Cain & Abel & Ishmael & Isaac & Esau & Jacob & Today

Acrid vestige

Smoke cloaked carnage

Hell’s residue remarks the ruins

Eyes blink open to reality

Souls burned, broken, buried, blown to acuity

Ages’ cinders

Never blow clean

Death-soaked soil germinates its filthy seed

Divided from the first jealousy

Until the final trump

Shocked streets in a

Time without pity.

Illustration: Photo by N. S. M., Iraq, 2003

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When I was Young I Played with trains

Over the border where only woods once were

Are the gray lands on a once country road

Developments landscaped and carefully planned

With rocks and ruts, rills and artificial streams

Upturned dug out stones transformed to fortress walls

Gazebo porches laced with gingerbread trim

And mailbox crosses like the fields of Flanders

When I was young I played with trains,

Lionel and American Flyer

And quite often I would go to the five and dime

And spend my allowance on another kit that snapped together,

And then, I too, lived in Plasticville.

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Abandon Place

      Our nostalgic hearts

Are only placated by

      Abandoning done.

The photo above is of a once popular restaurant called the Lobster Pot as it looks today.  To the left is how it looked in its heyday.

Young Poets

Young poets write words wet with angst

And angry whipsnaps at the world.

Hissed whispers harangue injustice

With facile manipulation.

Phrases, like white-foaming river

Rapids, rushes revelation;

Revolutionary in their

Mind. Their paths of poetic truth

Symbolized by their pacing feet,

Disrupted by four-letter words

As if the sludge and flux of slang

Was less cliché than moon and June.

They’re def in their rap, stringing things

Still damp from camp on lines of twine

For the sky to dry.

I could cry

From the rhythmic monotony.

Written 2004 with tongue firmly in cheek. There are many fine young poets doing Slam Poetry with clever rhyme and rhythm, poets much better than I. This is aimed only at those who rhyme over and over the same simplistic moon-June of old time hacks or think stringing curse words together is the height of witticism.





Illustration: Parnassus by Raphael [Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino], 1510-11

Among the Stones

Listen to the voices,

So still upon the hill,

Whisper in the grasses

And sigh across the leaves.

Look upon the faces

That form across the clouds

In a moment sudden

When the rain tears and grieves.

Find the past aside you

As you stand among stones

That speak in muted tones.

Bird Lust

I sat by the sea

And watched a gull,

Who watched a girl

In a bikini.

She ate a weinie.

Sometimes she would hurl

A piece to the gull.

He would wink at me.

Bones

Incident Along I-95 near Bellevue Park

(A True Story)

All trees in brief leaf.

Shadow fresh. Lush spring grass.

Lingering eve light

Glistens in red sundown rage

Upon apparent rib cage.

Seen in disbelief

Along the highway. Sped past

Homeward bound each night:

Vertebrae, discarded spine.

Accident victim or crime?

Each day and a week.

Bones lie exposed and ignored.

White, unhid by weed.

Is it only I who pay

Heed to death by the highway?

With son and daughters,

We drive to the skeleton,

Approach with shudders.

The murdered corpse we fear

Is but carcass of a deer.

In the City of Change

You will find me reading this at the bottom of the post. 

Literature of life was learned on trains.

Poetry to the beat of the rail seam,

In the trickle of rain,

The rising steam rhythms from summer heat;

Crackles of ice off long cold station gutters under strains

From winter snow piled deep upon the roof.

These teaching me all the beauty and pain nature sows

From which reap pleasure and vice.

In my life of change in a time of change

The streets were colorful as flowers bloomed.

Posters swirled and glowed while

New music boomed with meaning, with cause. Cool,

But laced with care, Accepting all the people in full rage

Against the bloody pool of war and hate.

And I struggled to paint upon the page each hero

And each fool I met while there.

In the park in the dark passing shadows

Change with the changing hour and the seasons.

In ragged second store dress,

Stocking runs, bell-bottom denim, dour

Pea Jacket blue. The men who love men; Druggies on their prowls;

Hippie girls with flowers in their tresses;

Poets and writers and actors and pals adding to

The bowers where my words grew.

Changes came into the city of change.

The nightlife shifted streets. Head shops went dark.

Psychedelic posters dimmed to new art.

As Hippies came from Beats, they went to Goths.

Rittenhouse square is where now old men range.

They occupy the seats and sing no songs.

So though I trod old walks and find them strange, Memory’s

Glow entreats their tales like moths

That I attempt to change back to butterflies.






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Who Was Saint Valentine?

                                                       

.

Here it is Saint Valentine’s Day again.

Who was he to start our heart’s aflutter,

Our tongues to stutter,

To melt us like butter?

Oops! I think I had a Hallmark Moment --

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

There is a living for a poor poet

Drooling out doggerel and growing fat.

But I digress

From my treatise.

Here it is Saint Valentine’s Day again.

Who was he to have us buying roses

From florists who hose us

Or candy that blows us

Up like a balloon on Thanksgiving Day

And then watching an overhanging butt

Trying to strut in sexy lingerie?

What’s romantic about my bouncing gut?

But I digress

From my treatise.

Here it is Saint Valentine’s Day again.

Who was he to make me spend my money?

Fatten up my honey?

Does he find it funny

That we spend thirty bucks buying bouquets

At the super market that wilt by dawn,

Fancy French dinners with puffy soufflés,

Sentimental music that brings a yawn

It’s all a mess

I’m done, I guess.

High Performance

1

TEENAGE TROUBLE

I ran away from an abrasive home at sixteen

Into the slaps and slugs of an abusive lover

Till a day I lay him open with a frying pan

And disappeared out a window in a country night.

I never finished high school and didn’t know nothin’

You’d call useful, but I had a body built for bounce

And a deep down desperation that helped hitchhike me

Three hundred miles to Old Street in Philadelphia.

2

OLD STREET

Ever been down on Old Street where nothin’ ever changes

But the music on the juke at Gil’s? Probably not.

It’s a place amateurs don’t come ‘less they’re feeling small,

Lookin’ for pussy or the jolly pop jive doo jee.

First night I walked into Gil’s, Simon and Garfunkle

Were strummin’ through the stale smoke when I bridged my first hit.

I‘ve been layin’ myself down on Old Street ever since.

Don’t know why they call it that. Just an old street, I guess.

Looks old, beat, dark and dusty, cobblestones down the block discourage cars.

Shadows of time discourage the soul.

Sidewalk wrinkles will crack your ankles if you tread quick.

And there is those’ll crack your skull if you tread too slow.

Nothin’ but flop houses, guttersnipes, bars like Gil’s and

Crevices in-between where whores do stand-up business

On the quick. It been that way forever and then some.

In my lifetime I don’t think it was ever New Street.

It’s got a permanent smell of age, death and stale sex,

Perfidy perfume. It clings like dirty soap scum.

3

MAKING MY PLACE

First night in I thought I’d slid to hell. Gil’s was as dark

As Poe’s pit with its own stink of failure and old beer.

Sittin’ sulky at the bar and hid in the corners

Was the debris of life. I took my place as litter,

Ordered a whiskey sour on the rocks and sat letting

The tears in my eyes melt with the ice cubes in the glass.

Nobody did any carding or caring on Old Street.

I set a Marlboro pack from my purse on the bar.

Stuck one in my mouth and ‘fore the filter’s wet some guy

Lights me up. Ten minutes later I’m lightin’ him up

Back in the alley on my ass behind the trashcans.

4

SIMON AND GARFUNKLE SING MY TRUTH

Few humps later I’ve got me a flop and a kit

And I straddle a bumpy old mattress on the floor

Where I can spread my poison out like a hard won prize.

“Dry your eyes and come with me. I’m on your side,” Simon says.

“Don’t worry ‘bout the rough times. You’ve found a friend. Whenever

You feel down and out, just come to me. I’ll comfort you.

You feel lost in the night and I’ll light up your darkness.

I’ll ease your pain.” I pulled the plunger and filled the tube,

Slammed silvergirl into a vein and I sailed the night,

Flowed above my troubles, eased my mind, stilled my waters.

5

ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE BRIDGE

But it ain’t 1970 anymore, is it?

I’m still here. Ain’t as easy you’re hard pushin’ whatever

As it was at seventeen. Darkness is my buddy

And shield and makeup on the street. But my body’s lost

Its bounce and it ain’t takin’ me anywhere tonight.

I’m old, beat, dark and dusty. So I sit in my flop,

One of the many I’m been in since now and creation

And ain’t one any much different from another.

I’m sittin’ on a bunk bed with my faithful kit spread

On the pillow, Uncle Kracker on the radio.

6

AN AGING WHORE’S LAST COVERSATION WITH UNCLE KRACKER

“I am tired,” I say.

“I’ll make everything alright. I’ll tuck you in tonight.”

“I don’t want to be tucked. I wanna leave. Want to quit.”

“Where would you go?”

“Don’t know. Don’t matter. Get ‘way from Old Street and you”

“Guarantee you’ll never find anyone like me, babe.”

“Why, what do you do for me? You don’t give me nothin’

Don’t get me no money.”

“Don’t blame me for the way your life strayed. I don’t care you want to leave. You wanna go, then go.”

I say. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know”

“Follow me,” it whispers, “I make you free.”

I unwrap the bindle of China Cat I scored tonight and prepare my kit. I sit naked in one more dark flophouse room on one more Old Street night. Alone and wantin’ it done and over. I feel along my inner thigh for the least scarred spot and do up.

“This’s mortal combat, “I hear it hum. “Real high performance schmeck.”

And I smile. “It is pure thoroughbred white horse, the uncut stallion, an unbroken bronco.”

Silvergirl sails in.

“It’s a ride to survive,” and I laugh.

I press the plunger and let that high performance Harry Smack swim through my veins like the fish in the sea, and he tucks me in that night, and he eases my mind.

And then he stills my waters.

Lordly Linage, Loyal Legacy

In the midst of sheep began a voyage,

The legacy of Shepardess and Noble.

Within the fiefdom of his father Lord,

In the shadow of the castle keep and

Shadow of wrath and rage that the issue of

The royal loins loved a serf of his board,

Robert Townley married Esther Linsey.

And so he divorced his inheritance,

Stately title and his native Scotland.

Young Robert, his bride and his brother John

Set sail cross the sea for New Amsterdam.

While at Boston an angry rebel band

Was busting boxes and dumping good tea,

The Townley ship wrecked off Hopewell, N J.

Making shore they built a home in Oxford.

Suspicions swirled about newly arrived

Subjects of the Crown. Be they Tory spies?

Mobs burnt the house. They escaped with a sword

With family crest, lives and little else.

Robert swore his America allegiance

In Pennsylvania. After that you find

He added an S and became Townsley.

He molded a militia company,

Was wounded at the Battle of Brandywine.

In eighteen-ten Esther was a widow,

Living on land in Lancaster County,

A patriot, a pioneer Townsley wife.

The man who rejected riches for love

Was the fore bearer of the female who

Gave birth to the father who gave me life.

On the Road of Myself

Do you know whom I saw today?

Myself down an ancient country road,

A twelve year old looking around a curve.

I didn’t know whether to lead or follow,

For I knew the road all too well.

I knew each loose and tripping stone,

Every broken jarring pothole,

Every rut and hill to its destination.

I could show where the mudslides were,

Where the high grass hid the carnivores.

I knew the distances from day to night,

The long lasting stretches of exposure,

The asylum of sheltered sites,

Waterholes of sanctuary

Where gathered each fellow journeyman

On this over-traveled road to desperation.

I met myself when I was young

And decided that I would follow

The boy I was once, not the man he is.          

I promise not to cry out directions

When he takes a different turn

I’ll be silent at each mistake

And embrace the unknown path taken

And look ahead in joyful anticipation.

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