PLACE

PLACE

yout touch
indelible

your fingers
going right through
my skin

into my brain
smoothing everything
                      everything

until the
stars came

shooting, falling,
shooting, falling

their heat and light
       bathing us both

finding
    every place

FIXING

FIXING
“where I’m wrong, I’m right”
The Beatles: Fixing a Hole

let’s
see what
we got here

check if
there is a hole
if so
   how to
fix it

if not
why not?

poem need
the right kind of holes
(where would
we be
   without holes)

just jokin’
poem got to be
fun
   poem got
to be serious

we had some
fun so
   let’s go
serious

switch of a sudden
turn on dime
between
   fun and serious

truth to power: break
in through the back
leave via
    the front

do your dreadlock goldilock
thing
   have your Gulliver
child’s play
                   turn it
          all
upside
      down

seems like you serious
but
    can we be
sure to
    be sure

that last line
     gleams wickedly, such
a look in your eye

and eye need
           the light

how else
delight?

bend those bars in
before out

     your light coming in
your light
going out

       see here: a VOICE

in with

       a shout

A WORD

A WORD

let me have a word

let me fill
you in
from a poetry

am going to need
twenty, maybe
thirty
thousand
characters already

oops1 sorry,
my apology

did I say
“characters”?

that was a bit
of a fatal Freudian slip

I meant to say “words”;
no sorry: lines

no I am completely wrong

in the wrong

to do this justice
I need to write
the final
death count
as poems

WEAVER BIRD

WEAVER BIRD

always on the farm:
flash of bright yellow
across my
      line of sight

furiously at work
building their nests

chirpy
masters of
twig engineering
       brandishing their
golden purpose

meanwhile, since we
are on the subject of
nest-building
       and things
with wings

let us observe old Nick
leaving his helo
having just be ferried

from quite distant shore
to Mediterranean ship

pausing a moment to
stroke brash steel,
sculpted aluminum

of the true
spirituality of the war machine
lover
     extraordinaire
paramour to the extreme

blowing kisses to his image
where
    reflected in such surfaces

every drop of bloodlust
contained in booklet form
in jacket
      inner pocket

there
     blueprint
              of a world gone skew

slavery redeemed
   refreshed anew

Sun
   itself

blind to the glaring ironies

so much
       to fix with

all this weaving

.

GHOST STORY

GHOST STORY

a perfect storm

winds from the East
winds from the South
converge

tearing through the streets
making a nonsense of your hopes
of a full
Mediterranean side-
walk café life

sipping a latte, sitting in the Sun
reading Proust or Sartre

nothing in those books
talk about
how the ghosts, the sins,
have caught
up
with you
(at least none
that you do read
none that you can see)

LIKE A

LIKE A

was
light years ahead

and now
I am dead

soul free to roam
in that dark space

ghost
    music only

ghost poetry

voices, songs

Ginsberg, McGough, Henri,
Patten,
     Ferlinghetti, Corso,

the Beatles,
    Hendrix, Cream

and the Rolling Stones

SCRABBLE DABBLE

SCRABBLE DABBLE

my brain
is a scrabble set

juggle roles, identities
am after a triple word score

tire
tier
year of the tiger
hit something
good on that
abacus and so

masc and fem mars
and venussing together
dance
of conjunction
in alignment

about to go full
elastic band

slingshot projection

time gravity bending me
to their will
true trajectory
whispering your name

MERELY

MERELY

chill!

it’s just
a poem
will go

the way of all things

not as if
in this or other simulation

you are playing white
against a dozen black mambas

or
at thirty seconds
trying to out-think, out-run
scorpions galore

outpoint everything that
threatens to make a meal of you

get out of jail
stairway yourself to
Heaven free

over the chaos of life
exercise
sole monopoly

so
chill!
just chill!

it’s just a poem, merely,
will get recycled

we all
get recycled

is the very nature
of the game