Outside Ottamanelli’s

there was a second there
even though I had forgotten my black and white scarf and the April wind
blew the New York wet and cold that can only be blown in New York
when it isn’t winter and it isn’t spring and the sun hasn’t shined since you got back into town
and there was this still second when I knew spring was coming under
my fur in an animal way like that red sense of food just off awareness
maybe fleet running prey or yellow papaya
but I knew something else some sidewalk satori
all motion ended and focus was tight
and everything CLICKED and I loved New York and I loved
all these people and the deep chocolate taste of grimsweet reality
and felt the spring that I smelt on that absence of breeze
in the middle of the block right there on York Avenue wasn’t a matter
of orbits and daylight and axial tilt but rotations and revolvings
of a more metaphorical sort and
rebirth never needs dying
and then I turned into the butcher’s and thought about dinner (duck I believe)
without even realizing what had just happened and just what it was that I’d just forgotten.

Acting the Asshole for all the Right Reasons

… didn’t want my skin
to make a promise
my meat and lightning
couldn’t keep

Skin can be treacherous
a snake sheds
skin for absolution

You turn
silence into song
doubt into depth
unaware how love’s
engendered

Skin on skin
is a common goal
sparks fire fine as far
as that goes
but silence and depth
deserve lightning

Fundamentalist Orthodoxy

Not a platonic cock
Not Jesus’ cross nor
Washington’s spire
Not Shiva’s linga
nor any potent metaphor
Not a doodle doo cock
Not an abstract cock
Not your cock
My cock
soft @ rest or hard to rock
I worship my cock
like a phallic Taliban

phallah hu akbar

(middle)East Side

Yofi Yofi
Let me buy you a coffee
or kiss you – even better
cause it makes me feel b’seder
like a varsity letter
on a blue and white sweater
from Hebrew university

When you fress my banana
it’s just like Rosh Hashanah
Yeah- the head of the year
like primo red-Leb gear
of kif from Morocco
psycherotic sirocco
blowin’ down my spine
and blowin’ my mind

Good thing I’m circumcised
cause you know I’m super-sized
and I don’t need no trayf cheese
Hebrew national to my knees
you know this kosher meal
going to make you moan and squeal
like a hazzer in a sty
So don’t be toyin’
with undersized goyim
who don’t know what to do
like Snoop Jewy Jew

Sound Poem

The predawn still is broken by the warbling of the muezzin, intoning the song to prayer. You stir by my side in the silverblue of not quite light as the cry streams in from each Marrakesh minaret offset in time. Even to an infidel this; this sound shared; this moment of divine aware shared, by everyone in the Adhan’s range, is beautiful, in its morning musical wakefulness. More so by your skin in alabaster against mine. Another voice and another and another and another join the chorus and the sound eddies out out across Arabia.



125 BPM of tribal drums and saucer sounds pounds our skin in a sonic fingered massage. A night of dancing under a Goan moon fades under the Indian sun. Bodies writhe in rhythm around us; No need to talk, pointless, only a shout could be heard. We fuck, standing up under a tree, behind branches overhung and held to stay upright, unseen by DJ satoris and swirling techo-sufis. Blanketed and buffeted by sound. Music. Sound. Beat. Sound. Alone. Surrounded. Sounds.



Beyond our building, the bedframe bang, the bedspring squeal, the liferhythm of belonging inside, wails through the walls.



Screaming fights and recriminations; seething frustrations; guttural expectorations pregnant with fear and fire and ire and loss. Neighbor waking exhortations, midnight palpitations, self-righteous orations, unmet expectations.



Iberian sounds surround us; sibilant Spanish and the round sounds of Portuguese play atop the bass and drum rhythm section rumble of train over track train over track train over track train over track. The endpoint cities lay so far ahead and behind that the only light whispers from our windows. The full train feels empty, you fill every nerve, no other sensation gets through. The music of your sighs between Madrid and Lisboa is a fado song, of incomparable tone; we fly across the peninsula; the peninsula flies by our window, almost unseen, against the moonless night, lit only by the sparks from your skin striking mine.



The BoopBoop susurrus counterpoints a baby’s cry. And another. Gurney wheels stalk the hallways morning noon and night. Coos and cries and newborn fears are the symphony of joy and doubt and irrevocable change. The dripdrip of fatherhood sweat. Every mother a martyr an angel a frightened delight. Another baby cries. This one nearby. This one shatters all possible peace. This one is ours.




Louder than those is the silence following the final footpad click of the closing door.

Sizzonet

(with apologies to petrarch & snoop doggy dog)


I’m lyrical empirical
nearer to a criminal
than poet in a hymnal
or Norton Anthology
Fear my psychology
my guerilla ontology
offers no apology
when your cerebrum gets frantic
from how I drop my iambic
a verbal alembic
distilling thoughts leaden to auric
ideas so phat they’re caloric
ignore it
if your mind can’t do meteoric

8 things I should be writing a poem instead of doing

1. Contemplating intricate incursions through folded space/time to finely re-finish every flirtation and conversation in the manner my memory demands.


2. Feeding P. Pan at the expense of the man.


3. O Maw! O Stomach! Y/our insatiable need for supplication and adoration is an aberration – suggestions of ingestion won’t answer questions indigestible throughout the night - besides we ate 2 hours ago - turkey on rye


4. Failing at trying not to masturbate.


5. Riding the Cathode Carousel for a 3rd time around – just in case - this time- I find the gold ring.


6. Blinking my lids must take –like- 38 minutes and the clock keeps on lurching in great fits and starts 1:37, then 2:08, soon a quarter to four and I still haven’t reached the end of the line on this great tangent train to the town of Minutia by way of whistle-stop websites hitherto unenvisioned and points further west.


7. Nothing.


8. Anything.