Two is too many.
Five is what I eat.
I put the can away and wonder if fruit flies like beans.
Maybe a crushed banana is better.

I Knew A Guy

Once I knew a guy with plastic veins he got as a result of plastic surgery. One day he stood too near an open flame and his insides melted like a burning straw. The doctor had warned him about heat and fires, but he decide to live life at both ends of the candle, ignoring all the risks.

My Street, Your Street

My Street, Your Street, what do I see? I see greying buildings, facades of crumbling civilization. I see weeping sorrows rise from heat and Godless fog. I see misty, pumped-up street punks on adrenaline and ice, plastic and gold bling bling, warring urban wolves, legends of city gaols. I see druggies, drunkards, slatterns, scalawags, sailors in white caps and blue pea coats in search of blacked-eye prostitutes. I see neon signs advertising Peep Shows, All Night Pool, 2 for 1 Booze. I see migrained magicians sapped of strength pulling soulless shoes from bellies of stuffed rabbits. Ah, the power of the poet's eyes, his arching words, verses dripping on tungsten lines of yellowing foolscap. To the lumbering lunatics, disposable in careless worlds of crazy minds of unglued rumblings. What of my street? I see acid face cops. Baton twirling. Broken heads. Social Workers on sedentary couches. I see unhinged accountants, undone and overdone roaring like lions at racing ambulances, drivers in front seat cabs reefing Jamaican Joints, driving the dead and dying to bloodless doctors and wily nurses slipping bennies into dry throats and rich plastic surgeon tum tums. Close your ears and stop the lions roar, the thieves and the pushers, pimps in pompadours, porno queens, drug addled flutists selling Bach out of a burlap bag of baroque tunes to fill tuneless lives.

But what of your street?

Tucked in the suburbs. The white picket fences. The manicured lawns of green grass and stone paths that lead to the rustic New England home. Hardwood floors. Stainless steel stove and refrigerator, marble counters of carbon steel knives, shrimp sauted in churned butter dipped in sour bread loaves. What of your street? Loveless teenagers, lonely embraces on a double size mattress on parent's springs, crying in the night. Bed wetters and Bed Sitters. Mothers comatose on the three seat couches...alcohol, prescription drugs, sixties memories, absent husbands in Cairo whore houses, rich salesmen of olive oil and farmed mendacity. Oblivious to the world of a Suburban street. Oblivious to the maelstrom of Mid East madness. Gun Ships. Rocket Launchers. Apache Helicopters. Silly Putty Bombers in strapped suicide belts of vinyl and aluminum grommets. Homicide. Suicide. Self-Defense. Self-Preservation. Self-Immolation. Endless Sorrows in sequels of time immemorial. What of the streets of rapping Rabbis. Hip-Hopping Imams. Crooning Calvinist. Dancing Taoist Monks in Mary Quant mini skirts throwing garlands of peace at bespoke madness in Saville Row suits. My Street, Your Street, Mad Streets, Streets everywhere rising up and lifting the mothers off besotted couches, colliding in a giant chamber of love and despair, happiness and sadness. Look into the sun. See the moonlight of our civilization. The streets awash in tears, paved in hope for a tomorrow, any tomorrow while it lasts into the twilight.