Thirty innocents are murdered
At a Baghdad apartment.
Palestine keeps lobbing
Useless missiles into Israel,
Inviting air strikes
Leaving hundreds dead.
In central Africa
Christians and Muslims
Systematically slaughter
Each other.
Seventy folks were shot
In Chicago
Over the holiday weekend.
Everywhere, inspired zealots,
Responding to orders
From their one true god,
Kill the infidels.

Meanwhile
Regal oaks, stately elms,
Weeping willows
Overarch
Lotus, rose, yarrow, dahlia—
Incandescent, stunning—
Wordless poems.

Breaking news: car bomb
Kills 89 in Afghanistan.
Malaysian plane shot down
Over Ukraine for no discernible reason.
295 dead.
More wordless poems.
(7/15/14)

To be, always, dark, mere murky shadows
Of the bright prismatic thought, rainbow wit
That streaks about, trapped behind the window,
Locked. The translation? Bungled counterfeit.
(5/31/14)

Then Angel came, his perfect David hung
With testicles, then Rodin, the moderns—
Their strange impressioned visions highly strung—
Then mobiles came to mock tradition, spurn

The stasis weighing sculpture down. Movement
Worked a bit, diverted our attention,
Inserted guile, surely an improvement.
Hands could not include that fourth dimension—

The greatest sculptor, clearly most sublime?
Life’s vicious animator—Passing Time!
(5/24/14)

Is it some genetic thing buried deep
That makes me wonder at a sunset
While he sees stormy portents ruining sleep?
Is my gorgeous bloom his allergic threat?

Rembrandt, Manet, Van Gogh, even Dali
Please the heart and eye—but Jackson Pollack
Sells for a million bucks?—insane folly!
Abstract impressionism’s just plain crap.

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Gershwin engage,
Enchant our ears—beguiled, we cheer and clap.
Now we’re asked to honor Phil Glass, John Cage
Mocking music’s art (not to mention Rap).

Then there’s us, human shapes: illogical
Protruding nose, hair, convoluted ears,
Toenails, genitals, anatomical
Design—veneers beneath which we appear.

Explain to me how women’s beauty works,
How canny centimeters certify:
An inch or two of breast—firm, nicely perked—
A quarter inch of lip, an eighth of eye
The length and shade of hair, the cream of skin
That curve beneath the knee, the width of thigh
Coalesce, create ugliness of sin
Or beauties that entrance our leering eyes?.

No wonder that philosophers debate
The nature of aesthetic enterprise.
Do we perceive, or randomly create
The beauty that our minds have crystallized?
(5/4/14)

Though shy at first, she loosened up, perceived
Our admiration harbored no vile threats,
And greeted us with smiles, despite regrets
That festered, generating toxic grief.

Her beauty notwithstanding, she, divorced,
Lost custody of her three school-aged kids,
Lost self-esteem, presence, stunned by the din,
The anguish, that grim experience forced
On her. She hugged Ginger, breathed fumes that rid
Her of malignant pain beneath the skin.
(2/16/14}

Without words, we pointed at stones, waved hands.
Movement filled with meaning—“bring that thing here!”
Then words emerge, soon complex talk expands,
But unborn writing won’t be birthed for years.

Thus memory contrived fine mnemonic
Tools that rendered contracts, songs, sales and tales
In metered rhyming verse, formal sonics—
Dactylics, iambs, anapests—firm wails—

That lodged in memory ‘till we transcribed
Those strange sounds to writing, reading—inscribed
On parchment, hieroglyphed, chiseled on stones—
Tangible contracts and glorious poems.
(1/26/14)

Sounds, listen to heartbeats, invent rhythm,
Even fashion instruments from bird bones.
Those ancient flutes—aural crystal prisms—
Mimic calls of animals, insect tones.

We really can’t explain how reeds and horns
(Those bowed, plucked strings) and opera emerged—
But once invented, music grew, took forms
Enraptured all of us in its rich surge.

It grew and grew, baroque and classical,
Romantic, modern, tonal miracles,
Along with blues, and jazz, and crooned bourgeois,
And rock and roll, and rap, reggae and ska.
(1/22/14)

December twenty-first
And my mortgage—
A poem a week—
Remains unpaid.

I jotted notes
Wrote two titles
Even made a quatrain,
But could not complete
A single verse.

My first remarks
Defined the power
Of unregulated greed—
The fertile seeds
Of revolution—
To crush humanity
Reduce this shining city on a hill
To chaos,
Leaving cold ashes
In its place.

But I’ve tolled that bell
So often that it’s cracked.

“Interest,” I thought,
“An interesting word.”
It’s what you get from lending,
Pay to borrow.
But, significantly,
It’s what makes life bright.
Imagine, if you can,
A life devoid of interests,
Except, perhaps, the meds
Reducing pain;
That’s what lies ahead.

Which, of course, leads to self-interest.

Born to melancholy
And suspicion,
I distrust those
Who seem to want to help.
I find the mission
Of most charities fictitious,
Fraudulent scams,
Enrichment schemes.
My doctor called—
Asked me to come in.
My first thought was
A milking plot
To bilk my Medicare
With fees for services,
Lab tests and the like.
But someone set me straight—
Providers get a capitation fee
And nothing more,
Which made me think
A darkest thought—
How Medicare’s prosperity
Would flourish
If they could introduce
A tiny “de”
In front of my
“Capitation.”

I made my living teaching poetry
Beguiled my students
With the mysteries
Of form, aesthetics, melody.
I’m much older now
And look back with a modicum
Of guilt.
I lectured fervently
On that famous ode
That ends:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
Perhaps some threads
Of truth are woven into beauty.
But to argue that truth
Is beauty just boggles.
I wonder how much beauty
Keats found in the truth
Embodied by the long,
Agonizing illness
That killed him
At the age of twenty-six;
What beauty radiates
From our planet’s history
Of storm, disaster, plague,
And ceaseless war?

Perhaps,
Without a 23.4 degree tilt
In the axis of our Earth,
We might be freed
From the deadly chill
And morbid heat
Gifted by those
Solstices.
(12/21/13)

Two or three unruly souls just ogle
Waiting for their chance, looking to embrace,
They peer with lust, predatory eagles,
And plan to place themselves face to chic face.

The other day one of them sprinted by
Determined to meet Paula, claim his hug;
Not one of those demure hip slants to side—
He forced full pelvic press (poor Paula—ugh!).

Though pleasure gleamed, desire all a-whet,
Deep down he knew that hug was all he’d get.
(6/29/13)

The women
Cover nipples
And vaginas
(Resentfully),
While displaying
Well-oiled bodies.
Their taut butts,
Flexed,
Display a tight crack
Able, in a pinch,
To crack nuts.
(5/28/13)