Transmission

Another dreary December day during which 

closed winter windows keep my mind incubated.

Outside, twisted black branches reach across

a cloud covered sky, creating inverted Unknown Pleasures 

artwork.

Mundane spikes of sound interrupt my stasis:

cars, dogs, sirens, planes, trains.

But then a solitary songbird breaks the din 

with a distinct tone: Ian Curtis perched on

melancholy.

In this moment, I realize reincarnation 

is not a rebirth but a transmigration of mood.

I could call out when the going gets tough

Things that we've learnt are no longer enough

No language - just sound - that's all we need know

To synchronize love to the beat of the show

- Ian Curtis

The Loop

I wake in the middle of the night, 

dodging Monday Night Football updates like 

Fox News, tear gas and bullets en route to the Ferguson verdict.

In the distance, I hear a train leaving Penn Station

and I resolve to let my anger travel north on the Acela Express.

But as the train and I toot our horns and 

regurgitate smoke, I realize my ire never truly leaves.

3 AM

We meet again

and you are the lullaby I remember

Whisk me away

upon a shooting star

to where my inner child hibernates

in the heaving hirsute bosom of Ursa Major

Nature

Saturday morning

And my lover is a forest floor:

Hair intertwined with sheets wet from wind wafting

rain through open windows.

I lie naked as countryside hills:

Soft drops stick and glisten over my curvy chest and 

stomach like morning dew or manifested sin.

Love-40

A boy lies in his yard

hitting a tennis ball with a racquet

five minutes before the sun forsook his world 

and took with it sixty-one degrees

Would that the racket never stop

That the ball would never drop

Let not the round greenness of summer 

be banished like the Apple in Eden

Ritual

Autumn rain falls on the roof with a tribal beat

and I speak to the darkness to invoke the dance

one corner

two corner

three corner

four

join hands

same stance

face toward

floor

Ring-a-round the rosie

A pocket full of posies

Ashes ashes ashes ashes

Any Colour You Like

To witness summer's last sunset,

I showed up early like I was waiting for the iPhone 6 

and it seemed like hours passed before the sky began to crack.

The cool, becoming chilly lake-breeze

gradually washed away my thirtieth summer,

putting the filth, the reverie and the wonder behind me.

Slowly, as geese grazing in an aquatic pasture, 

the sun dropped a muted Neapolitan scoop of grey, silver, and gold

into the water.

No reds, violets, or oranges. Just simple, sophisticated, streamlined

shades of wisdom.

It all made sense until the sun gasped for air,

drowned in the horizon, and blew out a colored spectrum of a 

billion bubbles

in its wake - reminding me that wisdom is eminent, evolving, and

thankfully everlasting.

Forty

I rode my bike for miles under the canopy of trees

that gave me shelter from the persistent summer sun

and the brief summer storm. Leaves fell like manna: 

silently, intermittently, and in premeditated fashion.

Dear God: I never complained nor despaired before

you sent blessings.  Only after the last leaf-loaf will

I wail lamentations through the withered wilderness.

Honey Nut Cheerios

She was a pastor's daughter and one of my first crushes.

I used to visit her every summer 

at my aunt's Christian camp in upstate NY

back when family and females held the same value.

Her younger brother and I would sleep in bunk beds

by night but she and I fed each other a year's worth of 

Honey Nut Cheerios on the same beds by day:

finger food...food for the burgeoning soul.

I don't remember when I stopped making the annual

trip - perhaps it was when family, like a toy at the 

bottom of a cereal box, became less substantial and

females thereby followed suit.

Nowadays, I prefer to keep things less nutty and

perhaps a little less sweet.  I dump my cheerios into a 

bowl: the milk dilutes and makes an echO as lOnely

as a wOlf hOwling at the desert mOOn.

Summer's Momentum

Cicadas
singing tree to tree

Scent
of mulch rising with humidity

Children
on squeaky swings

back forth
  back forth
    slowing
       slowing

summer's momentum

Crossword Puzzle

I saw an elderly couple
working on a crossword puzzle
and for a second I envied and wondered

How nice it must be to
connect words with ease at the end of life
The ones we struggle with day in and day out

The complexities in the white noise

Turn the television and the radio off

Tear down the world wide web of deceit

Shut the fuck up, reconnect and just love.

It's said that we mellow
as we age but this little light of mine
is a steady conflagration engulfing every section

ArtsBusinessEntertainmentPolitics
ScienceSportsTechnologyTravelObituaries

My paper is burning
Corners hissing and turning

Blame it on The Times
and read T
               H
               End in the ferment

Cauldron

At night

I lie in my dark bowl

Comes the blue flame

My rare heart boils inside

Soul screams and climbs

to the rim but doesn't jump

Insatiable incantation 

Pain with prescription

Venus Fly Trap

People say I'm too quiet.

Not the case.  I'm on the prowl.

Patiently waiting for one to stick.

Yearning for mind body and soul to connect.

Touch me right.  Touch me twice.  Discover there's

warmth in my black hole - I'll suffocate you with love.

Trending till the End

A dam shame

to think that the eve

before mortality was also the slow death

of singularity. Father, Mother banished as one

from Eden, fitted in skin garments, heart and soul

enshrouded like the Tree of Life—mind bewildered, harried

by a kaleidoscope of indistinguishable monarch and viceroy butterflies.

Downhill

Days of reckless wonder

Eyes wild, wide, as your bike rushes

to the hill's bottom like waves to the shore.

You crash as a car nears the stop sign

and you panic, sending your hopes and fears

skidding towards the curb, sandcastles crushed,

engulfed, and receded into the sea, blood leaking

into the drain, so abruptly, so definitively, but don't stop

nor despair: mount the bike; reengage the waves with recognition.

It's summer: high noon, high tide. In the heat of our moment, try to catch the wind.

Twenty Four Hours

To Ian,

frail, pale, with vapid eyes,

baritone, brother, born child of God but backboned by the Devil:

I lie down when I listen to you, keeping the tears

swirling in saunas of effervescent emotion: Marco Polo,

drip-drop, hopscotch, child's play – recreations from yesterday.

My joy is not the next man's: from Maryland to Macclesfield, mundanity.

I'm forever obsessed with the sunrise because the new dawn fades

into a perpetual autumn sunset with free-falling foliage,

fumbling towards the ecstasy of ash and dust,

sun holding sway until the final moment.

So, this is permanence....

July 15 – May 18

Firefly

You come to me

on summer's first eve

as a limited edition toy

You come to me

defective—nite lite

flashing fortuitously

You come to me

as a beacon born

before the longest night

You come to me

I grab, squeeze you:

my lucky star extinguished

Stonehenge

We used to be holy

holding hands at the Heel Stone

as the sun rose on summer solstice

a silhouette of stability

Today we are pagan

with primitive pursuits like

mimicking old magic of our first May

a mirage of a megalith

Days of Heaven

The seminal fire

Quiet, quelling the querulous

Nature's nurture – never casting shadows

Where crickets count sheep

and cousin locust never clouds our point of view

The eye in the sky twinkles indomitably

but burns too intensely – illuminating imminence

Innocence gone like days of polar winters

Leaving us frozen with the nostalgia of not knowing

The Great Gig in the Sky

winter

roaring nightly but drowning daily

spring

staking its claim deep in the dirt

summer

skulking away into a solemn sunset

autumn

arriving as a peacock in disguise a crow

GOD

sweating profusely

with

each breath a gale of exhaustion

as the

seasons seek dominion over the other

Killamanjaro

Dark urges mixed with passions' flare:

my relapses come frequently recently

as seen by my foreboding fumaroles

Mawenzi on the right and Shira on the left:

the demon and the angel extinct on either shoulder

Kibo: hardheaded with ice and inactive

but my body is hot and bothered and pressured

Molten moments create wanton waves

that at last flip the lid and it all spills out

leaving countrysides and towns languishing in lava

with the sun's answer as to why concealed in billowing ash

***

You'll view this on TV in a faraway land when my

caldera's collapsed further and I'm half a day dormant

Black History

I am descended from pharaohs

I am wild but royal from the chin up

I slept in the shadows of pyramids

I spent a sleepless night swirling in a Sea of Reeds

I was sold by my fellow man into foreign familiarity

***

Spent sleepless days parting seas of cotton and cane

Dogs at my heels

Sleepwalked for freedom through locust-plagued darkness

Dogs at my heels

Spent summer days cool as hoses parted my clothes

Dogs at my heels

Marched for freedom with my fellow man on the Mall

Dogs at my heels

***

Wild, royal, chin up, crawling success' pyramid

Looking eastward to Egypt's ancient wonders in ruin

Each effort as ephemeral as the last  

Writing on the Wall

One black man's essence plastered in pure white

like the pillars of prominence that preceded him

One black man's tireless gaze towards the east

where the sun shares a new promise per day—

illuminating the Tidal Basin's tepid pool—part

mystique part memory and part morgue for fallen

and forgotten cherry blossoms drowned deep

like dreams deferred—waiting and wishing upon

the wisdom of the stars that see through the frost

a germinal generation ready to spring forth....

Remains of the Day

Sunshine soothes winter

weary twigs after day's rain

Sparkling droplets dive

with Olympic form

towards mirrored pools shining

like golden medals