Tropical Heat

 

Tropical Rain 40 x 50 cm acrylic/oil pastel on paper

ILIAD

Weirdness draped over the family tree.

All the way down to the roots is my guess.

The Confederate general sipping tea

in his frilly parlor, handing his sword through

the window to the Union commander waiting

for it on the front porch. I wouldn’t be surprised

if he was whistling Dixie. Buffing his nails on gray wool.

The second cousin who thought her poodle

could understand 342 English words. Paternal

grandmother who kept a ragamuffin pooch

bound and gagged beneath her escritoire. For like twelve years.

Her son who wept every time he heard a 1915 recording

of Caruso singing an aria from La Boheme. Frank O’ Hara

once wrote that pissing in the wind on a New York City fire

escape was the male equivalent of a good cry. But Frank

would never have taught me, as dad did, how to disable

a man with a solar plexus sucker punch so devastating

if it fails to destroy your opponent you had better run.

He cultivated his own garden, got high on part of its yield,

choking back the burning weed, reading “The Day Of The Jackal,”

dipping into the “Iliad,” while In the middle of his garage floor a heap

of birds poached from some farmer’s land in the bitter hour just after dawn.

She came with Flowers in her Arms

 

She came with Flowers in her Arms 46,5 x 62 cm mixed media on paper

HAVE YOU HEARD THE ONE ABOUT

There are three interestingly feral  

angels sauntering up a suburban street,

flapping their Caravaggio pigeon wings,

clawing the air with dirty fingernails, and the

first one says, “Honey, get your big fat booty    

outta my face,” and the second one says, “Knock knock….”

and a nervous housewife, staring

out her kitchen window at the third angel

a hunk worthy of daytime TV she thinks

oh yum, calls the SWAT team anyway.

Three angels screaming BITCH! all the

way to the holding tank.

Basta, says the judge, you’re going down.

In a year, if they survive incarceration,

one of them will be selling mobile phones 

out the back of his vintage Toyota.

The other two, like you and me, saying nothing

or blathering incoherently, are barely managing

the daily shit storm. Are comparing tattoos in a motel room

for fun and profit. Nothing is against their religion anymore.

Even the people we think of as good, or at least ethical,

rare and tender, their innocence buckling

under the weight of soul-altering cocktails,

stare in wonder at what their words have wrought.