Bonzoponzirama

Juggling rubber checks in the dark

Hope that they don’t bounce or snap

No control, out of control

Watch the fire and the sparks

That keep the neon snakes at bay

Smile with those painted clown smiles

Distract from the files,

File away, look sharp

In those viper fangs

Waiting for any excuse to attack

Bait the prey, pray for bait

Sparks fly and singe the crowd

Avoid the debacle and the threat

To the juggler’s jugular

With the skill of blind justice

One eye covered,

Only partially just

As the cries and fears at the performance

Keep the speculators under control

Mesmerized with the spell 

Of the lights in the ebony sky

So dark, so distant, so vast, so eternal

Hook the unsuspecting tourist

Who grasps a tidbit

Of the aerial attraction

Seeing the truth, knowing the secret

Smirking at the faux pythons

And the rat-a-tat shoes

That flip and flop and conceal what grounds us all

Mercy For......

Protecting your secrets

Concealing your truth

From the soda pop, pop gun mentality

That would suck your life

Leave you bony and dry

Devoid of marrow

Losing your inner core, core beliefs

Outer core, skin deep,

They would pull you into a spittoon vortex

Swirling, repetitious and unending

Justifying with their lies

With any horror that abandons the truth

Lies about love,

Lies about hate

Vaporizing your only true happiness

Through violent outcries

Discarding your soul

With the carelessness of drunken spillage

From an open cask

Without keeping the angel’s share

For the defenseless babe,

An abandoned race,

A lonely and confused elder.

Victimizing the innocent with guilt

Over false honor that kills with piety

While we stand aghast and powerless

To protect the blameless

As the brazen conquer nothing

But coal in their hearts that once burned with pure fire

We do only what is in our power:

Shelter your silence

Unfinished Business

Morphing once again into a new entity

Changing from one level to the next phase

Without much thought or notice or remorse

Not even realizing what has happened

Until the transformation is done

And then

She is no longer there, no longer the same being

Constantly shape-shifting into a new era

That has only a vague semblance

Of the last stage,

While sometimes reverting back for a short comfortable time,

The permanent alterations have been fixed

Moving on, going forward

To new changes and challenges

Becoming the next metamorphosed creature

Who appears to have escaped

From yet another cocoon

Drought

Tar strip heaven

and my mother said they used to chew the stuff

blackrock tooth cleaner

for a gypsy-eyed little boy

“Eugene! Eugene!”

and he prayed for rain

and prayed for work

and prayed for pain

and prayed, I bet, for death

(near the end, anyway)

(as Eugene might have)

with a blackrock tooth cleaner

and pocket full of jumbled-dirt

Squirt-eye told me about the grasshoppers

grasshoppers as big as life

or bigger than life

(depending on the size of life)

and her father nailed them to the chicken coop

and watched while dark clouds came

I stood from eighty years' distance

I stood in the middle of a cloud of swarming grasshoppers

they bit at my eyelids and tore my lip

the blood pooled around my ankles

ankle deep and shouting from the soil

and the grasshoppers hit the window panes, dropped dead as dead can be

my father nailed them to the chicken coop

and watched while dark clouds came

My Angel Is a Creeper

I knew my angel as soon as I saw him smiling

At me in the coffee shop

With those pale blue eyes

And flopsy curls bouncing

As he jumped like he had a centipede in his undies

Scratching his shoulders

Where wings might have been removed

Because God would only want me

To have a creeper or two watching over me

Or maybe she was that big and tall creaker

With the pig snout

In the zebra print muumuu

Welcoming me to the joys

Of the afterlife

While nudging me back to the animal world

Where I wake up in that same café

Near the condiment bar

With a bump on my head

And spilled soy milk under my shoes

And an EMT telling me that I am okay, but I will

Need to get checked out at a hospital

And that my two friends left once they knew

That I was alright.

Yep, my guardian angel is a creeper

(Or probably two because I am so much trouble)

And that comforts me in a weird sort of way

Since I know that they are staring at me all of the time

Chugging Bug Juice

Eating crepe-like olives 

In the land of dancing liquid

Where the fierce wind 

Softly hits hard

Against the hand

Sailing through the abandoned barn

Of angel wings

Delicately floating downward

In the scent of the anise orchid

That snickers at folly

With impish sweetness

Of the tap, tap, tap

On the glassine fruit

Tasting the tepid tincture

Of the fading spirit breath of the green nymphs

Buzzing in my ears in the dusk

Singing the old gnomish tunes

Of delight and satisfaction

While the creepiness of the brush

Whisks away the glistening fireflies

Into the subliminal indigo veil

That curbs into midnight oranges

In the sky of my youth.

Mausoleum

I want to hear your breath

force it into me and calm time

your words in slavic god-speak

I could scream and press that stake right through my

heart

I want to hear it and if I don't hear it

I will go outofmymindf*ingcrazy

for that single Polish word on the lips of an angel

give me your breath

or I will suck it out of your still-warm corpse

and a halo rings your head

I could swallow your tongue and never do justice

to those dark eyes and mongolian fold

holy place

holy one

holy