The Literary Review
FLOW
The trembling brook quiets as
it approaches the rippling stream
wary of losing its watery simplicity to the onrush
the broad stream gurgles as it nears the
fearsome white water of a raging river
knows it can never be the same once its tranquility
is churned within the river flood
There are no more lazy plant tendrils draped over brook or stream
no more trout sleeping in shallow pools
and no more buzzing insects to lure their leaps
Soon will be lost the memory of its mountainous origins
or where the sources of life trickle and flow
The river seems eternal and poses as the end of all things
so streams bow humbly to its power, flow obediently
…soon to learn the lesson the river learns as it rushes blindly, humbly
to the sea.
Olympus Hijinks/Or –Dr. Frankenstein Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Without a clue his con clue son decided what was done was done
Without a pause he pursued his cause and severed Daddy’s too-many flaws of
vast creation of monster nation and of holy-moly constipation
and hurled them fiery high without the slightest consternation, that
glowing seedy ember where ‘twould be seen to be dis membered—although
dat member birthed anew not as hideous a crew…but Beauty from
a sea-so-salty
not a bit like others faulty but goddess of the skies and eyes long of hair and
full of thighs. So no more sons with bloody blades would have to settle
for hideous slaves as knaves who wouldst prefer their deep-sea murky graves
Dewberries
I awaken –or at least I think I do–outdoors .
Find myself in uncharted forests, fairytale woodlands of my mind.
Words tug from groundcover vines wound with
silver–purple dewberries that want to be ideas.
Dawn is drinking all the dew
and soon dry undergrowth
does not shine up at me
Too sweet these mornings of soft handfuls,
when I dark- crimson-dot my bowl of bran, of daily bread, of ordinary things,
with each small idea, the size of a chickpea, that wants to burst upon
my tongue
…too sweet
and inexpressible
Mescalito 1969
“Here, eat this.”
(“Who was that?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Did you just swallow that pill?!”
“Of course I did.” )… Party time!
Baba Ram Dass to Dr.Timothy Leary:
“Is this as high as we can get?”
Leary to Ram Dass: “I hope not.”
Love in the Age of Tolerance–She is young and beautiful
and still mostly a child
and she is all I am living for these days
But we are here to attend a Phil Ochs concert
not to Mescaline-melt into the terrain
like right now
not to lay nose-down in rich and pebbly topsoil
twining fingers through tree roots
and hearing the buzzing in our ears
that must be Druid chants
from beneath the weathered, paisley bark
of this monumental creature
that pays us no heed
as we grovel at its feet…
and then gibberish
more wet-lipped
topsoil mumblings spitting pebbles
and signifying nothing …
until we come to what senses are left us
and realize that we missed the concert
and go somewhere to eat a hamburger
and then hit the Thruway home
Oblivion
In ratty bathrobes
with cheerless red eyes
to my useless regret
they surrender dreams unwritten
these blasted minds of
tavern-cornered degeneration
bemused upside down
stumble sink into bubbles of fermentation
Freed from fury
slurring their devolution from
abusive progenitor maelstroms
into the calms of untroubled harbors in seas eighty-proof
Unbathed bards
their ears awash in hums eyes unaware or blind from
relentless daily suns that raisin their pinhead pupils
sputter back what the sea splashes across their lips
Where is poetry?!
These minds Bacchus bested
reveling in what backwater kisses their gaping mouths receive
bathe daily in grotesqueness
cling to passing monsters for affirmation
Reluctantly a mourner
still I long for the visions
they could have shown me
and for the longing they no longer feel
Disjointed: the cliché poem
(celebrating 48 years since Nixon Resigned)
There’s no present like the time—
the time to be, the time to do to.
Better sorry than locked in a safe,
all nowhere, and dressed up to go.
When the eye of the beholder is beauty,
we naturally think of Richard Milhaus Nixon:
“When the going gets tough
the tough get phlebitis.”
We all recall the Nixon fall,
after our long, long winter.
“Cliché’s R Us” said the sign
on his campaign bus.
But we showed him the Gate,
even though it was too late—
for the world was already crumbling,
and medicine is the best laughter.