New Haring

We could, you know, paint poignant pictures together
And, if you wanted, put pen-line portraits of ourselves
On the walls, did you think, that it was possible to see our figures
Cast as shadows, neverending and running, across chalk mural highways?

Bursting with chakra wavelengths, now you agree, and forever looping
We sink into each other with bits of bristling brushstrokes, all one hand's creation
We made love in between the lines, where little meaning resides
Never commenting that we could't quite make out our private parts
and secret zones - well, in retrospect, they weren't filled in
He left that to our scrutiny, and in a perfect world
We saw each other as we were in truth
Naked, half-dead, and hunched on ancient stoops

And penciling Primordial outlines
Archetypes of kinetic kinds of movement
New Haring split his head in two
Veins in vain in AIDS in aids to eyes

Mama Shaw (Back to Bethlehem)

Oh me, oh my, my young, rotten mind
that I devoted to a dying king
the man in his wine-stained robes
with abdominals starting blankly
and filling the dead sea with life's scaffolding
Those bold first beings, with the cosmic skill of Seeing

Oh gifts, oh curses, Earth's timeline - frustrated purpose
that rid its ambitions of that selfsame spark
bringing our wits to farflung reaches
to swipe at writhing abominations
and enter chambers constructed beyond our understanding
Those bold first beings, with the cosmic skill of Seeing


Oh ma'am, oh mother, was I removed with tongs to slither?
Did you force out cells and scream and yell
just to disown me in this hollow vat?
Cold, scared, in mold I bid - prepare
I stalk the ancient structures of
Those bold first beings, with the cosmic skill of Seeing

Big things have small beginnings.

Harelip

I was baptized by black thighs, mesmerized by white lies

In magazine slip outs, I theorized that the objects of my eyes

weren't worth the time I spent trying to metabolize and recognize

That holes and hair and dirt breath flooded my dreams 

Made me to fit to scheme methods of making madness seem clean

and made me to fit to sing dirges for my dying urges

Splurges to coddle her, like green leaves to a toddler

Disgusted me to the point of clinging to the bottles I earned

To the point of having a sexist breakfast with my two left plastics

And passing the last glass to a leftist cynic

1

How many times have you whined about trifles on your mind

and stuttered for someone kind when nobody was in sight

and how many minds have hankered to press rewind

to eliminate decisions executed with no foresight

I've got more poor sight in my right eye than

a blind kid in a hospital trying to pick a prison fight

and enough remorse set aside for ten Vets' lifetimes

Morose to the point that I can't help but be reminded

of instances long subsided, bringing sharp pains to my eyelids

When I want to drift unaided to that palladium of bed rest

but my interest in intentions keeps me kicking at my linens

and keeps me flicking at phantoms no more real than my obsessions

I always sound more depressed in these reflecting treaties

than my reality seems to be daily and nightly

Blame it on being flighty or a problem in hiding

That my rhyming time sink is slightly disappointing