Those Old Puritans

Those old Puritans, what a nutty lot,

Looked upon the forest as a metaphor

Where the God's battle gets staged; Lucifer

Versus Man. But who makes the cut

When God’s the head-coach? Wild-eyed

People like shadows between trees,

Or those who see the woods only to say:

I doubt we'll be needing any of these

But felled for raising our holy house.

Does God favor gold, steeples in the sky,

Or simple rituals on the by and by?

Which of those gods is a greater mouse?

Such readers of nature tend to go astray.

They might see you the same way.

Glory Mongers

If only they would shut up

About themselves, just fix it,

Solve the puzzle before it

Explodes; our deepest Cup

Of Plenty drained to the dregs!

All Presidents tell their stories
Of fools who thwart their glories,

While the nation kneels and begs

Riddance of all self-sacred men

Who live by ever looking up

Into the shining stars and planets

Where their souls jostle for seats

At the table where the gods sup.

Our fate's to ride it till the end.

Ballad of the Garden Gnome

Priapus got it chopped off,

Given a book to fondle the mind;

At one time he was hard enough

In garden plots to seed his kind.

He’s now become a Bohemian elf

Baking cookies in a tree; life

Amid the flowers, a plant himself,

He thanks Christ for his new wife.

O Priapus of the boner, your

Soulmate with the sweet breast,
Your flesh-pillow in the love-nest

Has changed the garden décor!

Fertility spirits, flesh and desire,

Now scold the chimp looking on

With that sparkling inner fire—

It’s God who created the throng

Scouring earth in search of wings

Hidden here, there, everywhere;

Since falling for all the shiny things,

Now demons whisper in their ears:

Dust to dust is thy destiny,

To pass away in soil’s memory

Of what was just a moment ago,

To join again that cosmic flow—

O Priapus! Bearer of man’s seed

Baking cookies no one needs,

Some devil is felling all the trees

To keep us angels on our knees!

  

US Territory

Puerto Rico always ever the bullseye

For the US Navy or hysterical

Hurricanes riding sins of weakness,

Always a port, and only ever a port

On the sea of dispatched goods,

Where retirees walk the gangplanks

To cherish the kitsch of island life,

Hispanic spices in the mix, on facades

And the smiles of waiters and maids

And shopkeepers meeting the high

Mainland expectations you saved for.

To fishermen, and those who can never

Get off, that passport is like the branch

Aeneas rips from the earth, his ticket

To the underworld where Puerto Rico

And Detroit poison in hatred's blood;

You would have to have a heart of steel

To see no tomorrow in your kid's face.

Puerto Rico always ever the bullseye,

And civilization our only offer

For location location location, smack

In an archipelago the whole world 

With air forces and armies and navies

Wants a piece of, land where you do 

What's necessary, what's demanded,

What made you go in the first place—

The natives, citizens like Souix, Pawnee,

Theirs in prison for acts of terrorism,

The word itself a kind of terrorism, stuck

Behind bars for defending mother’s house.

Now, imperial winds arrive to clear out

The coffers, and toss around the remains

Of bankers’ properties, battering shacks

Along the coast into concrete slabs; rafter 

Boards and faucet fixtures in sunshine

Once it turns north to become The News.

Puerto Rico was never not a bullseye,

Bombarded off the coast like a pile of sand;

Flagged as was the moon, it still feels

Like conquistador colonists yet thrive

And treat the natives just as we do, 

And for all the same glittering reasons.

Chapbook: Trumperlicks #45

1

I know a tycoon buffoon named Trump,

A blowhard in a goldplated dump;

     The people called him forth—

     Celebrity trumps worth!—
For whom the world is a hole to hump.

 2

There once was a peacock named Donald

Who traced his roots to bonny Scotland—

     He wanted nothing else

     But to grab beaver pelts,

Before his huge feathered head went bald.

 3

Let’s Sieg Heil the cad with orange hair

Who likes to brag that he grew a pair—  

     He applauded himself

     When he spelled “mini-golf”

Like a brat in a gilded highchair.

4

Our leader, dimwit confidence man,

Has our decline as part of his plan—

     He conquered the place

     By corrupting the race,

Soon to be king of a garbage can.

5

President Triumph loves his daughter,

And would love to put his paws on her—

     When he saw her in bloom

     He bustled from her room

To check if her mom wasn’t hotter.

6

I’m for burning coal, and fracking oil,

And helping ‘mancipate Blacks from toil;

     I love the Hispanics

     In the old cowboy flicks,

And GMO popcorn that don’t spoil.

7

“The Russians are bad and do sad things.

And Venezuela, hugely stinks!

     And Assad is so sad,

     And Iran is so bad,

But I have one of the best golf swings.”

8

If you get sick you can suck it up.

If you die, it’s a win-win lollypop.

     I got the greatest deal,

     Most awesome spiel,

But get the shit done by Special Op!

9

“Fuck all the people who you can’t sell

And buy them a ticket straight to hell,”

     He explained to his boys

     Before taking their toys

Because human and daddy don’t gel.

10

Dad loved Nazis, but mostly their shoes.

Mom was a potato, she didn’t bruise.

     I married gold-diggers.

     It’s like having chiggers.

Did you guys catch me on the Fake News?

11

I love uniforms who cry and pray

When they kill children on a bad day

     And then get really sad:

     “Am I really so bad?”

They wouldn’t bother asking anyway.

12

My daughter’s got a nice you-know-what,

And it’s not what you think, not a twat,

     But a really good brain,

     The biggest female brain.

Married a rich kid, hit the jackpot.

13

My boys, they love to travel and hunt.

They love animals, but I like Kant

     In some village somewhere.

     We pay our tourist share

Into the woman’s future life-fund.

14

North Korea’s the one place I’d nuke,

It’s run by a crazy commie gook.

     Not meant in a bad way,

     But it’s much easier to say

Than Kimmy Jung un, history’s fluke.

15

I pardoned Arpaio ‘cause I could,

Just a good cop in bad neighborhood—

     Those hombres are real tough

     And we’ve had ‘bout enough.

I can build it with Canada’s wood!

16

I’m in love with crooked banks, not Wall Street.

They would be so smart to kiss my feet.

     Lines of credit can heal

     Any type of dark deal:

If you work the oven, own the heat!

17

I defeated Marco, Jeb, and Hill,

And people still think I lack the will

     To govern the country—

     (Imagine a cunt tree!)—

I start each day with an ugly pill.

18

I love gold, even if it’s just paint.

Something about it makes me faint,

     The sparkle looks so rich!

     Lady Luck’s a tough bitch

And won’t put out for no stupid saint.

19

For hawks, a winnable little war.

To doves, I vow not a bullet more.

     For the unemployed, jobs

     Before they turn into mobs

And come at me like pimps on a whore.

20

This earth, such a fertile tank of gas,

Should be awarded a Miss Planet sash—

     I’d grab her oozing woods,

    And finger deepest roots;

Come morning, she can kiss my fat ass!

21

They say I’m connected to the mob

And think that’s how I landed the job,

     But I’m zackly like you:

    I want one, then take two,

In the race to be the richest slob.

22

My wife’s from a latent fascist state,

Which is good, for the sake of hate.

     I picked her out one night

     At a party.  My light

Like a diamond made her want to mate.

23

You can’t say I’m bad for business.

TV News used to make a lot less.

     I just open my mouth,

     Profits go north of south

Even when I peddle a Herpes’ kiss!

.

24

Love Indians, not their casinos.

And Blacks, you know, worked mostly pro-bono

     For a few hundred years

     Shedding blood and hot tears,

And still got less than a white crack ho.

25

It’s a worldwide cut-rate puppet show,

And I’m the star!  I go with the flow!

     I apply the make-up,

     Hug me a crewcut cop,

Then pay PR to polish the glow!

26

The quacks gathered to say I’m insane

‘Cause I love pussy (or a choochoo train).

     My mind is so damn fast

     My best thoughts run right past. . . .

What was that I was saying again?

27

I send cruise missiles wherever I choose;

You set the clock for permanent snooze!

     You don’t know when or where.

     I doubt you’d even care.

That makes two of us: that’s the real news!

28

My predecessor broke his word,

Then Hillary, OMG, absurd!

     I’m boss only for four

     If not many years more.

Don’t worry, I’m not really a turd.

29

My presidency inspires revolt

But I don’t fear the American dolt,

     His keystrokes are all mine

     I’ll break him with a fine

And blackmail the horse inside the colt.

30

I graduated maggots cum louder,

Got a frat-diploma and a trophy garter

     And chicks like wall to wall.

     I was built not to fall,

So you will just have to work harder.

31

My bestest friends are those who can pay.

If they have no cash I don’t let them play

     In my sandbox no-how,

     Except maybe a cow

If she’s the kind with big boobs that sway.

32

I’m a great judge of ladies’ beauty

And even God knows I’m a cutie,

     So I peek as they dress

     And pay them to confess

How they’d love to give me some booty.

33

Destined for things cosmological,

I followed the stars like I’m nautical:

     I sailed so friggin high

     Some are dying to die,

Convinced I’m crypto-despotical.

34

The other ones bombed so I will too

Even if the whole world says poopoo,

     We’re Americans, see,

     And we like to be free

To fuck you up in lieu of a coup.

35

I go through women like a storm through trees,

So many I count them in groups of threes.

     I’ve yet to meet the girl

     Who refused a real pearl

For a short few seconds on her knees.

36

Republicans are so full of shit,

They wagged their tails and that’s about it.

     The Democrats all suck,

     Ask Schumer, what a schmuck!

I wish somebody would pop that zit!

37

There once was a bore we all abhor

Who soiled the office many adore,

     He swore and decreed

     In secret as he peed

His revenge on the people who roar.

38

I like Iranians, the ones that we fixed,

Who live in New York and ape our tricks,

     They don’t love that Allah

     Like the Ayatollah

Who outlawed booze and titty pics.

39

I trust real people who never read,

They will journey abroad just to bleed

     For the red, white, and blue,

     Baseball, Gaga too,

While in my tower I count the green.

40         

Once was an exile, loved his I-phone,

We gave a CIA Predator drone

     To fight for democrats

     And his dad’s funny hats:

Murder’s heroic in a warzone.

41

I saw the studies but trust my gut

To steer the country out of this rut,

     The longer that we stay

     There will come a day

The Chinese and Russians want their cut.

42

Politics is so entertainment

Is what I proved for your containment:

     I am current trends

     On long golfing weekends,

Tapping my foot for late payment.

43

Dreaming of being the president

Like all kids rich who’re power-bent

     I’d lie at night in bed,

     Carved ceiling overhead,

Adding up the nation’s future rent.

44

Obama was oh boy something else, huh?

He practically wrecked the nation, duh.

     The black half of himself

     Put the white on a shelf

And that’s why the KKK picked moi.

45

I love miners and those who work hard

Being white, but I don’t like that bard,

     Whatshisname? He’s a bum,

     No talent, a real scum,

And such a sad man. Punch in Richard.

Thank God She Was Drunk

She stumbled, tumbled into traffic

And the sound was like a building falling
When it hit her square at the shoulder,

Launching her fifty feet up the road.
She got to her feet, wobbled, then
Bent over, as if to vomit it first
Appeared, to collect her things.
I saw her phone in pieces,

Keys in the headlights, her bag

Still joined at one end to its strap;

Inside out, all kinds of private things
From home littered the asphalt—

I was about to check if she was dying, if

I should call her mother, brother, boyfriend,

An ambulance, anyone to take her home,

When the driver jumped from his cab

And sprinted to her side, placed his hand
On her arm, still shaking. You cunt,
She screamed, and took a swipe at his head.
I froze, thinking how alcohol is the juice
Of power, the shield of the untermen,

A god's potion to withstand the brevity

Stretched out by the minute, the hour,
And how this woman will pose a challenge

For the earth to be rid of her. I walked

The driver back to his truck, made sure

He was okay. In the meantime, the word
Cunt sailed off, repeating itself faintly
Like a ship’s horn swallowed by fog.

The crowd that had gathered in witness

Turned from the sea, made their way
Inland, where a stiff drink conquers all
And puts off the pain until morning.

Suffering’s Fundamental

All the great religions, and the not so great
Put suffering center stage of what and why.

Look around: our children die, we wither

In pain, the animals remain as far away

As possible, hunted, trapped, studied,

Discarded—There’s so much to cry for,

To answer for. Perhaps, it's only dress-up,

Our grubby fingers in Mom’s makeup

Smearing eyes and lips with comical masks

Of immortality, twisting ankles in God’s shoes

The size of boats on wavy seas, the moon

And sun so there’s something to tell by.

All religions see life as one long suffering

We ought to be grateful for, that we should

Praise in song, that we should finally realize 

Not even a million lives can reach the stars!

Suffering, unmoored except to that, we pray

As hope, when all we have to do is grow up

And love the light, while our mothers relax,

Brewing coffee for our imminent return.

I'm So Hot

I am so freaky hot that it makes my life miserable. I’m not bragging, I’m just stating facts and objective reality. If hot is making people go googoo gaga and lose their shit, then that’s what I am. I can’t even talk to anyone except in my family. And I’m talking close family, real close, because 2nd and 3rd cousins have been known to drag their tongues after me and ogle me all day at family cookouts. Creeps me out. It’s like your constantly on stage, constantly being compared to the best hotdog or hamburger, constantly judged, though with me it’s already a done deal: I’m just freaky hot. And if you look through family photos, old and new, it’s obvious that I’m the hottest that ever was. You can’t imagine how that brought joy to my mom. Being hot means getting the money. All my frumpy cousins for instance married normal men with average jobs. They even belong to the PTA. Imagine me, freaky hot as I am at a PTA meeting. The mothers would run me out in a heartbeat! I can remember my mom talking about all the great things that would happen when I married a wealthy man. She was convinced that she’d live with us, later, much later, after she’d retired, out in a private apartment connected to the main house. She’d be talking about trips and vacations, visiting all the beautiful cities in the world, maybe moving to one if it comes to that. She made me feel like a lottery ticket, like she found a diamond and couldn’t wait to pawn it off. That’s not really what was going on but that’s how it felt. I never heard her say a thing about love. It was always about getting the right man who had the right money, and then keeping him for your own. Every time a Hollywood divorce took place, she’d check all the media to find out how much money the wife ended up with. And if they signed a pre-nuptial, man-o-man, my mother thought they were the stupidest women on earth. It ain’t enough to land one of those guys, you got to know how to keep him, how to tie him down. My mother said that men with money saw the whole world as a toy factory, and saw us girls as living toys, and someone as hot as me would be just the type they’d like to take to the playground, so to speak, and that’s why I’d have no problem getting myself hitched to “a bank account.” That’s how she saw them, bank accounts. I think she regretted marrying my dad, who was no more than a truck driver with no bank account to withdraw from. She always had visions of riding on boats and wearing dark glasses, a big windy hat on her head, a glass of wine in her hand. I think she just got sick of paying the bills and cleaning up the house and wearing stuff that got ratty in a hurry. None of her sisters were hot enough to get any money, though they all got nice enough homes and good husbands. One turned out to have a drinking problem but otherwise a pretty good guy. The ones with the money ain’t never that good, so it’s your job to make them pay. Anyway, that’s how my mom thinks about it. For me, being hot had its good side too, though I’m not sure it compensated for all the bad. No matter what you did, as soon as they looked into your face you could see the forgiveness wash right over them. Hot people get away with murder. The bad stuff was that no one really liked you. The ones who were pretty but not as hot as me would do anything to belittle me, and if I had a bad hair day or a zit—I never had ‘em but every now and then some blemish would pop up—they’d point it out fast as they could. They liked to take me down a few rungs. Mostly I ignored them, because when you’re the one being attacked it’s obvious that the other person is the one with the problems, so you don’t have to do anything, really, just wait them out until it all goes back to normal, back to you being hot and them not being. I guess all in all, I’m pretty lucky that I was born hot and not average, or even worse, too heavy or built like a “brick shithouse.” That’s my dad’s phrase. Back in his day I guess they did their business in a separate building. Seems a bit rich to me, kind of pampered having a special house for that sort of stuff.

You might think I get bent out of shape over everyone wanting to be near me or sleep with me or just look at me. I don’t. I know I’m hot and feel the same way when I see a guy who’s hot, who’s got that way about him, that look. If I feel it and they feel it it must be normal, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense going against the normal. I already did it, once. Me and this city boy met at a church thing, a weekend of singing Christian songs and praying and talking about God. He never looked at me, at least that’s what I thought until I went to talk with him and right away I noticed he was different. Everyone was treating him different, like they needed to be careful around him. He was blind, which I learned pretty soon. Once we started talking, we hit it off, and the others drifted away because they had nothing really to say on the subject and maybe they wanted to get a break from having to be careful around him. Maybe they thought that being hot with a blind person made me normal. It’s true in a way, even though he told me I was hot. When I asked what he saw when he thought of hot, he said fire, though he couldn’t describe it. He was blind from birth, so fire or anything else he had to imagine from start to finish. Except what he touched. That’s how it happened. He asked me to close my eyes and touch his face and to concentrate on the tips of my fingers, to see his face with my hands, as if I were sculpting it in clay. I was cheating, kind of, because I already seen his face and could see it when I closed my eyes. After that I let him touch my face and it felt like snowflakes or feathers had landed on my skin, the way his fingers were so gentle, like they weren’t even touching me just hovering a fraction above my skin. He traced my forehead and eyebrows, following my nose to my lips. Then he swept his fingers up my jawline to my ears, which he circled like he was drawing a map; pinched my earlobes, not hard, but I felt it. That’s when I grabbed his hand and put it on my breast. He reached with his other and did the same with my other breast. I was trying to imagine what he was seeing as he circled my nipples and made them stand right out like when a wind passes. Someone entered the room and I jumped back. He had to go to see Father Piaggi, but before he left he whispered in my ear: “you are hot.” That night while everyone was playing guitar and singing near the fire that Father Piaggi and Brother David got started for marshmallows, me and Kevin sat next to each other. I wore a special dress so he could put his hand on me without too much work. He was supposed to sit near his chaperone Mike, but he said he was just fine next to me. I could see that Mike was jealous, scrambling for some reason to stay. I could see too that Mike thought I was hot. But Kevin told him to let him be, and when a blind person tells you to do something you have to do it. I sat on the grass where my dress and legs fell into the shadows. Kevin sat just behind me, just listening. Then his hand brushed my thigh and I maneuvered so that he couldn’t pull it away. I let him touch me until I nearly fainted and then later that night I went and hid in the bathroom at the exact time we’d agreed to. He arrived, and listened for me, and then we made love. First we kissed and hugged each other and then we just did it, right there with the light off. We didn’t even lock the door, which was kind of risky. If we’d ever gotten caught I think they would have blamed me. I never saw him after that except at breakfast the next day. Somehow we got mixed up in other things and didn’t give each other numbers or information. When my mother arrived to pick me up with my brother, Kevin and Mike had already gone. I planned on looking him up through Father Piaggi, but it didn’t really make sense. My mother would die if she knew I let a blind boy do it to me. If he had money, maybe, but Kevin being blind and me being hot was not the combo my mother had in mind, even if he was sitting on a goldmine.

I pretend with my mother all the time that I haven’t done it yet. She sent me on the “retreat” because, really, I wanted to go, and she thinks having God in your life is important now and forever. Mostly forever. My friend Jenna’s almost as hot as me, and she was supposed to be there so we could hang around and worship Jesus together, but she had to cancel because her older brother got in a car accident. I’m not happy he got in one, but I got the chance to do it with Kevin and it was beautiful, even if he couldn’t see me. I mean, he could see me, just in a different way. If my mother ever found out she’d kill me. She’s always fishing for what I’m up to when I come home late from school. She’s sure the boys are looking at me in that way because they are, but I just ignore them though it’s hard to walk by them when you know they are trying to take your clothes off in their minds. If they were blind like Kevin and not like they are, they just might succeed. My mother is always lecturing me about boys and how sneaky they can be. She said they have tricks that you don’t even recognize because they’ve been working them since the garden of Eden and now it’s like a master magician who moves so fast there’s no catching his game. I like boys though I think they’re kind of stupid the way they dance around trying to get us girls interested. I’ve already seen it all because the boys start early with that stuff, and being hot I get a lot of examples of their craziness.

My cousin Mae went out with a major league outfielder once. She had three dates with him and told me all the details, except maybe a few. They went dancing, and to the best restaurants in town. He was handsome, and made a ton of money. We all felt bad when he didn’t call her the next time his team came to town, but she still had those memories. And now she knows what it’s like to go to fancy restaurants. Everyone was left wondering if she didn’t need to be just a bit hotter to catch and keep a pro ballplayer, but there’s nothing she could have done about that. Now she’s married and has two kids, nice little boys but from two different fathers so you can imagine what that house is like on a weekend.  Not what I would want, that’s for sure. But that can’t happen to me, because, as everyone out there knows, I am freaky hot, and can say no to a lot more men than she could.

Now, when it comes to keeping the man you caught, my mother told me that you have to use psychology on him, just like you do with children. Men, by their nature, never grow up. The more grown up they get the more they start acting like women. That’s the truth. Anyway, the most important thing is not to ask too many questions. The less questions, the better. Asking a question that requires them to go into the details is the wrong approach, my mother said. Yes, No, I don’t know, are the answers they are perfectly willing to give. You have to learn how to do that because it doesn’t come easy. The other thing besides asking questions is to never act uninterested in whatever he might say as the spirit moves him. Not getting any attention is the worst thing for boys and for men with money. They love attention, and with all that money they got people watching them and listening to them and jumping up and down whenever they say so, and that kind of power, that kind of feeling isn’t something they can get over.  So you have to be hot to compete with that. But really, I don’t even want a rich man, except to help my mother live out her dream. I don’t really need a guy with money. I just need one that ain’t a little boy. Someone who thinks being hot is not the most important thing about a person. In school, I went out with a boy who I had picked from the ground one day when another boy tripped him. He was kind of ugly, had a funny looking face, like a pear, bigger on the bottom than the top, but I went out with him anyway just to shut down the other boys who were always wrestling to get in my line of sight. We didn’t do nothing but eat lunch together and go to a movie on the weekends. He didn’t understand why I didn’t want to take him home but my mother would have killed me if she got a look at him. Nothing worse for her than aiming too low. Since this is my last year in school, my mother asked me to forget about boys if I can and concentrate on graduating. She doesn’t really know but graduating is the easy part. If she wants me to avoid boys she’ll have to keep me home. Once I meet one, a good one, I don’t know what I’ll do. A couple weeks ago, my mother showed me a package of condoms by leaving them on the bathroom sink and waiting outside the door until I finished. Did you find them, she said. I can’t keep you from doing it, but I sure as hell can try to stop you from making me a grandmother, she said. Babies are nice, she said, but not too early, and they cost a whole lot of money. Look at your father, works his butt off driving just to put clothes on you and food in your belly, she said, just to make sure you have what you need to grow up right. And, she said, just so you know, no rich man wants to feed and clothe another boy’s kid. Rich men want their own kids, so you have to wait awhile before you spring that trap. I didn’t know what to say except okay, don’t worry, even though she had all kinds of things to worry about because I was going to marry for love and not money no matter what happened. It’d be best if she go see Father Piaggi and pray together that I find a rich man that I love. And if I love him, I’d sign an agreement. You bet I would. Don’t think I’d tell my mother that I did, but I’d sign one. And I’d make him sign one too. We could start with two agreements. He might have the money, but I’m hot, freaky hot, and that’s worth a lot too.