Fast Day 77 November 21 2008 {Ramaad}

Ramaad

charcoal, ashes,
resurrect the glory of
any bright ringed bird!
The most wonderful adornment
is the gold and silver
chased upon my sword!...
and the oceanic inlet
between your breasts!
the tidal basin where life
was create by God alone!
no artifex needed, no engineer...
He sired the Universe!
the universe now
charcoal, ashses,

Fast Day 76 November 14 2008 {Danta Anansazi Files a Grievance}

Dante Anansazi Files A Grievance



We awoke, and I grunted
up in th'arthritic pain,
while he stretched
one leg, then two,
soon the third and fourth,
like twins, followed by the comely five
then six. Seven held back until leg eight
wandered hung over
along a silkiness redolent of
a sensuality long departed from
old Dante Anansazi,
spider of the winter,
esconced in the terra cotta
planter in the humid room
of baths, dreaming of Caracalla
and Diocletian.
Time's flies, he said, a cuisine swear,
time's flies...where are they?
I would break my fast,
he leered at the frightened mites
and swaggered towards
the fainting chiggers.
"We are having pancakes,", I said.
He growled and muttered
ancient arachno-swears,
as if a spider hex still lived
to vex the two-legged breed.
Grasping the paper, he fumbled with
a feigned uncoordination of the eight
with his cup of java,
spilling it profuse,
a caffeine shower which
I had to clean up.
He does it apurpose
when he is out of moods.
I'm gonna file a grievance, he said.
A big, long grievance,
and I'm gonna ask for back pay and benefits.
"tha's nice," I said, eating my
buckwheat stack sweet of
Quebec's maple harvest...
He looked at me disgust:
a big, burning laser eye of disgust.
Like I care, I thinks alone.
I sez, "What's buzzin', cuzzin?
Which bee is in yer abdomenal
bonnet...spinnet, I mean,
today?
He growls like a wolf,
ya see? tough guy spider...
I wuz supposed to destroy tha Whirled!
Youse guys went and did it!
Deprive me of my work!
He raved on...
But, you know, he is just
like the rest of us...
I mean, he gets lost in a
story forest, or adrift
on the Symbol Sea - a body
of brine just east of
the Los Angeles - and he is
just a little arach,
and wants to be the big cheese
of the spiderhood!
I only put up with tha little
beggar 'cause he holds the
candle fer me when
I write my poems...
my "lasciate ogni..."
that are my stock in trade
forte,
art,
adhab thaqaafee
runs thru my dome
"learned Lit. 101"
He's only a winter spider,
cold and white,
bloodless and far from his terra
cotta nest of miniature
greenery in the tropical
humidity of
my faux marble bath!

Fast Day 75 November 7 2008 {Shooting Film in Baghdad}

Shooting film in Baghdad...

cruising down the Tigris,
pretending to be an exile
in the Babylon of today.
Obama won the election - cool,

Nausicaa, sweet girl.
and Socrates the pimp...
So's I go to drink a cup

in the bar of foreign soldiers

and chat it up
with the blackness of a girl called
nuit noire,
pretty Layla Sawda'
and see a blond
sunrise on my Felluca on the Tigris:
o, delight of my eyes!
dancing obeisant in the court of the sun!
a skillful Lyre who deceives
with enchanting music
like a symbol of bewilderment!
**So, sweet Lesbia, no Tigris flow is this,
but the antique Nile odalisque that
flows beneath us to

our very urgent bidding.
And I am the turgid and fullness Wind
that swoops down in an arc
to kiss the full bosom
of your billowing sail!

Fast Day 74 October 31 2008 {When I Was Episcopalian}

When I was Episcopalian,
and she was young and fair,
I was a very young vicar
who oft fell down the stair.


The elders of the kirk
came to counsel me,
for I was Presbyterian,
as drunk as I could be.

And when I turned to RC,
they had an intervention,
and came to our sitting room,
a reverend convention.

I drank until the liquor
dried up all my tears,
and when I turned to sobriety
they'd stolen all the years.

Fast Day 73 October 24 2008 {Her Erotic Smile}

Her erotic smile
of intense delight
blinded me.

Her jazzed up laugh
of sultry madness
deafened me.

Her fiery breasts
like Catherine's wheel
burned me.

Joyfilled somersault
of the genital moon;
our rapture!

Fast Day 72 October 18 2008 {Culinary Sukkoth}

Culinary Sukkoth

We had a gingerbread sukkah,
resplendent in design;
the gum drops were from Wal-Mart,
the inspiration, mine.

Our harvest was enormous,
of wheat and tares combined;
gathering in by hands full,
hushing them while we bind.

Some we threw in fire,
some we threw in graves;
some we cast on water,
and some in silos save.

Some we kept in sugar,
to keep and crystallize;
to roof it as our skach,
and eat it with our eyes!

Fast Day 71 October 11 2008 {Lake Michigan's Dunes}

Lake Michigan's Dunes

Maple, beech...thinning...
canopy of leaves;
Return forest primeval!

Abandoned pilings,
and empty harbors;
I regret autumn's onset.

Contrary spices:
the sweet and the sour;
high blown dunes and quick descent.

Fast Day 70 October 4 2008 {Young and old Kumar is gone}

Young and Old Kumar

Young and old Kumar is gone,
sent the keys to the bank.
No more Sabah an-nur in the morn.
No more beautiful balcony flowers
like a paradise garden,
like heaven,
like angels.
He left the kitchen window open;
like a gaping mouth,
gulping down the summer rain.
I wish I had a photograph.
I think with my camera.
His three kids, two girls and one other:
He has taken them to Maharashtra
to his friendly days and
his school boy nights.
He did not want them
attending school
here
in the States.
A father is always right when it comes to
the hungry birdlike children.

Fast Day 69 September 26 2008 {Screw Archimedes!}

Screw Archimedes!

There is nothing we can see,
and nothing we can do,
except to live and and breathe and choose
to make a better world.
screw Descartes, let's dance!

There is nothing in their words,
their is nothing in their eyes.
They preach a sermon filled with hate
and bitter ignorance.
screw Plato, let's make love!

The alpha perch upon a roost
and lord it kingly over
slaves cunning in their repose
waiting for their day.
screw Deleuze, let's dance!

The love of God is like
a keen poison in my blood
aphrodisiac titrate drip
I cannot sleep!
screw Maududi, let's shine!

Let our teeth shine
in mutually mad erotica
face to face and mindless of all else
smiling lovers!
screw Engels, let's embrace!

Fast Day 67 September 13 2008 {Sonny Detroit}

Sonny

Sonny Detroit was a singer
and she had a dusky voice
like the first breath of cool evening
after the hot, hot afternoon.
So everyday we would expect
her there with braids.

Sonny don't owe you shit,
however.
Girl is free to do what she will.

Sonny Detroit had a lover
who ran around all day
like the screach of speed amphetamine
and ecstasy's cool breath.
So he would need her there
when day is done.

Sonny don't owe you shit,
however.
Girl needs a man, not a habit.

Sonny said they rob me,
Sonny said they beat me.
They took my stash, they took my soul,
they raped me and delete me.
Sonny came out of jail that day
and sang her tender song.

Sonny don't owe you shit,
however.
The girl has paid her toll.

Fast Day 68 September 19 2008 (The Beast}

The Beast

I was nervous and demonstrative,
I did not know why...
quiet and listen, you! you who are
so little and so small.
You are of no importance!

I wanted to be a prince and princess
when history was jello...
and came to a raspberry stand still;
You must kiss my forces
and all my army corpse.

It is difficult to make you wear greenery,
or make you salad...
or a fruit compote or souffle.
You do not bend to my will
like the chocolate swine of old.

Fast Day 66 September 6, 2008 {Echo Muscoy}

Echo Moscovy


We cop the West;
bored out of gourd, you say?
My english is not so good.
But you will see,
we are like you G8s:
ecstasy and cocaine in the corridors
of power,
drugs for the kids in the hall;
sex within the Marika club,
like molodyozh we dance and trip
over our fallen minds...
gone out of, no?
We joined together in the bathroom stall,
surprised at pleasure of the
proximity of people in
the other stalls...
They were mad at us, for
they had not thought of it;
they were like artists...
of the West,
artists, philosophy,
all girls who powder
their noses in the bathroom
with a puff of coke...
being first in madness
is what they seek, to be seen
as an orgiastik goddess.
Thank goddess!, there is nothing
but pleasure...
nothing but...goods and shopping.
3 cheers for Dialec-
tical Materialism, which
spoke of matter and
became religion
while the West spoke
of religion
but it did not matter.

Fast Day 65 August 30 2008 {Retail}

Retail

There are too many ways to drive a car,
too many ways to look around,
too many grannies chugging shopping carts
behind my trunk,
beneath my tread,
doing the stutter waltz
next to my parking space;
to go or not to go,
I see you. No, I don't.
I'm too old to grab the seatbelt.
My shoulder pains arthriticly.
I used to have a Merc with
a Nissan Enjine
with an auto seatbelt that was a dream.
but they got rid of them
before they were made mandatory...
so we fight for the foolish fabric
and buckle in
to prevent
closed
head
injuries.

I need a Wal-Mart with a lot
with mirrors around the spaces
designed on several axes
to help me see my way.
A Wal-Mart build half-timbered style
and Tudor packing boxes look,
before a baptismal pond with trees!
enshrined in photos
glossy emblems of its virgin birth!
But when I'd finally got out
from my parking cell,
and tooled down by the pond,
the trees were dead,
the algae lived and bred...
and all the photos lied.
I have discovered
my Wal-greeters
are not happy
to see
me
at all.

Fast Day 64 August 24 2008 {Green Poet Died}

Green Poet Died

On the day the poet died
the grass turned brown and wilted
on the sylvan circle where danced
faerie on the nights of quarter'd
moon, waning and waxing,
mullioned light partialed through
the sieve of space and cedar:
the old trees fell uprooted
baring their naked under root
to the eye can see...

Brand new eventides of holiness
before the adytum of the age:
the eve of saint mahmoud, of dan,
the vigil of the insurgency,
the bonfires of the hanged man!
odes of malodorous justice
and committees run amok
with fear and loathly demoiselles
before the green saints and
green knights of our age!

Fast Day 63 August 16, 2008 {Vendituri Te...}

Vendituri Te....

Micro graveyards by the side of the road,
saint ronny of the semi
and saint rhonda of the 'Gator!

Buster wuz kilt by the road,
he pointed up the driveway to
the main thoroughfare,
but me 'n maw planted 'um here.
he nodded to the oaken cross
topped with a plastic crown
and a rude sign beneath
Buster of Brownsville,
king of the hounds;
a pretty blasphemy bringing
a tear to the eye of angels and
quickly forgiven: this strange melange
of love and loss and faith.

saints billy and bobby of the six-pack
and the angel dust cousins.

we went into the garage, into the shade
where the sale items were;
a history of lives disjointed now
like the bones of ancient tribes
back-hoe'd to the light of day
and scattered to the four quarters.
machinery and broken saws,
barbells and weights,
and a tokapi mirror wherein
you saw the image of a sexy ghost
admiring his bulging chest!
and an old fry cook's kettle,
and the smell of WD-40.

we drive on and see
micro graves by the roadside;
saint johnny of the Hog and chain,
saint ahmed of the Focus,
felicia, sweet and innocent,
her memory exposed for all to see!

--
Vendituri te... (salutamus)   we who are about to be sold salute thee!

Fast Day 62 August 8, 2008 {Getting Around the Motor City}

Getting Around The Motor City



Imagine speed, imagine charm;
fastest car to recall,
fastest to the line-
the harsh award of size and speed
a bouquet for Detroit!
Extreme, extreme, unimaginable;
quickest, lucid, lashivous lickerish!
high speed auto, off the line;
and hell with economy!
burn the gas and the breeze
down the highway, the throbbing
highway, the pulsator road!
The ben wa stoplights of delight,
oh, motor city!
oh, international airlines
the neon signs of blood and lust
that chill and fry on 8 Mile
where everything breaks down
and stands on Ozymandias'
broken legs of marble
still standing and...
fending off the desert.

Fast Day 61 August 2, 2008 {A Motorcycle Rider She}

A motorcycle rider she,
blond long hair
and insouciant, empty smile
greedy for a thrill;
firm breasts forward like
an emboss of
Boadicea's breastplate!

New, gleaming, stainless
pipes she rides,
the chopper decanting her
like a an old
bourdeaux chateau certan-de-may
uncertain mix with me,
the wildly gone viking girl.

Like the shrew of Lansey Meadows
she beat her sword
upon her naked breasts,
yelling
that the cowardly men not shirk
to kill skralings;
or me to be her palisade.

Fast Day 60 July 25 2008 {When We Bombed Baghdad}

When we bombed Baghdad
I watched transfixed on the pixel'd
cross, and wept and laughed
for joy at smart bombs.
When we sanctioned the shit
out of them, I shook my head,
amazed at their obstinacy!
When we invaded again,
I watched and goose stepped
in my heart out of sheer loving
admiration for all such missions
yet unaccomplished in this world!
And like innocence children,
we smile and sing:

niemoller, niemoller,
let Hitler come over!
niemals, und niemals,
let's hear from Goebbels!
niemand, je niemand,
hab'ich kein verstand!

Fast Day 59 July 18 2008 {Never Again Shall I Return...}

never again shall I return to this haunted place
of spectral desires and grave lusts,
painted bloodlike upon the gypsum walls.
rather a halcyon to dive within the sea,
off the hook and top dog,
and I run through the blasphemed church
and break every memorious idol of
laughing destruction and exult in their
holy desuetude and impotence!

Fast Day 58 July 10 2008 {Golfing on One's Birthday}

A Desert Oasis

GOLFING ON ONE'S BIRTHDAY


Plans were made for morning golf.
Came next day, and we enrolled
into that strange order of protocol
where each of us obliterates
our intimacy of ball and tee,
creating a vector distance
with smooth and fluid stroke.

Gradually gathering momentum,
we recognize our oasis:
the hedge of trees,
the necklace of aquamarine,
the expanse of sand;
flying hymenoptera
with holographic wings
in and out among the thistles
where we golf.

We come here like our ancestors
who walked from Asia across
the Bering Strait revealed,
stopping on the way to golf
the neo-ice age course;
this migration we gladly trek
from sun-baked streets
to this implacable
and palpable green.
Silence and friendship, sun and water;
and golf is the ephemera bloom.

Fast Day 57 July 4 2008 {Coyote Sat By The Coleman Flame...}

Coyote sat by the Coleman flame,
thinking small bird, small animal;
AH, hunger is...snap at mosquito!...
so horrible, so beautiful!

Coyote saw footprints hours ago;
footprints of saint coyote;
footprints leading off the world
"like all the sweetmeats of my hope..."

Three Tuesdays for the holy coyote,
yet this famished one could not sing
a christmas carol nor talk til dawn
with sandy words in his mouth.

Three the nations and three the kings,
three days dead and hungry;
"tres milagros de ma vida", coyote thinks
hoping to break his fast.

Coyote sat by an open window,
and silently wished for fat,
knowing the prey as he knows himself...
Dawn! hits the optic nerve...

Fast Day 56 June 27 2008 {Cosimi de Medici's Chaplain Sleeps}

Cosimo de Medici's Chaplain Sleeps


At the Council of Basel
I dreamt of your face, thought
I found the smell of your breasts
in a bishop's incense.

Parliament of empty words,
Emperor's anger waxing;
not one cardinal so richly dressed
as you are naked.

Fast Day 55 June 20, 2008 {Rainbow, Belle Iris...}

rainbow, belle iris of the west...
beautiful tho it is,
is a first course to the feast
where you empepper
the pale tongue of dawn.

Fast Day 54 June 13 2008 {Reading Blind Words}

Reading Blind Words

...reading blinded words, the white-out smears
racing the clock, no time to eat,
sun going down, yet no time to sleep;
swamped and perplexed, too many questions,
head spinning in tobacco haze.
I go out to walk in the chill.
The clouds rise up like tantric mountains:
gods of love and icy river's husky breath.
Geese go soaring and seek the sun.
Where could I find a pair of feathered wings
to join you in your flight?

Hurry, hurry, run to the airport;
late or early- flight's delayed.
There is no parking here close by - cold winds!
When did you say that flight's due?
Parking easy in the line of wilting passengers...
crumbling odiferous in the radiant heat.
Dizzy and distraught, too much to do!
Mind in somersault, year 2008 scare!
In a dream's summer night we stand
and watch our girl dancing in the rains!
I could not rest by another's breast!
I cannot breathe without your breath!
Ethel Thayer! Where are those golden wings
I need to plunge into the river?

Fast Day 53 June 6, 2008 {Kermis-Elephantine}

 Kermis-Elephantine

Kermis-elephantine the leaves come back;

no weed-whacker man may kill them.

Where they had been pushed, pulled, uprooted

and splintered in twain and left for dead in

a cemetery of wooden crosses...

yet they come back in spring, water'd

by the crude runes of acequias and water courses,

filled with sand and silted up, broken down

and breached, a flooded swamp of winter.

They grow now and the water will flow again, wide

pachydermous leaves of shade bearing parasols,

juvenile lady bugs praying at the muezzin's call,

and the queen again will walk through the garden

as ever before, walking through the fragrant flowers,

laughing with her entourage diaphanous fleeting lightly

until the ark of reeds is found again

and all eyes observe

and mankind grows thoughtful once more...