SENRYU STEW # 4

Poetry Potluck

One Shot Wednesday

actress photographed

without makeup--

right cross to the jaw

miniskirts so short

these days--

midgets get their kicks

watchin' those old movies

drinkin' some beers...

Can Film Festival

MOST MEN IN AMERICA

Poetry Potluck

One Shot Wednesday

Outside my window

the raven calls

to follow him again

as in that kingdom far away

in a time when hoods

of muslin saved our sight

from the the diamond in his eye

that blazed like a thousand suns

And wasn't it you

who told me that love

is like a banana

you've got to peel

away the facade

And wasn't it you I saw

seething inside your skin

at the Metropolitan Opera

grunting like a pig

when the fat lady sang

hooting from the balcony

like a Portuguese pimp

a break with tradition to be sure

running amuck till they pinned you down

inside the ladies room

tempest in a pisspot

And isn't that

Miz Chauncey Lee Lamour

sitting right over there

sucking on her

mint julep

trading tales

of the good ol' days

when men were men

and women were horses

and GIDDYUP OL' PAINT

was the prelude to a kiss

her entourage

of the rouged and the wrinkled

hanging on her every word

well aware that

most men in America

in this year of the locust

in this decade of the plague

would rather be sniffing

through the long abandoned

ruins of an old haunt

than to give up the ghost

to your baby-faced whore

And now my old friend the raven

has moved to Baltimore

where he works as a squeegie man

on certain odd numbered holidays

and plays the guitar

with Eric Clapton

and sometimes Charlie Byrd

while all the sweet young things chant

GO CAT GO!

GO CAT GO!

But well you know

that the whole world's a stage

that you're going through

just to get to someplace else

and though they stomp and shout

for another encore

quoth the raven: AINT NO MORE !

It was a lively time

says Miz Chauncey Lee Lamour

well aware that most men in America

take their pants off one leg at a time

all grist for a story of some kind

and you know dahling

you really should write it

LAZY AFTERNOON

The century plants in the yard look like they're dead. They've surprised me before, though, kicking back to life after a couple of good rains. This whole desert city is going to look pretty dead before long too, as we hunker down into air conditioned isolation for the long summer siege. (We spend too much of our lives encased in concrete, and it makes us hard.)

The breeze is blowing in through the window, billowing the curtain into a kind of open parachute. The wind chimes ring off a couple of notes and fall silent again. It's a lazy afternoon.

It's nice to sit here and not think about things like Afghanistan, or the fist-pumping crowd outside the gates of the White House, celebrating someone's brutal death. I don't care which side you're on, repeating the bloody cycle of an-eye-for-an-eye down through the ages doesn't appear to be a strategy that is going to win your enemies over to your side--take the Israelis and the Palestinians for an ongoing example.

I've often wondered what if would be like to NEVER read the newspaper or hear the radio and TV news. You know, life goes on--the day to day part of it that we see first hand--pretty much the same as always. We talk to our friends, wash the car, sit on the toilet (or sit on our friends and talk to the toilet). The rest of it is just mind games. The news is designed to provide us with a daily dose of anxiety--a modern day Scheherazade that keeps us on the edges of our seats, waiting for the next episode.

Now there's this 2012 thing--what delightful suspense! December 21st, 2012 is the date the Mayan calendar apparently predicts that the world will go POOF. Many will hold their breath at the stroke of midnight--just like we did with Y2K. Some will undoubtedly sell all their possessions (what will they need the money for?) and head for the mountain tops, awaiting the rapture. The day will go by, just like every other day, and those folks will head back down--red faced--with just bare floors to sleep on. Meanwhile, those "primitive" tribes in New Guinea ain't gonna miss a beat, cuz they're oblivious to it all anyway.

So by now you may be wondering what's the point of these ramblings--where's he taking me and am I going to like it? Well, what's the real point to life? Where's it taking us and are we gonna like it?

We want desperately to like it--those of us who've decided to "keep the faith" and hang in there for the duration of this go-round. We give it the benefit of the doubt--maybe more than it deserves--because we're caught up in it. Fascinated. Spellbound. Addicted. We want to stay for the play. The journey out--into manifestation--and the journey back to Source. So we keep coming back. I think our spirits know that it's not all going to be a bed of roses when we sign on, before the amnesia sets in, (and in that sense we may all be astonishingly brave) but it's those selected moments of what Maslow called peak experience, I think, that give us the notion that it all might be worth it.

And maybe that's the best we can expect. Isolated moments of frisson when we feel like we could grab Arnold Schwarzenegger by his fat neck and swing him around like he's Mister Rogers; moments when we've got a room at the top of the world and we ain't comin' down; moments that by all rights should last forever--though we know they won't.

But they last just long enough to keep us coming back.

And maybe even moments like this will do. Moments when the wind is just husky enough to tickle the chimes...and I ain't too concerned about nuthin'.

T

SENRYU STEW # 3

Poetry Potluck

One Shot Wednesday

penguins

see the world

as black and white

expanded sports coverage

on the 10 o'clock news...

bingo highlights

Death

has been outlawed in France--

won't give up his burka

BLUE MONTANA

Poetry Potluck
One Shot Wednesday

Marie sits in a bar called Blue Montana and plays a song on the jukebox titled "Tomorrow Is Just Another Ache In My Heart." Cowboys amble over like the lazy August wind and ask her to dance. She looks each of them hard in the eye--but only for a moment until she is sure--then politely declines.

Lately, when they hit on her, she takes a new tack. "I'M NOT OF THIS WORLD," she says, with no further explanation. Most of them will stand there for a moment, as if trying to grasp the significance of such a statement, then totter away.

Jimmy, the owner, stands watch over her and tells tales of bygone days up north, where the sky follows along like a gun riding on your hip. Above the bar sits a picture of a horse. A roan mare named Sunshine. Jimmy's one true love. She wandered off one big sky morning, and though he searched for days, it was like some giant spaceship had come along and spirited her away. In his dreams he still sees her, running free beside a rippling stream, and he wonders if it's just possible...

But it's been years now.

Jimmy doesn't have a lot to do with women anymore. Says they're as fickle as that mare, maybe more so...'cept for Marie, of course. Talk gets around. The cowboys think she's a little tetched, so they mostly leave her alone now. Which is fine with Jimmy. He's the only one who knows her real story. Eastern city gal who came out west and fell for a drifter who let her down hard. Now she sits in Blue Montana , playing the sad songs and bending his sympathetic ear.

They are together...and they are alone. As those who grieve are alone together.

But she likes watching Jimmy move, and sometimes a primitive kind of feeling comes over her and she gets the urge to nuzzle...but why does she think of it that way? That word.

And though she will not yet fess up to it, Jimmy feels that she is slowly becoming of THIS world. His world. And he will tame her--slowly building her trust until she is eating out of his palm. Someday, she will shed the blanket of her pain and come out whole again.

And he will be there.

But now, the sun is dropping and she is headed home. She stops in the doorway--her chestnut mane suffused with the soft fire of twilight, and says, "Tomorrow...is just another ache in my heart."

photo by Timoteo

SENRYU STEW # 2

Poetry Potluck

One Shot Wednesday

cat sleeping

on the TV remote--

searched for it all day

air traffic controller

asleep at the switch...

in his dream he's flying

the royal wedding

is such a bore

I'll enjoy the royal divorce much more

NEVER

Poetry Potluck

One Shot Wednesday

I never thought it would come to this...

After happy days and high school plays

Willie Mays and back seat lays

Shadrack Horshak Abednego

and Zeke The Talking Raccoon

after the wheels in my head that wouldn't stop spinning

like a record going round

they wouldn't stop spinning

after getting starstruck

after getting struck by stardom

after I stepped up to the plate

after I stepped up to the mike

after the groupies that hung around

black white and brown

who thought I was something

that I was but wasn't

after all the times I was alone

when I thought that I wasn't

after the receptionist turned pale

and told me I looked like her deceased husband

after I rolled over

played dead

and fetched his bedroom slippers

and tried to fill them

after taking the boss's wife to Mexico on a lark

after gassing up at Texaco and peeing in the park

after the drunks and the skunks and the punks

after the first of the Mohicans

and last of the Puerto Ricans

after Woodstock and Plymouth Rock

after the monkeys and the junkies and the flunkies

after the freaks and the Greeks and the geeks

after golden showers and happy hours

I never thought it would come to this...

After my guru told me that life

is like trying to piss on your shadow

while doing the Macarena

(an Indian guru if you believed all the buzz

though an Indiana guru in fact he was)

after all the rejection in my search for perfection

finding Cinderella's glass slipper

and the hobnail boot she planted up my butt

After the good Samaritan veterinarian in Mexico City

yanked her Levis down to her ankles

and shot his wad in a shotgun blast that peppered us both

as we lay there in a stupor

AND THAT'S WHY I'LL NEVER DRINK TEQUILA AGAIN !!!

After casually tossing the condom that had served its purpose

out the hotel room window in Managua

hearing it splat onto the sidewalk

and someone shouting: AVE MARIA !

I never thought it would come to this...

After all the false starts and missed connections

and what ifs and what the fugs

after to give as good as you git

is to no longer give a shit

after all the days and nights

in the prison of my own desire

all the bittersweet days I remember

in an updated and romanticized version of life

the images colliding like sub-atomic particles

as a thousand million bursting stars

explode in a never ending climax

expanding ever farther into the reaches of space

I never thought it would come to this...

Face to face

at this moment

in this place...

and neither did you

TIMOTEO'S SENRYU STEW (eat slowly...and savor)

One Shot Wednesday

hacking up a hairball

onto the carpet--

cat licks himself again

beauty contestant stumbles

regains composure--

expletive deleted

coyotes howl

pampered pooches chime in...

call of the wild

Poetry Potluck

cactus needles

in my butt--

splinter group

taco stand

tasty burritos ...

off to find some Beano

she gives enemas

for a living--

bottoms up