WHAT I COULD NEVER TELL MY MOTHER

You are sweet
you are caring
your hands are soft
when you bathe me
dad loves you very much
you are my mother

I love sports
I broke my ankle
I want you to read to me
I do not like
when you argue with dad
you are my mother

I have two daughters
I have four grandaughters
I am happy
I miss you
I have always missed you
you are my mother

I did not want you to die
so young
I was only seven
I needed you
to see me grow
you are my mother

HUMAN BEING

My problem is
everyone mistakes me
for an onion
not a sapient
old dead poet

Why can't I be mistaken
for for a trumpet swan
dancing in the mist
or a bellydancer
having the best hand
at the poker table?

I know I barked
like a dog
devoured bones
played tether ball
and drapeed my leg
around fire hydrants

But if you check
my bibliography
you will find
I once hit
like Joltin Joe
played the horn
like Loui
danced
like Astaire
sang
like Hank
dripped
like Pollock
wrote like
Kerrouac

A human being
before
growing in the garden
as an onion

Historical Figure

A revolutionary poet

to free Cuba from the Spanish

cultivating a white rose

symbolizing innocence and vulnerability

offering love

to both friend and foe

everyone being equal.

Should not this be normal?

the way it should always be

free

free

free

a basic foundation for life.

It seems strange

this desire to escape

from oppression and

hate

is called revolutionary.

Jose Marti

killed

in the war

for Cuban independence

a revolutionary

a great poet.

Opposite Sides of Bench

Sitting on a bench in Havana

drinking rum

we talked about poetry

he read cultivating a white rose

by Jose Marti

I read swamp king

by Sid Marty

Marti writes about

light green and flaming red

Marty writes about

wild roses and grizzlies

I like beat poets

the harmonization of opposites

he liked opposites also

revolutions and love

we both read Hemmingway

for whom the bell tolls

and

on fishing

agreeing that

baseball cuban style is romantic

football american style the opposite

it seemed we were opposites in many ways

but we attracted kindred spirits

bonding over poetry

showing growth and decline

are not opposites

and opposite forces obey

a common destiny

over a bottle of rum

CHANGING

If I change as they are changing

if they change as i change

(if they change, we all change)

Is everything changing, as I bend

down to touch the wind?

(are they changing, or remaining the same?)

as I walk across the dunes each morning.

OLD BEATNIK

Old beatnik poet have you gone too far?
travelling to the mystic stars
with the flight of your soul
in the backseat of your vintage car

or burning on the docks at Veracruz
with the sacks of coco
smelling like the celestial burn
trying to win but always lose

mad with your solitude and foe
in collision with the lonely planet
stalled in the broken elevator
that would never go

dreaming of the bat with no head
sometimes your open
other times your closed
still sipping wine without the bread

THREE ARTISTS

Haze
three artists boarding a train
the clatter of the tracks
passing Rockefeller Centre
where the mural once was
Frida and Diego
using a glaze of sweat for a primer
and arranging broken glass
for their mosaic
Jackson Pollock standing beside his bottle
stick in hand
dripping
the scorching red paint
to carve an image on the floor
dripping
over the fence
down the post
dripping
on his granular sandwich
the willful ambasador of paint
dripping
showing Kahlo and Rivera
his sublime art
dripping
all the way to Birdland
to hear Charlie Parker
play for Lenin
empty his bottle
and finish his painting


Using words from read write poem ..... mosaic, willful, sublime, fence, granular, post, scorching, carve, glaze, finish