ode to cesaria evora

if melancholy
had a voice
it would
come
from an island
of volcanic
salt-ridden waves
cast adrift
like nets
floating
free of fish
and men

sadness departs
shedding scales
like notes
falling tenderly
rinsing broken hearts
with sands
of time
calling out to
the sea
forlorn
like the loneliest
lighthouse

blue has no hue
like mornas
a slow mourning
an aching honey
sunlit
dripping in long
drops stretched out
like an eternal morning
sailing
toward empty sunsets

*mornas is the popular music of cape verde, an island nation off the west coast of africa. cesaria is the most well known singer of mornas

night sounds

frogs make a chorus
chanting mantras
enchanting the mantel of night

owl speaks omens
asking who i am
tasked with hidden secrets of night

coyotes howl their approval
playing with cosmic jokes
praying to the blanketed night

what's it like being poor?

what's it like being poor?
ask your mother
who gave a lot
for little in return.
what's it like being poor?
try biting your lips
and chewing your nails
when the cupboard is bare.
what's it like being poor?
brush up on math
learn to subtract a lot
when the bills add up.
what's it like being poor?
take the yoga class
where you wait in line
to speak with someone who don't understand.
what's it like being poor?
become a collector
marvel over nickles and dimes
and cherish quarters like diamonds.
what's it like being poor?
ask your mother earth
the one who gives everything
for nothing in return.

Warships

Warships
Steel horses whipped
Across the sea,
Cutting through our maternal
Liquid
Blue and green blood;
Red blood spills
Where blue blood fills
Cash-laden coffers
Lined with coffins of poor folk

Warships
Ship sons off to war
As mothers wave white hankies
Waving to Yemaya
Pantomiming a ritual glory
Grieving with joy:
My boy is a man
Wearing women’s blue jeans

Warships
Storeships of silence
Spreading death upon the land
Like sprinkling salt
From the sea,
Striking from a distance
Leaving people in silence,
Dead:
Living tissue and bone and hair
A plotted coordinate on a map
Planning an attack on the earth
From the safety of the sea

Warships
Worshipped like
Sacred whores once were
Conferred with mystic power
Teaching men about flowering
Service;
Warships are women
Teeming with seamen
Flinging phalluses with fire
Scorching your mother’s pussy

I’m a warship,
Watch as I slip
Across the sea,
See me from beneath
I look like a pussy,
A slit
Backlit by the sky.
Warships are like razor blade lips
Cutting through swollen ocean tits
Sailing on a heading
Full steam ahead.
I’m a warship,
A metal goddess
Worshipped by seamen,
A whore stripped of my sacred.
My sacrament is fire,
A funeral pyre.
I am driven by the passions of men
Who hunt the globe
And return to their women
Waving their empty hands
(They left their kill behind),
Hands over hearts
Saluting a flag soaked in
Salt
Blood
And semen

solitude

"religion is for those afraid to go to hell.
spirituality is for those who've been there."
--unknown

scarcely can one recognize solitude
because when it arrives, at barren midnight,
with its caravan of mirrors and
echoing halls,
solitude reveals its hidden dimension,
its multitude.

count yourself alone, count your
self as one, but continue to count
as the numbers of solitude mount.
there exists a host of names,
a range of faces, pantheons,
ghosts and phantoms, these angels
and demons,
and those ancient whispers.

solitude is a multitude.

the business of hell is personal:
the personality of hell is business:
the company of one's self
and the workforce of the soul.
perhaps it is better
to bury oneself in work, in love
or in play, to consume all manner of things,
literature and entertainment,
or to be consumed by it.
some find it better to run,
running programs, courses,
running in circles or running
their endless, nonsensical mouth,
others run to church,
on their knees,
running.

if you're like me, godless and
averse to churches like the plague,
you welcome hell like healing herbs,
as a sacred sacrament to cure
the illness of our cultural solitude.
the best bread is baked
in the oven of hell:
the best way to confront solitude
is to befriend its shadow multitude.

Yahweh's fuck up

a coffee-inspired anti-christian rant

dense black bitterness of
immense caffeinated jitteryness
presses ground beans upon the
means of mental motion in
incremental compulsions to
compose constructs of
consciousness in synch with
the thinking mind behind
the twinkling of
a little star’s inkling for
making sense out of the senseless
rendering rational thought defenseless
leaving it susceptible to
irrational relevancy
immediately apparent under
the scrutiny of the inscrutable
intellect of derelict mindsets set
against the grain of a god whose
name is a vain attempt to
continue the corrupt bankrupt
judeo-christian fuck up
with which we are infected
through dysfunctional discord
disconnected from the reflected
shadow of truth showing proof that
a corpse on a cross is a decrepit
noose hanging around the necks of
nervous wrecks too afraid to
admit the reality of life without
a savior for the sake of
moral behavior that sows the seeds
of morbid prayers breeding
burial grounds for heathen children
for no other reason than to
cover up yahweh’s colossal fuck-up
concerning his inability to
masturbate into existence
that which he did not create

Parade of thoughts

this is inspired by Leonard Shlain's book "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess"

Procession of parading thought:
…..thoughts wrought from paradigm shifts
Within paragons of glyphs
Script gifts lifted to
The lips of prayers,
Rifting left from right
Hemispheric modes
When morality corrodes
Into component forms--
Models of composted constructs
Melting into molds of archaic folds
Flocking to the light of truth--
Truth
Blocking neural pathways of
Neurotic viral dogma devoted to
Dominant draconian denominations of
Faith enumerated by demagogic
Imageless gods
Typed in bolt face print
“Thou shalt not see my face”
But face the fact of factual
Fictional accounts of “something he said
So I wrote it down so you
Can read what I say he said
And lest you believe me
I’ll kill you dead--”
Ha! What an irony of the ages
As printing’s press upon pages
Harvests images of sages waging war
Upon image worship of
Goddess idols, full moon Earth woman
Whose warrior son wages word rearrangement
Spelling deranged tellings of creation
Accomplished by a bachelor deity
Who deceived the dusty nomadic
Tent dwellers
Into trading in their images
For the imaginary melange of
Manuscript messages issued forth from the
Mouth of the mother-killing
Monotheism maniac