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

PaleoPolish and Six

slip by happenstance,

slipped it right by the waking dream that leaves the mark

old tin of coffee

lard can full of cookies -

those chocolate cookies, you know, filled with a layer of white cream

calendar on the wall, open to April of 1963

and it has been there since April of 1963

slip by happenstance

slipped into the DNA and causes markers to pop right up

is it a picture or a clock on the wall

a picture of the son gone off to war -

the daughter who was killed in the motorcycle accident

two days after graduation

hit from behind outside the tastee-cone

/ blood and plastic everywhere /

the picture sat on the shelf for decades

looking like a clock

ticking away the same time after time

sometime

slip by happenstance

and a life changes with memories of puppets

and memories of foam-rubber skin and ping-pong ball eyes

little boys rolling red rubber balls and plastic parachute men

falling like spider webs

plastic parachute men

falling slow

look up in the sky

shield your eyes from the sun and the plastic parachute men

fall like feathers shed by a quiet bird

look up in the sky

look at the ancestors falling like plastic parachute men

falling like dew and falling like mist

like plastic parachutes

and when the first one tears you make a new one

make it from a bread bag

red, blue, and yellow polka dots give wonder

to the plastic parachute men

falling like manna from the old country

Did You Hear That Sound?

Basking in a sea of overwhelming memories

Scented with a glimpse of something

Ethereal and unspoken

An emotion touched through centuries

Shared through some outer world, outer realm

Disclosed through time and bloodlines

Flashing ancient remembrances

Of lives never experienced

Except through passageways

On the delicate petals of the cosmos

With a tribute to the swords and

The inner fire ever burning

where were you?

paranormal shoe and a hoe-cake dream

with a list on the tramway a trailer park scream

trailer park shuffle for the lady in red

stick it in a spleen make the other one dead

soulway height make the TV blow

move the rabbit ears - the TV got snow

pop rocks

and pop rock nightmare

jet jocks

and the middle east warfare

pile high, pile high

for the high priest team

the big three networks no video screen

watergate came, watergate went

everythings a gate now

the poet is spent

inflation stagflation recession depression

put a niner to the temple in a jeopardy session

brains on the sidewalk brains on the flag

take the troops outta nam put the body in the bag

schoolhouse rock like a candy pop love

get it out

get it out

nightmares blow

like a triple-tit cow

and the pop rocks melt in the coke and the blow

and the here and the now

drive a pinto to the corner in a flame end purse

for a 40 ounce comfort and the free love session

lovesession obsession depression recession

get it out

get it out

all my memories from TV

and a man called Nixon

and another called Ford

and another called Carter

and we all got bored

and we went off to college

and we went off to work

and we went off to dream

and the dot com bullshit

short sale scream

made a lighthouse eyeball razor in the bag

Marcia Brady wetdream and a three-piece suit

wall street backstreet

and the blow

and the loot

and I stare now

looking at a ghost and a sha-dow

of a 70s kid

and I hide now

waiting for a pop rock sha-dow

when the TV

drop a rabbit ear, and I got snow

soulway height make the TV blow

move the rabbit ears - the TV got snow

pop rocks

and pop rock nightmare

everythings a gate now

the poet is spent