 |
 |
DATE NIGHT IN THE BARRIO
Jose Jesus Rodriguez pulls up to the curb in his chartreuse
Chevy Caprice low rider. He honks his horn impatiently:
How-oooh-gah, Hoouuw-oooh-gaaahhh
As he waits he fondles the fuzzy pink dice
Which hang suggestively from his rear-view mirror.
Meanwhile a droplet of drool
Sullies down his dun-colored chin as
He catches sight of Maria; the kitchen door
Swings open and slams shut behind her
All in one motion wafting the smell of
Baked corn tortillas and refried beans in Jose's direction.
His motor is still running as she saunters
Off the dilapidated porch
Attached to the rear of the project stoop.
She is like Venus descending upon
A molten stretch of Highway 61 in
Wide Open Spaces, U.S.A., during the dog days of August.
She is Aphrodite spread eagle nude
Upon the green felt table in the smoke-filled
Neon-lit pool room.
Maria Conchita Malendez leans over to kiss Jose
Through the Caprice window and
As she does her left breast pops defiantly out
Of her black mesh tank top
Her tongue flashing out suggestively
Like a Bazooka Joe bubble gum colored, (half chewed), serpent
Peering and leering out of the charmer's brunette basket.
They take off together as Jose pumps the accelerator
In rapid succession hurtling toward oblivion
As they drive it's the silence between them
Which creates the loudest sound
The tape deck does its part pounding out
"Los Lobos," "Ritchie Valens," and "The Cruzados."
Maria thinks, "Thank Senor'e for music to get me through
Times like these."
J. J. quickly careens the car onto a moist dirt road
The sudden turnoff causes his sawed-off shotgun
To hurtle around randomly in the trunk
Maria, coincidently, is packing a pair of 38's.
In the back seat: where most of the
Crucial decisions in life are made
Jose mounts Maria, the ceremony now begun
One hand cradling each buttock
Jose sees himself as an obscene demigod
Like Ezekiel in the saddle of the chariot of fire.
So far afield from the comments and attitudes
Of the rednecks, peckerwoods, and numb nuts
Who berate those who think, look or act
In any way differently from themselves
"Life is a loser's game," she thinks,
"The deck is stacked against you."
Jose pauses in mid thrust
"Love is a loser's game," he thinks,
"This woman is stacked against me."
Maria cries out, "Jesu's Christe'!"
Jose picks up the rhythm again
He grunts, closes his eyes and
Thinks of the glory of Imperial Spain
The Armada sailing in the 16th century
A smattering of sweat droplets form a
Beaded Cross on his forehead
He climaxes in frankincense, myrrh and golden droplets
As the vernal equinox rises.
 |
HOMAGE TO MISTRESS LIBERTY
I only wanted to save her from herself
I wanted to be
Her friend
From the neck up and
Her lover
From the waist down.
Thoughts of my grandmother's terror
Being carried against her will
Down the steps of her house
By the paramedics after her first stroke
In the midst of her second
Race through my mind.
I am in love with Mistress Liberty
But, did she have to be everyone's girl?
Hiking up her green copper skirt for all to see
The tired, the poor, those yearning to breath freely
All toiling in earnest beneath the statue of bigotry.
She lead a pretty sheltered life
Hardly ever ventured outside her house
Except to go to Marvin Weinstock's corner
Grocery store on Saturday afternoons
To get her family's weekly order.
Yet she was open-minded nonetheless
When it came to what matters
She'd say, "Those people never
Bothered me any although some
People don't like them much," when
Referring to blacks.
"No one reads poetry anymore
It stinks for one man or one woman
To label another because of color.
And we're all from dysfunctional families,"
Said Roscoe to Uncle Jim.
She's had a profound influence on my life
Even though she had but a grade-school education
I remember her saying, "If you can't say
Something good about someone don't say
Anything at all."
Isn't anyone happy?
We are all vaguely dissatisfied
Without quite knowing how or why?
Even my sweet Mistress, Liberty?
Are we all merely hired hands
Stunt doubles or costumed understudies
In God's three-act, wet dream situation comedy?
Let me set the scene for you
Listening to jazz
Funky, smooth and mellow
All minor 7th chords, Fender Rhodes piano
Straight soprano saxophone
Grover Washington, Jr. via Philadelphia way;
This is truly making babies music.
Misfits in the modern world
We are attracted to and fall
In love with those who
Are bad for us.
We act out our frustrations
In modest acts of quiet desperation
A face is slapped while another
Tear slithers down an innocent cheek.
What's it all about, Alfie?
A gymnastic climaxed by a moan
Eye captures twinkling eye
Hand caresses tremulous thigh
Sperm catapults, shattering egg
Beginning this whole majestic mess.
What's your phone number?
Well,... you can guess the rest!
So, here I sit late one night
My future lies hard beneath my legs
While my thumb is implanted deeply in my ass
My fortune cookie lies, "a friend is a present
You give yourself."
I imagine taking liberties with Mistress L.
Beneath her green copper skirts.
I like her a lot
I guess I always will.
 |
EASTER SUNDAY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Fury unfurls flesh
Hands trembling over
"Men...what a headache,"
The cup slips loose
The press report states
"A kiss should not be planned or
He envisioned himself as a
A moment that will live in infamy
"Human nature hasn't changed
You have two eyes, two ears,
Television is the new church.
Sometimes I feel like Nipper
Sawbucks and pound notes
I have no desire to rock the boat
Life attempting to prove love wrong
My previous life left me blase
The blue devils are cursing us again
The cracked artiste'
Meanwhile the third monkey minus evil
Welcome to the depths of my despair
Sanctify. Redeem yourself.
The eminent approach
I'd like my hot breath
You can't see clearly
That's Brylcream, baby
My tongue
In Kashmir
Like Romeo and Juliette
Eve--
I wish we could go back to the way
You never call
I fantasize painting you, nevertheless,
With saliva , my tongue, the brush
My hand flattening
The soft contours of your back
Passing down your spine
Then rising to the slope
Of your buttocks
When suddenly I feel like turning on
My heel and running
Like Santayana mid-lecture
At Harvard leaving disgusted by
The splendid desperation of it all
I had become horrified at the
Very concept of my own existence.
Begin to enjoy it
To lose myself in the act
Meanwhile the existential elephant
Enters the darkened room
Toppling in its wake like the
Bull turned loose in the china closet of history;
"Life begins on the other side of despair," Sartre
sighs heavily.
Like the unlearned swimmer
Going down for the third time
In a sea of apple butter and Ovaltine
Entropy
Chaos
Decadence
I know I shouldn't be...
But, I'm enjoying this.
Cherry red, causing
The personal grey wolf to come out;
On the sidelines we merely
Watch the games cheering wildly
...and...
While I was well intentioned
The champagne bottle
Loses its' cork for the last time.
Standing over there by the curbstone
Ghostly and ghastly?
Disciples and betrayal
A bag of gold coins changes hands
Bodily secretions are exchanged
God! It must have been
Fun in the old days
Before herpes and (gasp!) aids
Still I'd throttle her just the same
The wolf again
"Suffering is the origin of consciousness,"
Says Dostoevski.
But, hey, maybe Sartre and Nietzsche were wrong
Maybe absolute freedom doesn't eliminate the possibility
Of supreme beings
But, merely opens all possibilities
I mean all those arguments...
A reality that transcends space and time
The ground of being and value and
Man's worship.
"There are no transcendant experiences," says Kant.
To exist, don't we?
Other than your cherry red lips.
THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Under the charge' d'affaires
Lying for a minister of state.
The lovers embrace
While the mortar shell
Careens apocalyptically outside
Carpet bombing the populace.
The kitchen sink
She is only a product
Of what society has made her.
She sighs staring blankly
Out her kitchen window
Her bare stomach softly-touching
The cold white edge of her sink.
"All men are assholes,"
She curses under her breath.
From subtly shaking hands
Shattering upon impact
With the porcelain basin below
Igniting like the charges outside
Like the quiet explosions going off
Inside the heads of lovers
Locked in orgasmic embrace,
Conforming to each other's contours
Like lime jello to a
Waving American flag mold;
As water responds to a barrier...
The high-level meeting
Was carried out in a frank and productive manner
Which in all reality means
Diplomats in French cuffs bound with
Gold monogrammed cuff links
Screaming at each other.
"That course of action, young man,"
The president said
"Would not be prudent at this juncture."
Requested," she said disdainfully,
"It should be spontaneous."
Meanwhile a "toe-popper" mine
Impulsively kisses off
An infantryman's foot.
Fat, grouchy general wearing
Brown camoflauge fatigues
Agitated from too much caffeine and
Too many grandiose ideas.
Inside the theater of operations
He envisions an end run
Around her inpenetrable Maginot line.
Sometimes a great notion.
They're just words
Slogans spray-painted upon the
Grey brick walls of the mind.
We will bury you
Brilliant tactical military strategy
Nothing to fear but fear itself
I have not yet begun to fight
Don't shoot until you see the
Whites of their thighs
This town isn't big enough for the both of us
Old soldiers never die
They just fade to grey
The time has come to start
A new world order
Thems is fightin' words, pardner
Draw!
All that much in the last 2000 years,"
She says, "We're still just as petty,
Jealous and ridiculous as people were
in Greek and Roman times."
"Yeah, except now we have high
Technology annihilation," he countered
"Instead of spears and slings."
The news report crackles on cable television
Flak and anti-aircraft fire sound out on the horizon
Ambassadors and rulers issue edicts
Eyes glance up from the floor toward each other
Then quickly back downward again.
Wonder why we need a war to be patriotic
Couldn't we just fly the flag because we're
Happy to be alive?
A cold hand cracks across a warm ass
With a mixture of affection and agression;
Compassion and contempt.
BLACK VELVET PAINTING OF JESUS
Why should I choose you over and above
All the dozens
Just like all the others
Passing the portal; like Tennyson crossing over the
Joining central casting's idea
Of what the Chief Justice should look like
Peeling back the sky with
Charlie Parker's straight-edged
As if incising and removing the skin
With a scalpel
Where the angel touched me
On the indentation in my top lip
Just below my nose
THE NEW CHURCH
(HIS MASTER'S VOICE)
Hypnotized by a disembodied voice
Staring blankly, contentedly, lovingly
Into an empty grammophone horn
Enthralled by "his master's voice"
When our master is really within
Yanks and limeys
Visual symbols of economic realities;
The big stick versus the big lie
The swelling masses lulled into apathy
The flywheels of my imagination
Increase their R.P.M.'s and warp
Which only serves to cause me to
Mired down into the muck of karma
I'm only running on the spot!
Merely to sink it will suffice
In my modest proposal;
I kneel before the electron altar
Cautiously approaching the throne
I lean forward and gingerly place my lips
Upon the sacred screen.
The crisis of democracy
Values, beliefs, ideas and nearly all
Transmitted throught the enplaquened
I warily catch glimpse of my
Cast in a blood-shot eye.
My lids involuntarily close
I relax, my mind turns off and
I see glimpses of the nature of
We create our own through our
Yet we often don't realize we have
REDISCOVERING FIRE
gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in
the history of the world man will have discovered fire.
Just like George said
It's a pity the way we
Misuse each other.
I chose that life deliberately
Each morning was a triumphant surprise
That we had not died of starvation in our sleep.
As my grandmother used to say
We've got the blues something terrible.
We live our lives desperately clinging to
Illusions that we will be alright, that we will be
Illusions that we deserve our lot in life.
Flying high on his own high octane fuel
Motiffs, tunes and stinking are all cool
He's the ranger alone while his zonked-out Tonto
Walks his lizard to the moon.
A deep brooding sadness casts its shadow
Dizzy and screw-top headed
A somber chill echoes down a dreary dun-colored
A blackeningly grey day darkens my hopes for
There's hope for you yet
Oh, ye of little faith.
SPRINGTIME IN PATAGONIA
or
THE SUICIDE OF WINTER
Of the vernal equinox
Stares me down
Like a steamrolling
Locomotive
While my car
Is stalled
Half-way across
The railroad tracks.
To facilitate
Melting of
The permafrost
Of your nether regions
Like an axe
Cracking ice jams
Which glue your thighs together.
With all that junk
Clouding your veins
Acting as a veil
To reality
Parched across your eyes.
How come there aren't more
Female junkies?
Pomade!
I can feel the love
That's pumping
At the doors
To your heart.
Which I have only
Recently become
Fully aware of
Is the awl
For the frozen sea
Which lies dormant
Kafka-like
Within you.
THE SEER AND THE SEEN (AT THE SCENE)
In Srinigar
Walking amongst the mountains
If you are very quiet
They say you can hear God thinking.
I am no longer the lover
But love itself
Love transcendant
Love so pure
I am the eternal flame
Beyond Lascaux Cave's walls
Back to the sacred sanctorium temple
I was the writing on the wall
I was Gautama
Lotus-like and contemplative
Beneath the bo tree
I was purified in the River Ganges and
Baptized in the Sea of Gallilee
I was becoming pure thought, pure emotion
Love itself
Not a bastardization, but
A love supreme
I was Mohammed
Inside the cave
Half-way up Mount Hegira
I was Christ in the desert and
On Calgary Hill;
With the money changers in the Temple
I am purity and vision
Vibrating to the dance of the spheres
The melody of the ages
Sitar to guitar; hollowed tree trunk to
Tabla to drum;
Atman is brahman
Reaping our karma
Realizing whom we ultimately are
Reaping what we have sown
Annihilation in God
I am a droplet of rain
Exploding into the ocean--nirvana
One of many expressions of truth
Which flow from the one who is all
Like Mother Teresa of Calcutta serving
The poor, the sick, the dying
All are partially true but none captures
The completeness of essence
God is loving, provident, concerned about all or
God isn't dead; he just doesn't want to get involved
A sudden flash of illumination which comes
From the realization of a new truth
I had become converted like
Abraham, like Mohammed, like Siddartha
I assumed the position
Lotus, prostration, genuflection
I watched camels jump through the eyes of needles
While I turn the other cheek
The wisdom of the ages
TAKE A BITE
Sampson and Delilah
Antony and Cleopatra,
Adam was the first man
To have to say
"She is mine."
The good samaritan
Was killed while walking
Along the shoulder of the road
To Damascus.
She was one part Madonna and
One part whore
Who could ask for anything more?
Angel and devil all wrapped up
Into one compact unit
Woman, thy name is temptation.
The burning bush and
The forbidden fruits
All giving new meaning to the term
"Original sin."
Comfy and cozy
Bedding down in Eden
Adam was busy naming the animals
Adam raised a Cain and he was Abel.
She offered the promise of unlimited
Physical pleasures
Her unique combination of innocence and
Jaded experience
She was interested in my missing jigsaw
Puzzle piece.
Unrequited earth mother and
Acrobatic combustible lover
Eve in the endless evergreen meadow
Eve on a fire-engine red crushed-velvet
Water bed
Come to me, Eve
For all the artists in the world
Who've ever felt completely and
Utterly alone
Eve, give yourself to me.
THE WAY WE ONCE WERE
When we first met
When we used to look forward to
In anticipation
To the way we used to be together
Simply waiting for redemption on
Black Velvet Painting of Jesus/The New Church/Rediscovering Fire/Springtime in Patagonia/
The Seer and the Seen/Take a Bite/The Way We Once Were
He has published poetry in Anemone, Bad News, Fountain of Youth, Magniloquence, Manuscript, Scop, Northeastern Pennsylvania Writer's Club Anthology '90 and other publications.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
