O MISSOURI

Oh Joplin Oh Missouri Oh Zion

Regal as the Sky and just like Magic

Langston appears in his smoking Jacket.

His Cynical Tirade -- A Quill-Diamond

What a Gentleman & with what an Ache,

Cultured, Articulate, and Uppity

Simple a Style as Tormented Numbed

I see you as you FLower in my Sight

Half Transparent but Alive and at That!

Your Spirit is a Sledgehammer Feather

Lighter than Heaven forgot what it Might

Life is but a Game without a Ticket

It Plays all by Itself while we Watch It.

DEATH GODS OF WAR

Thanatic, the Death Gods War Commissioned

Of Fearful yet Divine Ingredients

Drew Forward the Underworld and Opened

A Potion made of Ash and Sediment

Stagnant Vapors Melted from Fumes in Flame

Oh How the Black Cloud Thundered with Screeching

Carving a Wound in the Shape of a Star

What a Terrible Force that Mounts the Scream

The Past Time and Present Times are Reversed.

As Time Draws Closer to its Destruction,

The Power of Time-Bound Catastrophe

Bodies are absorbed in the Capsule Burst

Minutes without Eyes Seconds without Ears

Heaven brought  to Life is Atrocity

Not Free Not Simple, Verse of Marti

As if when Marti fled to the Catskills

or traveled the Sea to Guantanamo

he held in his heart the soul of his Mind

that he drew from when voyaging his Thought.

Aching in his Groins he disciplined Art.

He made it his Ally and Companion

For it came from a world of Grievances

the prepotent cast on the Slave and Cursed!

As knowledge wracked the world in his Head

Meanwhile the pusillanimous fled

and Friends that were made were gone forever

none would speak ill of him nor he of them

Than whiter no flowers could ever Be

roses of July and January

ABCD EFG EFG

I watch as a graceful shadow lingers

cast by the branches a gentle breeze shifts

softly swaying the veils oncoming

and the clouds that veneer with soft filters

then gathered with those of another mass

they lie down together cover the wall

a father appears, retrieves his daughter

she shouts her unwilling play time now lost

he assertively sweeps her up in arms

in the same movement he closes the door

the shadow grows taller touches the roof

and the warbling whistle of a bird

concludes the Act with a Note for each Scene

ABCD EFG EFG

POETIC DEATH

Oh Giant Frigate the Port is Empty

and the Memories in a Poet’s Eyes

sonically they Echo Soliloquy

by water passes a Day is nothiing

but as a Sonnet preserves--Imagine

the surface bent the shallow undertow

Mosses green island plentiful splendor

beauty allures it declines in power

across the anchor in the horizon

still as the Sinking happens on its own

without explanation for its Descent

Violins as though Stringing and Wails

Is Music without a Musical Soul

Vehicle and Carriage to Metaphor.

BEAUTY FLOW

Oh Beauty so Radiant and Magic

You dance at the feet of a Sycamore

Wrap yourself inside its branches and Roots

That you Love me is Certain and Prescient.

I watch as you Lower yourself to Mice.

Even your circumference is Even

Encircled in the Presence of Something

Not anxious but tilling the Seasons Soils

IT thrives without Notice and Hesitates

An Edge is its Surface so Miniature

While it is smaller than Moss and a Tower

A waterfall melodiously pours

Unconcerned for whatever’s the matter.

TWIN CYCLOPS

I place in a poem what I lost today,

all of my happiness all of my hopes

a barbed wire appeared around my throat

its edges encircled me like chains of steel

though this is a metaphor and I cry

like a Dove when war makes its presence felt

the sounds of its terror and its madness

as heaven becomes itself a new hell

the mouth of the sky pulls itself back booms

the horizon a throat and tongue vomit

a bomb screams its unwillingness, volting,

while standing to assist is the warlord

he mounts on a Cyclops tamed as a man

the chimera they form is a monster