The man who cried False Alarm

Every morning this week

the neighbors car alarm has gone off-

beeping, blinking, blaring, whining, wailing-

in the darkest neighborhood of morn.

Parked across the street

it goes on and off for two full cycles,

at least,

someone is trying to snooze.

Already awake at that time,

I am still disturbed by the ruckus,

my tail feathers are ruffled,

and the worm has been scared off.

It could have been an accident-

if it wasn’t a recurrence.

And it could have been a real robbery,

since much sleep has been stolen

in our neighborhood.

Or perhaps it's petty theft-

left bereft of quiescent courtesy...

Likely, a case of false alarm was set

to scare the wolves away, 

(the wrong) buttons have been pushed-

not all alarms work the same. 


Image credit By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons. The second jungle book., 1895.

Pequeño Sueño

Like waking...
When the material world
flashes its things, solid as snapshots;
clock, window, truck, cat, plumbing,
stretch toes, sigh deeply, lay, sheets,
sweat, stir. It comes. Solid. Heavy and Material.
You've fallen awake. In the thick of It.
Exit bed, feet float, glide along, smooth tile
and enter your dream…world.
The motions-you move through-
seeking any signs of a new day.
Yes, this is all too familiar.
Here you are again.
And then you realize, rationalize;
a dream is to pretend. I pretend
Practicing the motions
with a lingering notion
nothing you do is new.
All that you think and say
was there before you.
This is no nightmare, but awakening
is scary. It is your secret
when you weep-while you smile.
Playing your part, stage set,
cast into type, lost into words
you've memorized
but have no idea
how they got there
and seem suddenly, today

something new,
or just acted out

by the other 

dreaming You...

Composed 12/3/15
Image of painting by József Borsos, The Artists Dream (The Little Painter), 1851 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Mid-April 2016

I hear but cannot see
                            coming from behind me
I go on reading
                           like this
Anyway,
                           I hear
                           (in a deep voice)
"Cuz 'nigger' is a weird word-'
                            "Yeah-yeah-yeah, I mean..." squeaks
                              another
And I look up to see
                            a preppy young black teen
accompanied by two of his friends
                           (a fast-talking Filipino
                           and a shy brunette, buried in her phone.)

The black youth is pushing a Diamondback,
                            (not the snake, the bicycle)
wears square-rimmed glasses, his hair is tightly trimmed.

Seagulls bitch and moan in the back-ground tarmac
bickering over scraps
                            (maybe sushi)
in the adjacent high school parking lot atop the hill
                             over-looking the ocean
(a
ffluent
beach town.)
He looks over
                              to the sea,
                              sighs and says,
"To me, it just means 'slave'"
They have moved on.




Image credit USMC [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ahora, Flora

Beat-up pick-up
sideboard, plywood
PVC poles hold hoes
and Co. land-scrapers
dirt brown men
burlap bags bulge bulk
fronds flap, waving bye
bougainvillea leaves
the wind in its wake
vined venomous snakes
coil and toil
pushing pedals,
nipped at the bud
the garden view
flowers wild
migrant faces
in full bloom.



Image By Unknown or not provided, taken on California Hwy. c. 1935 (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

In essence

Pinch and tart, sweetly smell in-
Culling season has begun!

Spring is loaded,
its arsenal of flower power
and the annual dramatic
pallette astounds
against the brown subdues earth,
set under stoic grey skies.

The lions purr thunder
the hunters in Heaven
have scared the lamb
to May.

Humans gather
en masse
genocide, green stalks
with showy tops
limp headed bodies lain
and strewn in pot-pourri

Incensed
with Pride!
our Kill!

Boquet'd
mantled and displayed,
propped and posed, pretty
for (the) sake of a seasonal
mild medicinal redolence bliss...snip.




Image by János Thorma [Public domain], Girl picking flowers in a red coat c. 1930, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nerve-us

Nobody has the nerve

to go against all odds

even when winning
If
certain

is only the beginning

and defeat is destined
postdated

(sometime too soon)

in the end-

before it all starts

to get really good,

would you try
to be
Brave?

Image of painting by Alfred Stevens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 
Details & History: The Psyché (My Studio)
Trained in Brussels, Stevens finished his studies in Paris and made his career there. During the Second Empire (1852–70), he pioneered and perfected the domestic interior scene, which the Impressionists then adopted. He was inspired by Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch and often painted on wood panel. This painting, which once belonged to the poet Robert de Montesquiou, is one of several by Stevens of his studio with a model and sometimes the artist; its title refers to the mirror at the left. A full-length mirror with chassis was invented in the late eighteenth century and took its name, psyché, from the legend of Cupid and ­Psyche, a story that thematizes looking. Yet this is not an actual psyché but an easel with a mirror where the canvas would normally be, an analogue to a psyché suggesting that art is a reflection of life. A cloth partially covers the mirror, hiding the reflections of the studio. Focus instead is on the model, who may have interrupted her posing session to peer around the edge of the mirror, which reflects her head and hand. The artist hints at his own presence with the cigarette butt, ash, and match in the lower right corner. Nearby struts a small parrot, seemingly a reference to art’s mimetic function. The backs of canvases and portfolios of prints or drawings represent some of Stevens’s working materials. On a chair are Japanese prints, reminders of his love of objects and collecting; with his friends the Goncourt Brothers, Bracquemond, and Whistler, he was one of the earliest collectors of Japanese art in Paris. Among the small paintings on the wall is a sketch for his Salon picture What They Call Vagrancy (1854; Musée d’Orsay), a picture of social protest.

Cross-polination

untouched by light-yet-
feels its warmth and reaches out-
made bigger by desire-
hard wood, hard-ly virgin
forests for the feral trees-
wild in her-ness, promiscuous
phallacy, the protection
of innocence, guarded in a sense-
an essence burgeoning out-
no reason to celibate...




Image by By Jon Sullivan (Public-domain-image.com) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.