skulkers

They skulk

And that is the only way to describe it.

Cats at night,

Homeless and home-free,

Prowling the Universe, the hood,

The protectorate of Isis,

They, pussy-footing down driveways

Across street ways;

What is their point, what are they trying to say

Why do they look at me that way?...



…Like I’m crazy

Well, it’s not my idea

to fawn over the cute little f'ing things, “Well, HEY there, cutie. Well, HEY there,”

As if I were talking to a one year old child;

It is they who cull this ninnyish salutation from me,

They who make me feel like a warm mammal in pajamas,

They who, concurrently, make me feel like…



…I am an affront to sanity, talking to stupid, skulking, prowling, pussyfooting,

Conniving, feline, fraulein, fornicating, free-basing, drug-smuggling, embezzling,

adulterers!, adulterers!, MURDERERS!!

They think they’re so fucking intelligent,

Pretending they know what the hell I’m saying, what I’m thinking,

Then looking at me with necks haughtily cocked back a fraction of an inch,

With eyes appalled,

never thinking to validate me in my insatiable hunger to feel okey-dokey.



Well, all I want, after all, is just to pet them.

But they spot it. They sense the neediness. Run off like beauty queens

From an old pimp.

Not so unintelligent at all really.

Self-protection. Intuitive creatures, indeed.



The short of it is, she’s gone,

And I dreamt about her last night,

Petting her, she on her back, pawing my hand.



And if I would have only held it together in 1999,

If I wouldn’t have kept cutting my wrists, I’d have kept that apartment,

Not had to give my poopy-butt,

my black cat Audrey,

up to the APL for adoption

or for slaughter.

haiku for Nenette

Nenette, subject of the film "Nenette" is a rather large, 40-year-old orangutan. Bored-seeming and coyote-spirited, she looks out on the passers-by at the Paris zoo.





you laze on the cross
of your daily lassitude,
orangutan-Christ

objets d' desire

I will be trying to post at least a few poems a week, to see if that increases readership. I think it's a worthy experiment, and certainly a harmless one, as I have a lot of old poems unread by anyone besides myself.

temple of ants

hear the chanting of clacking pincers,

guiding the way to

bits of broken pretzel,

crumbs from Hostess Twinkies,

sugary goop from a root beer Dum-Dum

all dropped by a small child

wending his way home, not wanting

to lose the trail back

out to the world



and the ants marching home,

with offerings for the One,

the mother,

never breaking free from the womb,

the scent of the great mother,

larger in her fecundity

than 20, 30 male workers,

fragile in her vulnerable

centrality

to life under ground

to the mound

to the hearts of thousands,

to the health of devoted followers

running unpatterned unpatterns

through sand, through soil,

through composting matter

and constant, exacting chatter

first blue

first blue
written one morning -- about the process of sun rising






a taint of quavering navy,
blue of ghosts and blue of dark, sad thoughts

the part of the brain that distinguishes color,
discerns an infinite shades of azure,

the flight of birds
against the punctured sky,
the inception of creation
at first blue light

a palpable powder-blue, incurably rising now,
a baby-boy-blanket blue, a faded blue-jean blue,
a sentient hue



it knows its own self,
and it may know me

better than I do

leaving Sarasota

Written in ATL (Atlanta airport) after leaving my Mom and Dad in Sarasota, my Mom, in the hospital.




ATL,
courage, brief
candle,
out-out,
come together,
nothing short of Apocalypse
could tear us apart,
but it will
because
all things must pass,
all matter degrade,
dissolve,
to the finest essence, to the poorest street-corner hustler,
to the thing inside,
the soul that hides
waiting for us
in our paper-bag coffins

some bombs are good bombs

some bombs
are good bombs,
the ones that don't go off,
for instance,
or the ones that are left incomplete
on the assembly line,
the factory workers
gone
to celebrate
the Armistice