love is the pits

Let there be light

and music that makes the

ears ring,

then darkened surf, the primal sea,

that tosses we

two in swaying

chains

The temple smell

of incense and cloves

the torrid reek

of perspiration

and libation

conjure the blood

and bodies

make it sacred

grinding in the twisting

throb

your body electric and

light as a a live wire

my hands bruised and

ribs on fire

the cut on your

forehead making love

to my bleeding lips

living on

into our

grinding days.

Knacker

Cart away the feathers of crows and

The red dirt of ruination.

Mix them in an iron bowl

Fresh with the salve of patience.

Stacked in a corner under a low roof

The hides of raw harvesting are

Scrimshawed by the dragon’s tooth.

Outside on poles hard and black with

Cheap ichor, the skeins of

Unused love claw at the wind

And lose their

Scarlet, fade

To pink and then

Whiten

Into ghosts

When every electron turns to light

rendered with all the rest

there will still be a

you

and an all seeing

I

to she who has lived

her life for other people

and what they want from her

nuzzling at her purring teat

taking the last cookie from

the jar, the one

she was saving, but not

leaving a damn note,

I give her a voice

to say " I

am tired of being eclipsed

and walking off the

bruises that come from

the stations of the

cross you bitches demand."

and yet they

eat on

not hearing a word until

she pulls

the calloused nipple

and goes to happy hour.

happy days are here agian.

Well, there's no business

like show business

except for giving the business

to the chumps

because there is a lot of bending over

and there is a little bit of stealing.

Everything that the traffic

will allow,sir, and we just

stare blankly at the scene.

There's no business.

There's no business,

just people looking

for work.

Teach us to smile and

be still to always

have an answer, oh lord and

not give up, like the poem said

to care and not to care,

to be silent and still.

not looking at

unrepentant chaos eating
itself tangling the hours.

Teach us to sit and think

not skid off the dirty

 wings of time as we

go forward into

the future.

She eats ground

with the sharp teeth of her

heels,

stomping out the strident

fanfare of her

displeasure..

at some point all the floors

are raw and bleeding

the anger threadbare and

of unremembered origin.

Liberty

The old days are simply that,

and there is a new colossus that should

stand, invisible, but unavoidable

on the burning sand reaching out

his mighty hand toward the bitter

fog of night.

Instead of a homely woman with a

torch, and say

"Poor huddled masses, yearning

to be free, stand up on

your own hind legs and

fight where you are."

STAY HOME

" we don't need you and we

won't feed you

any more"

"I have all the winners, the

ass kickers, the ones who

won't be pushed

aside, ,"

Beyond the ocean walls, in letters

one hundred miles wide,

"Buffet now closed"

their are no more places left inside.

Sestina...

I was lucky enough to teach a small group of students the other day and one of the other teachers left an example of the the "sestina" for us to follow. It is a form of poem dating back to at least the 12th century which has six stanzas of six lines with an ending stanza of 3 lines. The trick is that the writer can only use the same six words to end the lines of each stanza and use all six in the last three lines. What a friggin' hassle. I just had to try one and it was hard and very confining and not that much fun. Sestina might be Latin based meaning "sixes" or it might mean " trying to swim a breaststroke, fully clothed, with a backpack....."

Glory be to the Father

who keeps this carnival together

who forces two ornery gases to be water

at first, so profoundly slow he can't be seen

keeping dark away with soaring light

but even so his will alone keeps hungry blazes still

In our home alone does water

stay and go reflecting festive light

infinitely elsewhere her clever body - cold and still

what lies beneath will not be seen

until destruction brings the fire and ice together

for she is a carrying wing set free by her giant Father

Circling now, he keeps the nebulous herd together

moving with such speed he can't be seen

The entropic wolves seeking to devour all the light

get sent curling into the dark abyss where all is still

like rain rippling on the silvered water,

Only what is done or made is evidence of the Father

Let us now turn from physics and how it all fits together

or even if there is or ever was a Father

just love that in all this black nothing we have light

enough for flowers and white beaches on the water

Outside, space is awful,dark and still

and for all our sensors and scopes, not one blade of grass is seen

Well, every one of us has a Mother and a Father

so we should huddle in our family tree tied all together

or, if not a tree, we are all sailors on the water

and hold on to each other through stormy seas and still

on dark and cloudy days we'll bring the light

that even in the lazy fog can still be seen

So even if no big hands ever packed this snowball together

into a gigantic chunk of power and light,

and no fuse was ever lit by the happy, playful Father

we've got lots of pretty lights and dancing water

There's no reason to be dry and still

for all the joys we've seen.

It's sad I've not flung the ashes of my father on the water

so he and the sea he loved will be together forever still

yet when the light goes out there will be something left to be seen.