Category: My “poetry”

thursday, january twentieth, two thousand five

High noon,
still no sign of sun,
clouds lower overhead,
the very puddles
reach the sky,
muddled thoughts
fill my world with
shades of grey.

Even
this miraculous mirror
on the world
gives no reason for joy,
as if some dark force
weaves itself
throughout
our entire kingdom.

Surrounded by troops,
while snipers survey the crowds
our newly-crowned king
proclaims

“We have seen our vulnerability, and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny — prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder — violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat.”

promises to bring
freedom to the world
while Hajj pilgrims symbolically stone Satan
and, putting a modern face on slaughter
Turkish authorities try to clean up ritual killing

Feeling like
some freshly-gored
fisher king,
I cannot help but wonder
if one must
sacrifice the heart
in order to leave
no room for despair.

One Giant Cosmic Joke

I found it hard not to snicker
at feminist bumper stickers
that read “Goddess on the Loose,”
knowing full well that
if there were a God,
He certainly wouldn’t be a woman.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to rethink
what was never clearly thunk at all.
Could I have angered some
half-naked Goddess with a twisted
sense of humor, one who’s decided
to punish past indiscretions?

If so, that could explain
why I’m suddenly more concerned
with how the Chicken Breasts Ala Rivera
are going to taste and reach the table
than how fulsome the buxom young waitress
looks in that short little outfit.

Perhaps it could explain why
hot flashes seemed much funnier
when it wasn’t me waking up
in the middle of the night
in a cold sweat wondering
what new Hell awaits me.

Ultimately, it might even explain
why lately far too many strangers
want to put things inside
my body where
they just plain don’t belong.

Drained

Minutes after parking
in the rented-out
Christian Scientist
parking lot,
I lay here tossing
just as I imagine Mary Baker
must be in her grave.

You’d think it would
have been enough
to have replaced my
testosterone,
with female hormones.

Surely they could leave
some small sign of my
red-blooded manhood.
But no, these angels of mercy
have come to bleed me
as white as their dresses.

Today even my chi
seems taied in knots,
and I’m left with little more
than this feeble sense of humor
or what’s left of it,
to defend myself,

turning paler and paler
as each precious drop drains away,
a nearly invisible man,
little more than a few stray
electrons flitting across a tenuous
web of relationships.

TAPPED OUT


Mailbox jammed,
desperate appeals
crying the world ends
TOMORROW
unless you care enough
to send us
more than you have.

With the best of intentions,
they seem desperate
to convince you unless
you’re feeling depressed,
you’re probably not
feeling at all.

The more you care,
the more they seem
to want, ’til caring’s
no longer a solution,
just one more source of pain
in an already pain full world.

In your dreams you finally
waken to find yourself
standing at an intersection,
hand out,
holding a sign reading
” World Ends Tomorrow.”