Poem #999 (for Doug)

blood quenches the thirst of the parched earth
as the priest anoints each patron with ashes on his forehead
the symbols of wealth and authority hijacked
by political hacks and activists with views so diverse
as mischievous as imps and as sultry as nymphs
they wear only round wire rimmed bifocal glasses
and dress in bow ties and cardigans.

thumbs flutter like wings of humming birds
listening to the voices of leading men
all the omniscient granite of infatuated nobility
provide the aligned zodiac animaniacs
and members of the royal society
with overstated axel comma areas
but still, there exists the omnipresent foreboding
as a village voice cries in the wilderness

this is where old school fuses with new school
where mourners let out a howl as they sit on a stoop,
where everyone who casts a shadow in the crapshoot
of half-truth reality and filled with bluff spontaneity
where they rant and rave about the free-form performance
that has turned the oral tradition into a pseudo intellectual
mythology compressed into byte-sized chunks
with lights flashing and a screech of a sirens
twinkling like stars in the dark night sky,
releases onions reseed to shift the abyss
as they try to evade petty arrest and the icy waste fanfare
stored in an outside hard drive

bad news, sad news travels fast
and Sandra weeps, a suffering artist, sobbing,
dethroned and deflowered by a troop of rabid baboons
but not complaining about the dirty windows
as the pomegranate elephant raises its orange trunk
while the idea of reality incubates, kicks around and rolls
from the crown of creation
there are no clinical dissertations or colloquial clichés
once you get beyond the big bang
there is only writer’s block.