BREAKFAST TIME IN AMERICA

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads--dVerse Poets Pub

Corn flakes get so soggy
so fast
not like grape nuts
which will hold up for a while.
So be quick with your flakes
and let your nuts soak a while.

Do you miss any of the houses
you used to live in?
Or any of the mouses
that stayed there with you?
Or did you just methodically murder them?

Order. 
Chaos. 
You want fries with that?

The fakers and the fakirs come and go
charming your snake for a while
until someone yells:
Put that thing down!

What will be your saving grace
a la Steve Miller in a psychedelic haze,
and if you only save face
by saying grace
will that be enough for you?

Life is a game
pick a struggle
take a side
or just sit in the stands
drink beer
and shout obscenities.

To work on the work
is all there is left.
And all that matters.

LAST LESSONS OF THE AFTERNOON

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Didn't send anything 
to your journal this time
didn't send anything to
your contest 
(after winning it last year)
give someone else a chance
I said
but the truth is it's just too much
goddamn trouble 
for little reward

Like a lot of things

Like life
mostly

But you're expecting
a poem 
of course you are
that's why you're here...

So let's not disappoint:

Last lessons of the afternoon
your last drive
I said, this misery must end

The rolling English road
bagpipe music
anthem for doomed youth

Buffalo dusk
full moon
what are years?

Look within
the lost man
not waving 
still drowning

I remember the woman
 at the Washington Zoo
wearing flames and dangling wire 
a kiss in space
a taste
tangerine
Xmas trees
the end of love
going
going
gone

All day it rained 

Fuck you 

COMING BACK FOR MORE

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

1.

Her exterior has been religiously anointed

her interior is exquisitely appointed

but I've come to the conclusion
upon eons of self-delusion

that the solitary life works best
for the constitution

as all about there's prostitution
in one guise or another

so be my sistah
and I'll be your bruther

for us there will no other
till my hour is up

and you're off to your next call
counting your haul as you slink out the door


2.

Decades whiz by
in the flash of an eye
and when I say I took her support stockings off
and wore them over my head
and then went out and robbed the liquor store
I think U know what I mean--
it's the universal language of love
ooby dooby dooby doo
 just me and you

Now I just want to slip
into another world
as this one grows chillier
by the moment
any world that I'm welcome to
(I grope for the key beneath the mat
at the foot of the door)

And she said: what is it 
you love about life?  
And I replied : the way it kicks our asses
and still we keep coming back for more

3.

Now I sit like the Fool On The Hill
on his lofty perch
a  man on a stationary bike
could attain a similar altitude
in far less time and trouble
but I preferred the scenic route

And I can see clearly now
all the dead-end roads
I've traveled down
they stretch in all directions
snaking to the horizon...
leading not to Rome
but to Samarra

UNNOTICED

• Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

They slip by

day 
by 
day 
by 
day

that is life's little trick
as you're not supposed to notice
till one day you glance in the mirror
and reel back in HORROR
then you hear somebody laughing
you can't see them
but that is LIFE
getting such a kick out of
pulling that shit
on some hapless sonofabitch
once again

ULTIMATELY

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

When I start to thinking about it
I say to myself what was wrong
With that one?
And what was wrong
With that one?
And so on down the line
Covering all the ones I
Ultimately
Found something wrong with
And then I think about
What was good
And there was always something good
And often there was a lot that was good but
Ultimately
There had to be something
that was bad
That trumped all the good, otherwise
DUH
I'd still be with that one
But often I don't recall just what it was...

And then I start to wonder if any of those who
Ultimately
Found more that was bad about me than good
Ever run through the same checklist
In their heads
Asking what was wrong with him?
Ya know
Cuz there WAS a lot of good
(At least for a while)) but
Ultimately
There had to be
Enough bad to trump all the good

But

Why do I get the feeling that THEY
Sit there shaking their heads saying,
OH SHIT--how could I forget about THAT???

And 

Gee, I wonder whatever happened
to that A-HOLE anyway!

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

MASTER OF MY FATE

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads/Wednesday Word Challenge

The lonesome moon roams the streets
searching for mad love
in all its myriad forms
it's image reflected in the gutter splash
that peppers my trousers
as a fancy horse-drawn carriage blows by.

A calypso drumbeat seeps
from some nearby edifice.
The crickets sing along.

I duck behind a shop
to drain the snake.

Memories of sinning in the alley
thrust
bang
bite
come flooding back.

I'm so uncouth
I laugh
slurring my words
it's only life
I'll just go back again
and take it on the chin.

Drifting along
weaving this way and that
muttering curses
into the dying night.

I am the master of my fate
but where are my subjects?

The moon climbs rapidly
in its umbral sky.

A poem swirls round
in my head
edgy and cryptic
teetering right on the brink
of beginning to stink.

It's about walking  up to
the precipice
 looking down
deciding to back away
and fight another day.

Yes
I believe in mad love
in all its myriad forms
one's only leverage
in a broken world.

A cock crows.

A street sign says
69th Avenue
and I know I'm getting close
though can't remember which
of these lawns might be yours.

This one looks fine
for a little nap
and a snooze
I know you will  find me
and make me your famous souffle.

Ahhhh...

Let the dogs come by
with their pee "drive by"
just as long as I 
can be here
on the street
where  YOOOOO LIIIIIVVVVVE

Burp.



Written for Kerry's Wednesday Word Challenge at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.I had the honor of providing a list of 20 words to be used in a poem. I managed to utilize all twenty of them! Please follow the link above to get in on the fun.

KISS FROM THE CLOUDS

With Real Toads--d'Verse Poets Pub

She was a woman from Jakarta
the mistress of a Cardinal
and she painted lonely landscapes
on her journey to the sea

A child of the east
a woman of the west
she loves only what is forbidden
standing naked in the courtyard of a country church
where you have followed her from the tourist bus
dark angel beseeching heaven
for a sign from her departed lover

And you know that you can touch her
but she has already told you
that sex is meaningless unless
it is tied to some romantic illusion

And she has told you that her lover
had said that when he is dead
he will send her a kiss from the clouds
and you turn your face skyward

And you know that you can possess her
but she has already told you
that life is meaningless unless
it is tied to some romantic illusion

And she has told you that joy and sorrow are both impostors
and that joy is born from exultation in the moment
and sorrow in a morn when the moment has passed

And you know that you can kill her
but she has already told you
that death is meaningless unless
it is tied to some romantic illusion

And the rain comes like music divinely orchestrated
and your tears come like the muse
unexpected but greatly appreciated
and the colors of the rainbow explode inside your head
as she transmogrifies into a vision of the Madonna

And transcends into heaven

And you wonder who will pick the shrapnel from your eyes
as the rain sends you a kiss from the clouds

She was a woman from Jakarta
the mistress of a Cardinal
and she painted lonely landscapes
on her journey to the sea 



Many thanks to Sherry at Poets United for selecting "Kiss From The Clouds" as Poem Of The Week.

SAY THE WORDS

For One Shot Wednesday

All life is suffering...

the Buddhists say.

Now THERE'S a rosy forecast for ya.

Imagine your TV weatherman saying:

Partly cloudy tonight with a 10% chance of showers--

and the extended outlook:

MISERY THROUGHOUT ETERNITY!

All life is suffering...

And you say to yourself well surely that can't be--

and you try to think back to a time when you were truly happy,

lips fastened to your mother's breast,

until one day, quite by chance, you discover that dad

has been granted the same privileges.

And that is your first taste...

of betrayal.

Time passes...

And it's like a slap in the face the first time you realize

you're not the be all and end all of anybody's universe--

and that girl, that wonderful girl you think about every waking moment

of your day--wondering whether she's thinking of you--

while all the time she's ecstatic because she's planning

a two week trip to Mexico with some of her friends,

that she intends to tell you about the day before she leaves...

and you KNOW that someday she will give you an emotional kick

in the cojones--and you KNOW that it's coming,

and still you stand there with that stupid grin on your face.

All life is suffering...

And you find yourself a woman--a beautiful woman-

and she takes you to her bed and says:

Touch me here,

and ooh, touch me here,

and oh baby, touch me HERE!

And you are beaming in the afterglow

and you say, OH, please SHOW me who you are...

and she says: Don't touch me...THERE.

Time passes...

You trust no one, you believe in nothing,

and life becomes a nasty cycle of dump or be dumped--

and you begin to wonder just when it was that you became numb--

and still you have the unmitigated BALLS

to hope for a happy ending!

All life is suffering...

And soon you've forgotten why you get up in the morning--

you do it by rote, as if you'd be letting the world down if you weren't one

of the masses of asses sitting at the stoplight

trying to find something worthwhile on the radio--

a favorite song---anything to medicate the pain...

Medicate, masturbate, hibernate...

And you get up in the morning and go into work day after day

like a good dog, where the boss treats you like another piece of the furniture

and he almost sits on you and crushes you with his fat ass.

All life is suffering...

And you're convinced that the best thing to be in life

is a masochist--but that doesn't work either because

masochists must surely suffer when they're not in pain.

And if all life is suffering then the question is:

How then must we live?

How then must we live?

And until we find the answer,

this thing that we do--

this spilling of one's guts onto the page,

this POETRY,

becomes your only salvation...

and mine.

For I can take the pain--

work it, shape it, and transform it into a gift

that you will willingly accept

because you know that it's been there all along

like the refrain from a song

that you've heard a thousand times before

but somehow

it's different now...

and all I need to do is say the words.

TIMOTEO SEZ...

Stay in the moment. The past will make you sad and regretful, and there's nothing you can do about it. Strive to live with integrity from this day forward, and the universe will yet reward you.