ANOTHER NEW YEAR
New Year breaks with bloated belly
And bad breathe past the promises
You will never keep.
The exhausted sky settles down
Down to a handful of yellowed stars.
The haze creeps from the shoreline,
Hunched over ready
To swallow everything
In this impatient workable world.
I can see why she left you
With more freckles than Howdy Dowdy
Complete with paper crowns,
Horn blowers, confetti, and champagne corks.
It was only she who reminded you
That only the corners were real.
Such a fool you are thinking that new rain
Could wash away more than the
Urine from your city streets.
NO GIN IN MY GINSBERG
Just a handful of Zen is all you left
As we watched you change
Into those borrowed robes
And chant your mantras to
Run away people in parking lots.
Such a real cool daddio only children
Failed to recognize you once prophet
Of bongo players, jazz players of the world.
Did you really think we
Would shave our heads?
Clever you, you fooled them all but not me.
My face formless like the Immortals,
I followed your nameless streets
That led all the way to India and beyond.
I still howl in your painted posies.
I now spit in your holy water
And write your name now only in
Urine.
THE REAL MISSING MASS
They say that most of you is missing
Perhaps even from your private places
Something more than just an arm or leg
And deeper than your darkest spaces.
Researchers conclude as much as ninety percent
Lost deduced from a long line of X’s and O’s
But it takes no greater science to tell me
Your muted mysteries no one knows.
I too have peered down your opaque passages
Have felt your fractal pulse dimensionless
Have seen your eyes hidden in a veil of stars
And knew then that you are quite figureless.
Like staring at the stars
You cannot be seen directly
Or your skies blue only from a distance
Because you are a tease only.
EVERY BOYS HERO
They kept it a major secret like buried
Cuban missiles or the true value of gold,
Never told us that you were just like us.
Even when they paraded you in pinstripes
Or gave you some lucky number
Or put your portrait on a box of bran flakes,
You were every boy’s hero
We didn’t care about the smoking, the
Drinking, or your father’s image
Or your illness that ran in the family,
Or cared how you neglected your children and wife
Or knew why your ran so well,
Because you were a legend, our hero
And idols make perfect statues
Like yours they placed in center field.
BINARY BITS
Examine her too closely
Like under a magnifying glass
And she will turn and burn your eyes out.
Stand too close to her
And she will pound you like dough
Flatter than Florida.
Unwrap her cellophane dress
All the way down and all you will find
Is the face of another clown.
Don’t worry. I’ll clean up your mess
Into the dustbin your bits and bangs
Next to the pile of your yin and yangs.