The Bill Cosby Rape Accusations Have Me Very, Very Afflicted...Right!

1. She was raped
at knife point.

No question.

She reported it
immediately
but justice was
decades away.

I believed her
and lived with her
and her hyper-vigilance
and her PTSD
and her inability
to emotionally connect
with me.

2. Did I ever tell you
that I was accused
of rape as well?

She was
an angry married sow
who wantonly pursued me
right after my wife left
and she boiled
when I didn't beg her
to leave her husband
after we fucked,
stupid and sweaty
in a hazy, August afternoon.

She couldn't bear
to be discarded
as easily as I did
(which is why you
don't fuck
newly divorced people)
so she told her
hillbilly caveman husband
I raped her.
He threatened to kill me.

Three months
after we fucked,
then came the
vengeance
wrapped in a false accusation.

3. Lessons Learned:

Time is of the essence:
if you're raped,
report it immediately.

If you're falsely accused,
defend yourself immediately.

Don't give any one
any time
to make up
their own versions
of what happened.

Holy Ritual

If you light a candle
as part of the ritual,
without thinking,
without devotion,

then it is just that:
a ritual,
an empty ritual.

If you light a candle
and you feel the connection
to the eternal flame,
to that which commanded
let there be light,
it is also
a ritual,
but,
a holy ritual.

Following

If I strike out
on my own
and get lost
I am alone.

If I follow you
and you get lost
then we are both
lost.

I love you
and I trust you,
so I say
let's go

and try not
to get lost,

but if we do,
at least
we won't be
alone.

Not Optional

From the beginning
I had no doubt:

we are to love
and take care of
each other.

Liking them,
however
is optional.

The Unseen Three Haiku

They cannot be seen
but each one, Air, God, Music,
make this life real.

November 12 and January 6

Every November 12
I remember,
thankful that they found
each other
and eventually made me.

If he didn't die
they would have hit
54 years on
November 12.

This coming January 6th
my Pop would have been
80.

Between these dates
came Christmas
the best time of the year,
a time my mom said
my father was relaxed,
different,
maybe happy.

They seemed happiest
at Christmastime.

It was always
the best time of the year,
many years
it was the only good
string of days
I knew.

So, every year
I start playing
Christmas music
November 12
and I end 
January 6,

thankful
for the precious gift
of memory,
which becomes more
fragile with each
holiday.

Muse Trouble

Poised to write
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
come out , come out
wherever you are
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
reluctantly,
I admit defeat.

Weather Report

The national weather map
with its colored waves
purple, blue red
produce
in an inverse bell curve
of temperatures
that will dip from
the mid 70s
down to the teens.

In just one day.

Our nation
will be one
prematurely shivering,
freezing monolith.

Except California
and Florida,

where it remains
sunny and perfect.

So,
how's that news?

Blind Faith

Who suffers more
from blind faith,

the one who believes
in what he cannot see

or the one who only believes
in what he can see?

The Itch

There is an itch
in the middle of my back
just out of reach
and i scrape myself
like a pathetic grizzly bear,
against trees,
stucco walls.

Try as they might
no one can get right at it.
Either it's the wrong pressure
Or the wrong location.

It's maddening
this unreachable nagging
that cannot be answered.

I used to fear it would
drive me insane,
until I realized
it was the thing
driving me.

Happiness

Happiness
is a
fleeting thing.

Only fools
try to
contain it
as it
dries up
and dissolves
upon touch.

All we
can do
is make
our hearts
and homes
ready to
welcome her
and maybe
convince her
to stay
just a
few minutes
more.

Keep This Moment

Keep this moment

as a memory

but not a museum piece.

Make this moment always shine

like a diamond 

under a spotlight, 

make it sing like

a bird before dawn.

Let it be alive,

a rose in perfect bloom,

thick and swollen

with red passion.

Let your fingers

slide over and pluck

this stringed harp

and feel the reverberation

deep in your soul,

echoing a million times

or more.

Keep this moment

and really study the light

caught in her hair,

her lips,

moist and inviting.

Keep this moment

because somedays

the sun will be hidden

and the birds will be asleep

and you'll need

these memories

to get you through.

Keep this moment,

yeah, 

I know you can't,

but that doesn't mean

you shouldn't try.

Dirty Lenny

“Heroes aren't born,
they’re cornered,”
said the Foxx.

I wasn't around
to see his battle,
I only read about it.

His modest proposition
to say the things
he thought comical,
the things
everyone thought
but were too timid to speak,
brought him to light.

Some intone his name
as one would a martyr
for the hipness cred,
forgetting his own definition
that a comic needs
“to make an
audience laugh
at least once
every 20 seconds
for a period
of not less
than one hour.”

Some try to see him
independent of his milieu.

You can’t
because he couldn't exist
without the repression of the fifties,
with its paranoid boundaries,
and spooky religious superstition.

The nerve he let tumble out
fueled by hypocrisy and speed
was a crazy quilt of jazz argot,
metaphysical poetry and
Yiddish schtick
at a seedy San Fernando club.

They called him
Dirty Lenny,
and he was my favorite kind of hero,
Jewish, with a correct sense
of moral righteousness
not unlike
Jesus, except
Jesus wasn't
a junkie.

Lenny Bruce
my hero in life,
done in by
the heroin life.

Blankets

It's easier to surrender
the warm summer nights
to the first chill
of Autumn
knowing I will be
warm,
under blankets
of stars
and promises
with you.

I Believe in Heaven

The Ebola nurse
and her spaniel
after between apart
for three weeks

or the soldier father
back from Afghanistan
seeing his
toddler daughter
talking for the first time

both elicit
the same tears.

The natural response
of such reunification
is primal:

we existed
before we were born
in the infinite,
together with God,
incorporeal.

Bringing us down
to this blue planet
makes us
human and alive
and finite.

I believe in heaven
because I believe
in the power of
reunification:

everyone finally
together again,
awash in a mist
of embraces, laughter
and tears
of thankfulness.

The Heroin Game

Sure, it's a game.

You put down your nickel,
and you take your chances,

but make no mistake,
the game is rigged.

It lets you win
at first,
and you ride the high.

It's unlike
anything
you've ever known.

It's like your first pastrami,
the best blow job
and infinite Christmas presents
all rolled into one.

You coast for a while
and it begins sneaking up on you
that you're
winning less
and paying
more and more
for an ever diminishing
payoff.

Yes,
you win at first,
but remember
everyone
who plays
either
cleans up or dies.

So,
don't play.

Not even once.

The Stench

I ran up to my front door
stuttering my key into the lock
and I could feel that presence,
a stiff, steaming stench
breathing at my back.

I turned on every light,
reflexes at the ready,
and I inspected the room
(there are only so many places
a psychopath can hide in a studio
apartment).

I snuck up
on the shower curtain,
and whipping it
to one side,
I found nothing
and then proceeded
to give myself a one-handed scrub,
with my kitchen knife
poised in the other.

Finally,
I lay myself down
in the darkness,
safe in the knowledge
of the gun in the drawer,
the knife under my pillow
and the door
chained and tripled-locked,
and I drifted
into slow, deep-breathed
slumber.

The last thing I remember
before feeling
the piercing of my chest
was the stench,
laughing and derisive:

“I knew you’d
eventually
fall asleep.”

[Written for Fireblossom Friday at  http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2014/10/fireblossom-friday.html - write something scary...boo!]

What I Kept From My Father (a Dia de los Muertos tribute)

I kept his humility
but not his shyness.

I kept his loyalty
but not his tribalism.

I kept his laughter
but not his derision.

I kept his discipline
but not his strictness.

I kept his skepticism
but not his cynicism.

I kept his patriotism
but not his blind allegiance.

I kept his faithfulness
but not his routine.

I kept his integrity
but not his inflexibility.

I kept his hairline
but not his irregularity.

I kept his high cholesterol
but not his naivete.

I keep him inside me
but never hide him.

Making Peace with War

There is always war
waging somewhere.
This is the nature
of this pageant
that begins
bathed in blood
and ends
in the snuffing out
of the breath.

Even Jesus,
the Prince of Peace,
was at war
with those who did not
honor God.

Trying to eradicate
this malevolent pulse
will keep the foolish
and the naive
running in circles,

so I try
making peace
with war:

Yes, I see you,
but I refuse
to fight back,

or cause your demise,

and I will not
surrender
to your
destructive ideology.

Live and let live,
you can't kill me
for this soul
has no beginning
and no end.


[Posted for my friends at dversepoets.com - come on in and lose your war.]

Love Note to the Muse

Turn me on baby

wrap me up
in your electric
fuzz guitar solo

send the firecracker
giggle of spicy coconut
chicken to my tongue

give my body
a gazelle’s grace
as I jete
off the cliff

and then spread
my wings and land
just south of
the fragrant field
of sunshine roses.

Let the Beatles music
play
and let this guitar
be the extension
of my arms

soften this heart
to catch a glimpse
of God
in every shape and hue
and tone

and help nurse
my hopes in this borough
of disappointment and filth.

It’s an ugly world
but you always give me
x-ray specs

to penetrate
and see all those things
otherwise hidden and divine

and give me
a pencil and paper
always within reach
to prove that
it’s more than
a dream

turn me on baby
you know what I need.