stripping away

cascading reveries scramble irreverent synapses
with sudden glimpses of star bursts from the corner
of my eye while water faucets drip their last drops
into the gutter of despair surrounded by market
analysts who can't count to ten but echo tripe
back and forth in the corn rows of ears marching
down main street to the tune of "A Spoonful
of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down" and gullets
constrict at the starvation raining across scorched
specters acid etched by tongue-tied infants gurgled
bile until atomic bombs dance in the sky at night
when the stars fail to shine carousing inhibition
as infiltrating double agents succumb to the curious
delight full of consternation's coronation collecting
titanium from sublunary mines extracting
cavities with the precision of root canal drilled
epicenter shockwave defined gravity-quake
flute trilled nether regions feather flicked
with honey dust across memory's spine shorn
of the intoxicating calamity brought to you by
tonight's sponsor for our show - the platinum
whore mongering, war fondling, planetary
eyesore stripping away the color of dawn
as trapeze artists mourn their slipped grips
without a net falling in tumbled motion
beyond the event horizon of a black hole

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.

An Orange Firestorm

When the horizon steams up a full moon
and the morning condenses on your window,
pain whispers in the limb stumps of a hollow
cast as witnesses upon stormy seas, rowing.

Into the tears a mother sheds for her last lost
son stampede gallant white horses, crossly
demanding obeisant gestures with arms
outstretched, and faces plastered to the floor.

Mushrooms cloud TV news' screens,
surrepticiously gleaming in the eyes
of nondescript, nefariously motivated
spokesmodels who cling to lead plated

bomb shelters while stagnant air
gathers into dust clumps, beyond
the radio, active vitrolic antipathy
swarming over apathy's soft underbelly.

The sky flames into an orange firestorm
where the pre-dawn, purple firmament
once caressed stars' soft glimmer
while children smiled at tomorrow.

Kreative Blogger Award

Marco Kaufman is a wonderful and talented writer, specializing in flash fiction. His blog is listed among my blog list in the column to the right. Please take the time to visit Marco's blog and enjoy his writing by following this link, http://tbbog.blogspot.com/. Thank you for the acknowledgement of my poetry, Marco, and thank you for the award.

It is customary to list seven people or things I love and then acknowledge seven blogs with Kreativ Blogger Awards.

My seven loves:

1. The Beatles
2. Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi
3. Martin Luther King, Jr.
4. Charlie Chaplin
5. Alan Watts
6. George Lucas (for all 6 Star Wars movies)
7. Friedrich Nietzsche

The Seven Kreativ Blogger Awards go to:

1. CrisisChronicles Online Library - John Burroughs has impeccible taste and maintains a valuable library of excellent poetry. http://library.crisischronicles.com/
2. Peony Moon - Michelle McGrane is not only an amazingly talented poetess, but she also has a keen eye and ear for material to share with her blog audience; informing, teaching and inspiring us along the way. http://peonymoon.wordpress.com/
3. Joy's Poetry Blog - Joy Leftow is an inspiring and intuitive poetess who is also capable of lampooning or exposing society for its ills and shortcomings, she also provides insight into a host of important topics to the contemporary world. http://joyleftowsblog.blogspot.com/
4. duckdaotsu - Lisbeth West is a taoist and provides her keen insight on cultural, political and social issues which are always well informed and well worth reading. http://duckdaotsu.blogspot.com/
5. Blue Moon Northeast - Meg Harris is a remarkably talented writer, poetess and editor, and her blog shares the vision and soul of her creative writing experiements. http://bluemoonnortheast.blogspot.com/
6. Middle Ditch - Monique Caddy and her cast of regular contributors entertain with humor, story and performace as they regularly perform the episodes Monique writes for her serialized story and fun and fascinating, reappearing characters. You have to hear it for yourself! http://middleditch.blogspot.com/
7. I am not who I think I am or is I whom - Carol Novak provides her sometimes critical sometimes satiric but always illuminating look into then world of politics, philosophy, human rights, women's rights and much, much more. http://carolnovack.blogspot.com/

Please enjoy finding your way through the minds of these wonderful writers as you read these gems of weblogs!

Chasms' Rifts

Beyond the ivy covered walls where hallmarks chisel tears
a camera snaps its shutter shut on ungreased and toothless gears.

A field mouse lying motionless blends into his landscape
until incendiary bombs lay waste to quick escape.

A village wraps itself within a net-webbed fishing weir
catching all the nothing floating past a silent cashier.

The morning kissed rays of summer on the curves of noon napes
shimmer ground gold into russet, autumn-ripened, rain drapes.

Lost locks of amber hued cascades hurtle head first, diving
into divining, sage pyres, filled with death arriving.

Corruption spilled from the rotting, fleshy, bloody debris
strewn upon serenity's once orderly pedigree.

Unkempt, unshaven, the unwashed and blind powderkeg ticks
the moments away, one by one, consternating cynics.

Gladhanding politicians smirk behind their ally's backs
as courtyard countrymen repast shaded by black smokestacks.

Under flaming sunset skylines where eon's current drifts,
the setting of an era's age bridges past chasms' rifts.

Behind the Garden Wall

I sit behind the garden wall
in an alcove, beside a solitary
rose bush, a single bud
blooming on the stem.

I sip from a crystal chalice -
only a few droplets, blood
red, wetly stain my tongue
and lips with yesterday.

A rill winds around,
bending between footsteps'
markings left in the dust
as dusk shrouds around.

A full moon climbs stairsteps
leading up to a purple night:
awakening me with a stark,
chilling breeze, fluttering.

A hush gasps fragrantly,
grasping the thornless stem
with intuitive fingers,
caressing my luminous flesh.

I emerge from a cocoon,
the chrysalis falls away,
as wings spread and tremble
my heart beyond tomorrow.

Chariot Driven upon Dry Graves

Buds shiver against a reedy, brittle, brown stem
as a hoary, ice wind corrals damp, gray fingers
into mustang herds, unshod and trampling dusty,
back door trails that lead out of boxed canyons
and up the sheer cliffs of craggy mountain passes
carpeted by the soft, white sheets of powdered
snow that clings to the walls like static balloons.

Ancient wooly mammoth tusks scrape hollowed
out, petrified tree trunks on the icy sloped ridges
as their trumpet heralding calls still echo
through ageless nights where constellations still
slither across coal black skies like diamondbacks,
rattling warnings in rhythms only babies in cribs
decipher but ultimately lose the code's key
when language invades minds with simplified
brands of ambiguous meaning - begging cries.

Wiley geysers spout unfaithful jets of steam
and boiling liquid from the churning bowels
of gas-sick, earthen chambers, releasing
the parboiled, rocky flesh of screaming ocean
reefs, hundreds of years in the making, dying
as seductive actresses bat false eyelashes.

Fossilized, crystal geodes glitter iridescently
above the crowded Eurasian steppes, sacrificing
cultural immunity to the conversation god
of technology on the unwired, rippling auroras
fashioned by the solar wind as it rips Mother
Earth's plasma right out of the center of her
soul - as if a chariot driven upon dry graves.

Sabellapress to Publish Anthology including Two of my Pieces

I received notice from Ed Parris of Sabellapress regarding material I previously submitted to him for publication in the soon to be released anthology "Unhoused Voices: Granting Change for the Homeless." They received over a thousand submissions. My contributions to the anthology will be my poem "The Disenchantress" and my essay "On an American Homeless Odyssey." The anthology will be published in August. Because my material was accepted by Sabellapress for publication in the anthology, I now intend to submit my manuscripts to the publisher for publication consideration. The link to the page where the book will be for sale upon release (tentatively set for August 15, 2009) is: http://sabellapress.com/buybooks.html

Amid the Scent of Mescalito

Melting sedation drools down mother
superior's chin the way a child's runny nose
curls over his upper lip and dribbles snot
into his mouth, gums and tongue numbed
by his mother's lack of perspicacious
vision under midnight's cloudy haze.

Conundrums riddle through swiss cheese
gray areas like Billy Bonney's lead bullets
boring holes into his victims' gray matter
across the monsoon-gray skies of Arizonan
and New Mexican hammer-slamming-anvil,
lightning-sparked, firing-chamber, high noons.

An inauspicious chart hangs a pall from limb
warping nooses, interwoven cords skew
perceptions into pack hunting deceptions
as the distant, dry, desert sands undulate,
rolling swells ripple mirages - conjured
images from inside an inner world outside
conscious boundaries - upon solemn dusk.

Pythons slither in cold, dark alleyways,
coiling around the throats of circus barkers
beneath sunset skies the color of campfire
flames sparking and spitting into the carnival
of a night while all the rivers cease flowing,
dammed up within prismatic plexiglass.

Flashing yellow corridors' replete arcane
charade washes me in a warm rain, removing
the stains ancient talismen hand painted
upon my soul as the sun rose over the lake
of dreams, affectations slip through
grasping, clutching fingers seeking to own.

Under a street lamp, resting in the eye
of a storm, a delightful cacophony
interjects nonsense into the traffic
merging between the two-laned
asphalt hiding from the moon's
view, where sage mixes with rosemary -
haunting amid the scent of mescalito.

Eerie Chimes for Gandhiji

Feather fair or feather fowl
adrift within the weather howl,
some wildebeests together prowl
displaying behind their leather cowl-
like faces, traces of heather's scowl
beyond creation's pillars.

Monkeys drew the primate sea
where banshees cue decreed debris -
foresee the stew, cauldron's draftee -
though gathering's adieu from far Capri's
races thorough paces, despite a plea:
purifying, boiling distillers.

Sullied summer sundae, shooting up a rotting vein,
sunken jowled expression: a recollection gone insane;
in heat on city streets, dogs' rabid barking frothy cries:
supinely frozen corpse inquires, "What's between your thighs?"

Cow corral befoul an opalescent overcast isle while
enduring pointing fingers' smug, accusatory bile,
wall street bloodsuckers hang out an open window pane
and pray for evidence their lives are not in vain.

Winding staircase, winding tall,
twisting, turning - a blinding fall,
compels a whirling, grinding squall
through a starless galaxy's binding sprawl
at a crawl; it debases deep space's thrall -
collapsing constellation caterpillars.

Monkeys climb the primate tree
sans degree, sublime chimpanzees decree
eerie chimes for Gandhiji
whose peacetime prime reclined primly
into embraces with grace's pedigree:
navigating astral tillers.