from a red notebook, circa summer 2021

Horrible prose of History where

    poets proudly proclaim the

benevolence of kings, Glory

    while

Nations tremble and

    wait in the doldrums

    of time

Sweet kiss goodnight

Empire of the stars

    smiling down on us

    while

Heaven rains

    phosphor tears

Trudge through

    tremendous tribulation,

and exalt the prolonged

suffering of our birthright

                                      .    .    .

Fractal Asymptote

    Nearing the centre

Conflagration

    Holocaust that

    will never reach

                The End

Midway

A new beginning

Pacific Theater of Cruelty

    Precipitous Plutonium

Ginsberg scratching odes

    on the cell wall

Pindar obsequiating

        for all Eternity

                                       .    .    .

Rubbing sticks to

gether to cool down

Campfire in the Summer

darkness. Sent to

gather berries maidens

reach for bidden fruit

& come back w/

    husbands for slaves

                                        .    .    .

You can't forge steel

    without a little

    irony

Copper-crusted

  green decay of dollars

Depreciation, currency

manipulation (yellow belt,

                        Kung-Flu)

Towards a Lay of Faramir

 I

This being the grave tale

of Faramir, bold and brave

who did retrieve, from peril dire

for his sire, the golden ring

That Denethor, bereft of hope

whose eldest son had set upon

the ever-flowing Anduin

and him received the boundless sea

The younger brother proved his steel

though saved from the refining fire

by halfling bold, and twice a fool

yet father and hoard perished in flame

II

In youth the hero sword did shun

to study lore, with wizard mingled

learning much, betraying naught

still was observed by Lord all-seeing

Steward of the Kings' City

that southern bastion,

fell to waste

who espied Northward, ever watchful

saviour, supplanter 'midst the wilderness

Tuesday's Blues

Curs'd day! Day of Mars,

whose grandfather black Saturn,

multiplier of cares, rends my insides

and strains my nerve and tendon.

Day of brothers - alas, I have none!

Day of friends, long gone...

day of action, on which nothing done!

I love you, My Darling;

we quarrel too much.

Now, come back to me and

still the sea, becalmed at

gentle eventide. Astride

that fiery charger, Phoebus

gallops o'er another hill,

searching (in vain) for his stolen herd,

until baby brother shall grant

me quick-tongued thought

on the morrow, at last.

Ah! home again

Ah! home again

as always, and yet

it never seemed so new

and tenderly familiar

nonetheless. Still of late

a certain silence hangs

on Autumn leaves reflecting

precious fleeting sunlight

through the faithful windowpanes

and slanting between blinds

in angles softer than the

course of Heaven above,

the wooden floor below

instilling splinters as my

sufferings bring sweet

wisdom to the table,

laden for feasting and

celebrating the household

gods we brought with us,

escaping the captivity

of our youth.

Ode to the Writer

Praised be the poet who put his pen down,

The faithful philosopher who took a wife

and, choosing the better part of valor

fled from folly, forgetting youthful freedom

and other corrosive illusions.

Scorning party politics, yet he

between the lesser of two evils

descried the wit in leaders' rhetoric

and counted him, duly elected,

as if appointed by the gods

to join that list of great men

who sewed their stars amidst

the blood and high-peaked waves

woven in that flag he now salutes,

which once he carried, smirking

to the privy for purposes of hygiene,

along with the good word

of our Lord he now contemplates

faithfully in solemn hours not

wasted on contemporary literature,

save a certain Bavarian

novelist, writer of historical

fiction.

O Joy, that beckons me!

O Joy, that beckons me!

Why must you wait upon the

 shelf, gathering dust as the years

 decompose all that is, while the

 yoke of life drags us day-by-day,

 ever onward and back, unsure

 whether we the horse or the cart?

Inflame my breast once

 again, yet temperately, that I not

 abandon duty and forsake the 

 charge that is my privilege and

 destiny, but rather, provide a 

 beacon to illuminate the path that

 others must drudge through in

 these small hours.

        previously published in All Seasons (2021)

from the Black Notebook (age 15/16)

To grow up in America

    Young, white, male

  I drink Robitussin (4 fun)

  I'm pulled between extremes

        and it keeps me going

            and it's killing me

  I can't believe how I got here

    Sexy drugs and Rock N' Roll

    Madness,

    It's a wonder I'm alive

        (to see the SUN)

As children we learned

        Learned the child's freedom

        Learned to procrastinate our birthright

Older we,

        Heavy officers hungry for adolescence,

        Stumbled backwards,

        Learned the Gold Rule

    In high-school

        We forgot that we were led

            by a kindergartener who came into a

            fifth grader graduated grammar school

            full of ideas about the 1st Amendment

            to learn the price of silence 

    Hung between 2 worlds,

            We learn the worst of both

Television sloth reminds of death

The air here doesn't let you go:

            it hangs on

    A chair is your throne

            then a prison

       Mansion confinement

         Window eyes

          A grim, expected surprise

        Who dug these insane walls

            around my spirit

            around my fence?

        Whose blueprint?

        Unanswered phone alert

        Who hurt you in your own

            house

        Was it a cat, or a mouse?

Hey!

I saw you there in the corner of

    shadows, sitting

And in my head we got Mexican

    food that I wouldn't eat

    and smoked cigarettes that I don't

                   have

    and these poems left my page

    and these dreams left my head

Train tracks on a bridge

We forgot ourselves and broke

bottles

Standing above

Boats on the river

Follow the tracks down a cement

    jump,

  Humping the rail

    Kicking rocks

A train

All Seasons

Selections from All Seasons:

O Joy, that beckons me!

The Rainbow's Creation

Queen of the South

Lawrence Ferlinghetti - These Are My Rivers (a poetry review in the form of a poem)

Dawning of the Gods

Ode to Democracy

Cambridge, MA

post-Election Day blues

Turning Inward

Sunday night in Inman Square

Jacob (BONUS: not included in original limited print)

All Seasons was a limited-print self-published collection of poetry from the first two decades of my writing, from a wide-eyed and lonely fifteen-year-old atheist who had yet to kiss a girl or smoke a joint; to a teenage acidhead oracle watching an election get stolen (by George Dubbya) to a white Rasta hippie loafer; to my first legal 6-pack, getting married and the birth of my first son all in the same year; to a working-class father with a highschool education in a bourgeois liberal bastion in the age of Trump on the edge of a pandemic......

The title or phrase or idea 'All Seasons' I thought for years I had adapted from Miles Davis' "All Blues" until I realized I had stolen it from a Christina Aguilera song...but the meaning is related to the Catholic All Souls' Day this time of year, or in the thaw of Spring, when the cold of winter, the warmth of the spring, all the seasons can be felt in a single day, a single moment...in all our love and hate, triumph and failure, we are nothing other than our own totality...I believe poetry and music and art is the way to express this, to share it back with the world that watered us, for the dead do not bury their dead but rather, feed the living...

Verses True

All Seasons

All seasons live in my soul

this moment

full florida of summer bloom'd

bittersweet, golden fall

the pure possibility of empty winters

and this misty rain of spring dew

with green grasses afoot

these days live with them all

All seasons 

these days

The Rainbow's Creation

When the 1st face arose,

framed in starry darkness

seven serpents held the Eagle's Egg aloft,

suspended over hungry lions

13 night lilies blossomed & died

Her eyes were like spies of the Gods

burning into my mind,

I saw the child's parents,

Oceans apart in the rainstorm 

and got struck by the Dragon's

lightning tongue,

while real purple fire

illuminated the sky

She returned, while jackals

rent the first forms, frantic,

searching for Death beyond Life

The 12 are there, speaking in all

colors amidst temperamental beasts

Priests play upon tender courage,

ancient cities drenched in tears, now

recalled only by drunken magi on rainy nights

the people sleep while murmured 

laughter from the cupboard

heralds Dawn's soft flame

    The Rainbow's creation

        is beautiful

        

            Fire in the waters

            burns the waters,

            Desire for the Earth

            melts dark clouds

        previously published in All Seasons (2021)

from "The Last Bohemian"

Free now from the 

    manacles of doubt

My spirit can fly on 

        wings of poetry

    The poet's freedom 

    is a crime against 

    public morality

    "The long arm of the 

      law just got a little 

      longer."

                            -Sean

Raising children who will be 

    the actors in tomorrow's 

    merriment

Now they say

    Money is God

  Industry 

    is the only way

but the machinations of 

    logic have no will of their 

        own

    My mother's grandfather

    came over from Germany

    (barely a Reich at the time)

his ancestors had settled there

    several hundred years ago

from Bohemia (now the Czech

Republic)

                Wild Slav

        I'm the last Bohemian

                "I'm Czech as heck"

                                        -Lucas

    I dreamed we could 

    free the world with song 

    and poetry!

    I was willing to put it 

        all on the line for Art

With a few friends I thought

to found a new Academy

    but they didn't understand 

    my dissonant melodies

    and most ran back to

    their precious social identities

I wanted to reinvent myself

flowing like hot magma

    erupting in the streets

    chasing fair maidens

    we'd smoke ganja and

    scribble love letters to God

    at coffeeshops in spiral-bound

notebooks

    The Red Notebook loosed my 

heart

    The Blue one tore my mind to

        Shreds

                What did I find out

        there in the Arizona desert?

                where did I look for myself,

             upturning rocks

                        revealing scorpions

    The Green Notebook was 

truly a portal on Infinity

         my brain took time to

     congeal the phlegm of all

         my flights and sea

         voyages,

                    however my pen

        knew right away

                when we'd land!

When I walked w/ God

When I walked w/ God

            they feared me

Feared that I might

 heal them,

 and rescue from the

precious pain they guard

 like misers,

 like a dragon slumbering

 over its worthless horde.

Sleep then,

 while I stand guard.

But when we wake to see

 what color the sky has

 become at this hour,

 remember I warned you

 but you just babbled on,

    deep in dreams.

Well!

What Nightmare was that?

It's past us now.

What will you dream tonight?

                        previously published in All Seasons (2021)

Ode to Democracy

Are any fit to rule, but Lords, the 

groveling wretches, selfishe hordes

who, greedy-eyed, do wet their lips,

nor sated by gold-laden ships?

Then let the freedom bell to ring;

they melt it down, to forge a thing

more useful than a noble soul,

and suffer kings to pay a toll.

Their leaden hearts

 that trample Arts

 and flowers unto distant parts

discover now a wondrous land

and deign to count the grains of sand.

The lustre, fading, of mankind

shines all the brighter to the blind

that scramble, lowly, for to find

that knot the Mede could ne'er unwind.

This liberty's a funny thing

that doth compel the bird to sing;

the right to see the sunny day,

makes it, by right, the kitten's prey.

        previously published in All Seasons (2021)