Sebastopol

Was it a dream
Soldiers
In a thick ankle deep
Overcoats
And I had none
It gets dark early
In Sebastopol
A blessing
I tried to buy
An overcoat
Was arrested
Sweet wine they sold
For cigarettes
Sent back on board
Brezhnev
Did the driving
What do I know
It might still be
The darkest place

The Odd Narrative
Steamed up the window, my finger I paint a landscape,
Mountain, forest, and lake; the peak cries into
the lake becomes a vast ocean,
where trees made into wooden rafts floats
Midmorning, there is only an outline left of the crest,
this will happen to the Himalayas,
it will be a grassland on a plateau where horses gallop,
flying mane and all that,
since man won’t be there to domesticate and make them
drag bunk beds and kitchen stoves around the pampas.
The rest of the world will have sunk into a big sea that is so still
it spends all its time mirroring the blue sky thinking, it’s seeing
is so deeply in love with the image,
that doesn’t notice the man in a rowing boat; he’s one time forgotten,
he has married a big fish
which he thinks is a mermaid, often puts his hand in
the sea and strokes the fish’s belly: “without you,” he murmurs
“I would truly be alone.”

The Date.
Sat in a pub talking to a woman of no substance
other than she wore a skirt and had *****.
Pub closed, I was allowed
to follow her home
through dreary streets
fine rain and yellow street light.
I kissed her dry, bloodless lips
We parted.
Walking back to the ******´s hotel.
She stood by a bombed-out church and had damp hair.
This is too absurd
again; I was at a place I didn´t want to be.
Money changed hands.
My loneliness laughed hysterically.

Campo Alegre re-printed

Under the houses on stilt
That has no sewers
And built for ******
To service sailors in Curacao
A barren island
In the Caribbean Sea
Pigs live under houses
Grew big and ugly
When one is slaughtered
The meat tastes of a drunk
******’s *****
And cheap perfume
That hides
The grotesque ***
In the name of need

Kaleidoscope

A man unsure of how to address women
walked into a tube of colored glasses
and bits of painted paper.

he was brought up as a Presbyterian, were
women were held in high esteem
wore long gloves when going to a ball.

He thought the color in the kaleidoscope
where tartish-like women dressed in red
standing on the pavement near a bar.

Yet he felt drawn to the colorful women
they exited him, unlike the young women
who looked dowdy at the church.

He thought of sin and a moral dilemma
should he pay a woman in a red dress
see what it was all about, the *** thing?

He did and had a hell of a time; he did
time and time again until the day *****
danced on his eyebrows.

The blues affair

I met her where the light was weakening
an enduring twilight had settled on what
was re-lived in the memory of summer
moving out of the convention, tired leaves
in the soft breeze on its final breath.
We spoke of the past but not of the now
the present didn’t matter.
I saw her as a disappearing holograph
dying in the mist of life lived
past emotions could not awaken
she had gone to a place I could not follow
as her face was erased.

The magic hour

The day is ending, and time is one hour back, but
the day still serves early twilight
From the window of a tourist resort, I see the mountain range
I lived beyond, in a village with no name.
So many years ago, when thinking about that time
it appears as movies rolled fast forward the seasons
turns into one was it summer or fall?
I had a dog we walked in the woods every day she chased rabbits
I chased dreams like catching the breeze
The dog, tired of chasing bunnies, retired to the verandah
walking alone in the forest was tiresome
I knew of Serengeti in another dale tall yellow grass were
lions spied, crocodiles in the muddy stream, but when
I blinked; the sight had gone, substituted by grazing mules
and wine orchards, beautiful red grapes going nowhere.
The dog resting its head on my thigh, so tired and weary
in the morning, she had gone.
A dream was over; we had both been defeated by old age.
I sold the cottage, but before leaving, I walked up to the hill
to see the ocean I shall not sail on.
But what I have lost will forever be mine to keep.