the firestorm of raging opulence

faded denim streaking through the night air
caresses the warm fingertips of somnolent
violins' mourning phrases for ancient cultures
caught in the firestorm of raging opulence

native bows drawn no more, their quivers
emptied by gunpowder tea leaves rolled
into balls and stuffed into peace pipes
with purple Scottish thistle a smokey poultice

father sky cradles brother sun and sister moon,
illuminating mother earth through a succulent
expanse as the four winds carry the seeds
of tomorrow across a vast forest silence

as the repetition of seasoned cycles cavort
between the hewn blades of merriment
trampled by the heavy steps of leather boots;
marching concoctions cover happenstance

This piece is inspired by the bloodshed in Peru, by the 40,000 brave indigenous Peruvian natives standing up to their government's corruption and desire to land lucrative contracts with US businesses for oil rights and commercial farms. The government seeks to force these people off their land, destroy their way of life, and put an end to a whole culture. The people are trying to keep their sacred lands and preserve their heritage.

"The indigenous community says at least forty people, including three children, were killed by the police this weekend. On Friday morning, some 600 Peruvian riot police and helicopters attacked a peaceful indigenous blockade outside of Bagua, killing twenty-five and injuring more than 150. Eyewitness accounts indicate the police fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowd. Over the weekend, Peruvian President Alan Garcia said 40,000 natives did not have the right to tell 28 million Peruvians not to come to their lands. Since April, indigenous groups have opposed new laws that would allow an unprecedented wave of logging, oil drilling, mining and agriculture in the Amazon rainforest by blocking roads, waterways and oil pipelines. President Garcia’s government passed these laws under “fast track” authority he had received from the Peruvian congress to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement."

"Alberto Pizango, the leader of the national indigenous organization, the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association, or AIDESEP, said, "They’ve said that we indigenous peoples are against the system, but, no, we want development, but from our perspective, development that adheres to legal conventions, such as the United Nations International Labour Organization’s Convention 169, that says we, the indigenous peoples, have to be consulted. The government has not consulted us. Not only am I being persecuted, but I feel that my life is in danger, because I am defending the rights of the peoples, the legitimate rights that the indigenous people have. I feel I am being persecuted, and the situation can get much worse with my criminal prosecution."

A Pointy-Fingered Firth

strip and rape your mother earth
carve her into a pointy-fingered firth
steal all her hidden, unmined treasures

utter aloud her unspoken, secret name
nurture wildlife within a crosshaired aim
drown her with watered-down tinctures

gaze upon her with gauze covered eyes
pour concrete into every crevace of the skies
with tar and asphalt pave over grainless pastures

a feast behind an ivy covered wall
just down the bend from a free-for-all
graffiti etched, black-sheep sloganed scrawl
that silent corpse with a dead man's gall

an angel takes the assassin's hand -
while a black limousine devouring funerary retinue
smashes a Kennedy legacy into glass slivers on the floor

an untouched maiden drowns in luxuriant opulence

cathartic spew
vitriolic voodoo
embryonic guru
sadistic, tortuous thumbscrew

mothers marching in the avenues
while sons lie dying in foreign streets

networks crashing in the dry desert air
pointing chimpanzees scream their "There!"

a rabbit scurries through the brush
as lightning crackles through cloud anvils
raising the hairs on the back of my neck -
dancers writhe, cavorting in brothels

burning desire paints black walls
with red licks of flaming envy

we're all running at top speed
legs churning, feet slapping the ground
the only non-nuclear option;
dig the fathomless gravy of experience

the rotting entrails of corruption rusts corrosively
eating away and decomposing the philosopher's stone

uncomforted suffering

children wailing through the dead night air

"Hold me!"

shiver into the cold dawn

huddle together as the moon whispers
shadows across the dusty ground

burrow into the earth, carving out dens

ancient choruses sing sacred earth chants
sacred earth chants sing ancient choruses
chants sing ancient choruses, sacred earth
ancient earth chants sing sacred choruses

Fanciful Dreams

The scent oozing from lilac petals pools up
into large, liquid pearls which drip down glass
panes, stained with the fanatical cries erupting
from the newborn - their spirits caged, barred
behind walls erected by unimaginative
generations; a flavorless fountain facade
rests on a crumbling foundation of recondite
esoterica formulated by the melting minds
of pornographic deity adorers devouring
masses of the thoughtless consequential.

Shepherds cull gullible babes in the woods
with mirages of un-kept promises still
echoing within caverns of despair as glowing
embers inflame hearts with a passion
tears cannot douse; a vastly strewn archipelago
in the broad ocean of souls drowns amid rising
sea levels as briny barnacles cling to platform
planks never intended to be more than fanciful
dreams - gleaming cubic zirconium set in pyrite -
the luring cheese orators lay in the mousetrap.

The Long Lines of Tradition

An elderly woman awakens like clockwork
every Sunday morning, keeping her thoughts
attenuated to religious piety and God. A shawl
cowls her trimmed gray locks with a black
aura, matching the ankle length dress
loosely adorning her fragile frame. She grasps
her black, patent leather purse which matches
the 3-inch heeled, open toed shoes carrying
her frame over to the nightstand where
a Catholic missal sits on the white, adorning,
macramé doily with a simple, black beaded,
rosary beside the night, reading lamp.
Shriveling, furrowing, wrinkled fingers
with arthritis-knotted knuckles grasp
the missal and rosary, check the purse
for car keys and her two crisp, new dollar
bills for the collection plate. Her short,
angular legs churn over the carpet,
whisking her out the door and into
the already idling car, the engine warmed.

Motoring down her sleepy, elm-lined,
residential lane, she ignores the man
walking along the sidewalk, shuffling
feet that have grown tired of trudging
the same path, twice daily. He sleeps
in a ravine just beyond the asphalt's
dead end, hidden among tall grasses,
his camouflage colored tarp preventing
the morning dew from painting his
broken body's form wetly before dawn.
The man sloughs down the sidewalk,
the weight of youthful expectations
and prime time accomplishments
humps his shoulders with the laconic
portrait of late-middle-aged
accusations hurled like darts
in the insinuating stares pointedly
stabbing him on nearly every street
corner. Nonetheless, the final odor
of his rotting, fecal pride arises
from the stench of the last threads
of clothing he owns - stylish and neat
to the end, cleanly shaven, hands
and face washed, but the unkempt,
few strands of hair flying haphazardly
in the cold morning wind betray
the impression he seeks to portray.

She sees him every Sunday morning
on her way to church, but her mind
is full of her devotional prayers, so
she never stops, never offers the man
a ride, never shares a kind word,
never offers a meager few pennies.

Every street corner the lady passes,
it seems, lays claim to another
social misfit, cast away by society,
crumpled up and thrown, like waded-up
litter, strewn into the curbs of American
streets, glimmering only for the youthful,
upwardly mobile, success stories of today,
soon to be tomorrow's sacrificial casualties.
She scantly casts her eyes on any
of the throng pleading for alms. No,
instead, she parks her car on the asphalt,
the church parking lot, spaces reserved
for only the chosen few parishioners.

Inside, she joins the others of the flock
standing, sitting, kneeling, responding
vocally, dropping money into the offering
plate, each at the appointed instant
during the service, following the long lines
of tradition, souls forming an eternal
queue, paying for their God's indulgence
and permission to enter heaven. The
priest takes his few moments to preach
a sermon on the meaning of charity; his
meaning requires little of the parishioners,
no daily acts of kindness, no offering
of alms to the poor, no occasions
of feeding the hungry. No, the priest
preaches the counsel of donations
to the church, who will do all the good
deeds for the parishioners on their behalf.

After the service, the flock file out
in formation from the edifice, a building
made from the same materials as any
other, stone and brick and wood and
steel, and the sweat of honest, working
class laborers. The woman's sight fixes
with such intense focus, and so burning
of a determined will to live piously
and follow the priest's commandments,
that she cannot see the face
of her long lost brother shines
from behind the eyes of the man who walks
down her street and who, even at that
moment, holds out an empty hat as she
drifts right by him, walking in perfect step
with the dispersing congregation
after the service - the man's hat
as empty as ever, his heart growing
just a little more broken each week.

After Eons of Slumber

Seductively urgent dawn
Drips from sunrise ewers
Into leaf-filled eave gutters
On moonless, October nights
When the divining hag reappears.
Fragrant melodies from oracles’
Lips part foggy veils
As pointed tridents whirl,
Staining glacial tors,
Until rug rats initial steps
Intercept furtive glances issued
From furrowed brows. Snickered
Under the breath are the ocean’s
Whispered asides – beneath
Boardwalks and piers – “A carnival
Or a feast?” She wondered
Down roving-laned byways
To bridge an abysmal chasm:
White-bread-blues imitating
Intuitive, sulfuric, tea leaves
Tuned to a Delphic frequency
On Apollo’s alarm clock
Awaken him from reveries
After eons of slumber!

The Sidewalk Streets of Despair

Blue tip matches travel
the dinosaur's path, ringing
in a right ear, spinning
in dizzying circles, fingertips
sky-grazing while alligator roach
clip protected, day glo faces
radiate snickers, bars cross
windowpanes' louvered blinds.

Who carves initials
upon the tree of woe?

A magician's trunk falls
to the wayside, mimicking
carols lilt through the hot
summer night.

But, can you dig it, man?

Can you take your jive ass, honkified,
plastic paid for, mystery misery
to the ocean's edge for all to see,
bare witness to salty tears for
the horror-filled TV screen - death
images destroying villages in desert
jungles, and jungle deserts glorified
slaughter at epicene generals' command?

Can you get your freak-on to fatherless
children, walking, dazed, in circles
on the sidewalk streets of despair, wailing
beside mommy's body lying lifeless,
curbside, in the blood-flowing gutter?

Do your vibrations groove to
fourteen-year-old children snorting
crack on southside street corners
in the unchaperoned night, sucking
down Old English with crusty old bums
who collect the change off asphalt to pay
for that 7 AM, start-your-day-off-tight,
morning, wakeup beer?

Will you trip to the buttoned down, spit
shined, Starbucks junkies, the fat cats
who prowl gated alleys and calculate
profits while digging cemetaries
in foreclosed track-home backyards?

Do you keep on truckin', brother,
while babies' malnourished bellies
distend, and distempered dogs' drool
anticipates masters' rabid-foamed
injunctions wheedling eminent
domain inflicted repossession?

Hallucinated reality cloys
close-knit, joyful bundles'
wrap: feather fabric's fantasy - try
washin' away each hopscotch square
on the sidewalk streets of despair.

The Flying Squirrels' Wailing Lamentations

Frozen outside,
on roughly coarse crags,
the vanilla king rode
on the back of a coal
colored panther
flinging Melipona bees
at dark orchid pods
until ice cream rained
over every velvety carpet
that stubbornly refused
to stimulate consumption.

Acorns, meanwhile, ceased
issuing from oaks and hickory
nuts eschewed to be chewed
with inanimate reincarnation,
leaving a whole generation
of starving, skinny, crazed
squirrels to offer their bodies
as asphalt roadkill sacrifices
to the great nut god -
for whose favor they pined
throughout the unfalling
autumn failing in 2008.

The god of nuts, cruelly
and remorselessly
denied sustenance
to flying squirrels,
relegating them to a fate
Boris and Natasha never
succeeded to inflict on Rocky.

"What's a few squirrels,"
pundits deadpanned in the Post,
as the entire east coast
became an acorn free zone.

The god of nuts bellowed
bellicose guffaws, as he schemed
in league with the vanilla king,
and the risen-cream's rain
suffocated each bank's acorn
retirement stash squirreled away.

The flying squirrels' wailing
lamentations fell on deaf ears,
echoing through empty safes'
depositories; for redemption,
the sole solution
offered by the vanilla king
sanctioned doling out more
bees to pollinate the orchids
believing that increased vanilla
wealth would end up trickling
down to feed the squirrels.

Unquenchable Thirst

Concrete and asphalt sprouted palm trees
as the caravansari out-flanked the oasis
in every direction. The one-time savanna,
bared of all nurtrient laden vegetation
by the grinding, pulsing prurient horns
blaring out "The Stripper," bore witness
to shrinking wetlands' evaporation while
deep within Gaia's bowels her black, oozing
blood gushed upward, poisoning the sky
with the fool's gold of scheming human
design. Metropoli blossomed on the polluted
banks. Glaciers, melted by the stifling,
rising temperatures, which should have fed
irrigating rivers who wailed the agonizing
screams of poverty's emaciated children,
while the bottled remnants wound their
way to the lap of luxury, shipped across
the globe, slaking the opulent craving
of a nation who polluted their own
waters into actual undrinkability
with the plastic, petroleum chemicals
they force-fed into Gaia's dusty dermis.
The nation's public only cries out
in concern for their wallets' reduced fat,
blinded to the onrushing sandstorm
of unquenchable thirst.

The Disenchantress

A teenage enchantress stroked
her chestnut hair one hundred
times every night, gazing
into her full length mirror,
mirror on the wall, pronouncing
herself fairest of them all,
imagining herself in the arms
of the football team captain
in a far off future land
of make believe: white picket
fence surrounding the well
manicured yard of a two-story,
upper crust, suburban home.

Amid the congregation of social
hangers-on, she pointed out misfortune
dripping from the sweat of a feebled,
balding man, a two week stench
perfumed the tattered, dirty clothing
draping from his emaciated body. They
all laughed and snickered, as they gawked
mockingly in his direction, reducing his
crumpled form into a cultural stereotype -
a sub-human.

Years later, the former enchantress
still holds court - now, her snaggle-tooth
mouth verbally accosts strangers,
wheedlingly pleading for spare change
along the Venice Beach boardwalk,
laughing with her disheveled retinue,
each one spitting epithets at ignoring,
affluent passersby, while clear, cheap
vodka drools from crooked mouths.

Somewhere in her backpack,
the disenchantress clings
to the hair brush which once endowed
her chestnut tresses with a sparkling
sheen. It reclines, unused, almost
forgotten, along with the faded memory
of her smug, finger-pointing superiority,
hidden by her collection of methadone,
syringes, a packet of rolling tobacco
and papers, a couple of hamburgers she
liberated from a garbage can, her extra
panties, soiled and scented with brown
and red stains, and her secret stash
of vodka for later that night, when
she would awaken, shaking, coughing,
and spitting up blood from her failing
liver, dreaming about the fairy tale
ending to life her mother once promised.

This poem has been selected by Sabellapress for inclusion in an anthology which they will publish and release in the summer of 2009 under the title, "Unhoused Voices: Granting Change for the Homeless."

Helen of the Agora

Long, breathy moonbeam wisps
wind together, weaving honey into hair
strands, braided and cascading over porcelain
shoulders, shimmering an amber aura. Aqua
pools ripple upon opalescent gemstones,
hypnotizing, luring, like whirlpools which suck
down every revolving body drawn
into a magnet's pull. Caressing tones flutter
seductive silence from chords never drawn
too tightly, nor left limply hanging. Vibrations
insincerely whistle jingles in rhythm to veiled
partings which hide no iridescent
gems. Clandestine commerce inhales
amorous scents, inferring flesh is alive, arising
with goosebumps, copulations incites
lingering daydreams - sensuous onenightstands
and even soul mates' eternal monogamy. Eons
elapsed before spicy incense trails arrived
without dooming everyone to death
by ennui. Contradicting longings, induced
in sirensongs' temptations, uttered
incantations commanding no one can live
without them. Prim asylum guides the tillerman,
who steers his ship past rocky straits - navigable
only by the hearing impaired, sightless
connoisseurs of the most delicate flavors. Calm,
the still air blows, as rocky shores retreat
in the presence of bucolic, pastoral leisure suits
found moored in a leeward harbor
at twilight, after tempests fail.


This is an edited version of the poem which was originally published by Eleventh Transmission in their March of 2008, Volume 2 Issue 3. A link to the archived publication is provided on the right hand column.

Parched Lips

He rests emaciated arms
from shooing flies buzzing
near his face, crawling
across parched lips. Wide-eyed
expectation begs for so much -
really, very little to drivers
whose cars suck
the water and food
right off the earth.
Recreational golfers turn blind
eyes to everything but shooting
par for the course, while fountains
evaporate in Las Vegas
through an abracadabra
wink as Copperfield says,
"Presto," and water
morphs into the almighty
American dollar. A TV
flickers with images,
Madonnas and Jolies
whisking a child or two
away from everyone's
starving mother:
umbilical Africa. Even
Bonos and Geldofs
tell us to send the almighty
American dollar
to relief funds.
But the wide-eyed pleas
will not grant absolution
to overweight motorists
who drain drop after drop
from Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika
while they idle in drive-thrus
for another burger and fries.
The flies continue to crawl
across the parched lips
and into moist eyes, multiplying
with each additional car
started, driven and idled.
Take another trip
to the corner convenience
market, buy only a pack
of cigarettes or six-pack
of beer, adding to your obesity.
Then, blame oil companies
and car manufacturers.
The child sees you
grant absolution to yourself
as you tee up yet again
and idle in another drive-thru.
Every additional almighty
dollar sent to the child
evaporates another drop
of drinking water
and morsel of food.
The child cries in muted tones,
"Will you awaken
from dreams of bank account
balances, dates with boyfriends,
and the best sex in your life
long enough to save mine?"

This is an edited version of the poem which was originally published by edifice WRECKED in their October 2007 issue. This was my first poem published. A link to the archived publication is provided on the right hand column.

Desire Whispers

Outside Chartres' walls in clay
Thorns menace a rose;
Inside a palace in Marseilles
A painting of Camille Corot's
Waits patiently to say
What parentheses eternally enclose.

Desire whispers in the night
Lifting moonlit veils,
Fulfilled oration can't delight
Homeric ships which have no sails;
Though winds may howl, "Take flight!"
Ulysses anchors while Circe serves him ales.

Diamonds' polished and gleaming
Facets fascinate
The darkest vestige within priests,
Whose black robes fail to suffocate
Nature's urge unexpunged:
No instinct's easy to ameliorate.

One Simple Rose Petal

When we were but wee ones
and watched drifting clouds
upon wayward happenstance,
our little minds played make-believe
and imagination reconfigured the sky.

Not too many years distant, we spent
our mid-summer mornings rolling
on clover covered hills, the sweet
smell in our hair and clothes jumped rope
among late afternoon oak trees; later, playing
hide and seek in the grove's after-dusk orange.

We raced our bicycles through autumn streets,
fallen leaves floating up in zooming tires'
whooshing wake; we zig-zagged by mud
puddles on our way to the creek in the field
marsh where we caught frogs in our hands
and collected tadpoles in glass jars.

We hunted through flower beds' honeysuckle
trellised patios trying to catch butterflies
with index finger and thumb; often, they
fluttered all around us, staying just beyond
our grasp, so we'd giggle off to the swing
set and try to soar above the Sun.

I used to pick four daisies every single
school day to bring home to Mommy;
sometimes, I found some marigolds to add
to her bouquet, but I never found even one
simple rose petal that human minds could sway.