I Am a Bagman

I draw back my arm and cock my wrist

My blue handled hammer hits the hardened nail’s head

I watch sparks fly

My hands are getting calloused

And so is my soul.

I caress the shape of things

With a rough grip

I wonder

And move to match the moans

In the hot city night.

I am a dancer with answers

I didn’t demand.

I feel like the bagman for the collective unconscious.

A divine wind in my face

I go kamikaze on the keys

I try to be,

Neither, victor or victim

Whistling my way through crowded streets

With work songs, symphonies

And sensual sympathies

For so many faces in the crowd.

I have been lucky

For an odd man out on the edge

And though the faces I have faced

Have been replaced

The friends I know

Continue to grow.

The holy helix howls

As memories flow

And fluids flex

In accord with ageless laws.

In an unkempt room

Lit by stiletto streetlamps

Once more our flesh flashes together

Forming fugues

In carnal counterpoint

That remind us that

PLEASURE IS NO ACCIDENT

PLEASURE IS NO ACCIDENT

It is a lesson,

so ancient and obvious,

That we all misunderstand it.

PLEASURE IS NO ACCIDENT

It is a message

PLEASURE IS NO ACCIDENT

It contains knowledge

Unavailable in college

It is a lower education

Suitable for worms, insects, chimps

And humans.

It is a required course

If we are we are to survive.

As we love we learn

We exchange strengths

Then go our own ways.

I am a bard playing the odds

Defying the devious

Offering the obvious

To the oblivious

By chancing

Dancing

With answers

- My Words

I ride the waves

On the inner ocean eternal

The pulsing tide

Soaking the cells

Feeding the ancient forms

Spiraling up

Through geologic time

Birth death birth death

Selves circle

Seeking centers-

That shift forever

Dams and diversions

Always fail

To direct the flow

I ride on until

The tide turns on me

And I cease to be,

Leaving behind

My words.

Evil may be banal, but it remains dangerous. What is most banal and dangerous is the post modern denial of evil's existence.

Youth

I wade waist deep into the swirling sea

Sand runs out from beneath my soles

Brittle sun dried salt cracks

As I flex my thick shoulders

I lean back slightly against the flow

Of the returning broken surf

Gulls guffaw in a frenzied feeding spiral

I hold the rod high above my head

My spine is like a sapling

Strong flexible full of life’s juice

I bend the rod arches

My finger firm upon the line

The weight and bait flick behind me

The glass tube an energized arc

Snaps back and then forward

And when it swings to 11 o’clock

I raise my finger from the monofilament

Rings hiss of off the reel tracing the sinkers flight.

The distance measures my manliness.

There is a splash beneath the gulls

Now one with the sea I wait

For the blues.

Blind

Blind
Blind, with hands outstretched, my finger stroke the futures face seeking to see its features.

Broken Men

We are Broken Men

Our heads are full of

Red glaring rockets

Shell shattered buddies

Blood gulped by the thirsty ground

Screaming wounded

The crying dying frightened friends

Faces twisted in ending agony

Their pocketed dog tags

clicking against extra ammo

muzzle flashes

then the telescopic sight

of an enemy head exploding

the lingering smell of flesh

eaten in ovens

donkey carts piled high with shrunken bodies

bayoneted babies

tearful mothers with shrunken breast

inside us forever

we do not share.

We are the Broken Men

Before Roe (1964)

I remember my former girlfriend, she had broken up with me months earlier, but I still loved her dearly, drenched in sweat, writhing in pain as peritonitis ate out her insides, the victim of a back alley abortion. She refused to tell her mother what was really wrong, because she was afraid of what her mother would think of her. The family doctor thought she had some kind of intestinal infection. She was dying. She pleaded with me through cracked lips not to tell her mother the truth. I kissed her on the forehead and reassured her. Then I went into and told her mother the truth. They rushed her to the hospital. Miraculously she survived. That was what it was like before Roe.

Blue Anguish

Blue anguish on a red field
Arrangements made with arrogance.
The rebirth of gentlemen’s agreements
Marionettes that think they are men
Their free will boxed bought and sold
Tall towers of see through glass
Reflect a bleeding sunset
To burning eyes averted
The smell of candled feathers
The adoration of the cats
Black blinking eyes
Tortoise shell shock
Red bloody rivulets
Run from shattered souls
Blown out blasted blind
Staggering from feeling to feeling
From angry age
To aged anger
Stepping outside of time
The bill will be paid in full.
By future children

A New Prayer

Our Mother who art the Earth

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Queendom come

Thy will be done,

on land and upon the seas.