ricocheting history over cobblestone streets,

  carry voices of szymborska, milosz,

  vodka-laced phrases of herbert, komeda here,

  swelling through billowing gray fog of november

  yet mystery is here too, real as time is

  as each of us moves through it,

  through space with superstition, wonder, we

  humans do, holding fast to life

  they can be seen as birds

  soaring with music, as poetry sometimes does

  when carving bllerinas’ bodies into shapes

  they dance in gaps, while others flying through

  space jack-knife, double-pump into the galaxy,

  their torsos break-dancing up in the air before

  tomahawking basketball dunks to riotous cheers

  we are here, erupting through brief moments

  on this planet of rock & water, spinning

  indecipherable, the road ahead full, packed

  tight with illusions, they surprise us jumping out

  from hidden, secret places, love can reveal

  itself as a paradox here, in each of us,

  a flower growing in a war-ravaged space

  where hatred abounds, despite tendernesses

  LYRIC STILL LIFE

  once again for Margaret

  love, hand me flower petals of your laughter

  shimmering as a school of silver fish

  swimming fast just beneath the clear surface

  in an ice-cold lake, somewhere deep in memory,

  during the thaw of springtime, early morning

  rinse, where no waves moved across the surface

  but the silent air hung inside a misting veil

  full of fragile dewdrops, just before the sun rises

  splendid over the rims of mountain tops

  fencing in the lake, trees sprouting in the east,

  your face appeared wondrous as a sunrise

  in the image of a photo above your name

  NEW POEMS

  2019–2020

  DUENDE

  for Garcia Lorca and Miles Davis

  it’s in the bottomless power, magic of duende

  climbing stealthily from earth, wrapped inside

  secrets, mystery infused in black magic

  that enters bodies in the form of music, art,

  poetry imbuing language with sovereignty,

  in blood spooling back through violent centuries,

  voices echoing ancient Africa, rise, thread

  from skins of blessed, sacred rituals, people

  emerge from drums as heartbeats in time

  where memory is revived here now through metaphor

  when olden voices find their way vibrating into song,

  rhythms stitch forgotten sounds into language

  beat out of them by whips on slave ships,

  bring back wonder of feet pounding, dance

  the holy ghost lost in bloody homelands,

  now souls underneath, rise up through bodies,

  spool back with talismans, hypnotic, pull ancient

  voodoo up in buckets filled with holy water,

  evoke memories drinking from whodunit secrets

  awakened in poetry of Garcia Lorca,

  Andalusian dues heard in Miles Davis’ clues

  vibrating anew in Sketches of Spain, andante blues

  SEARCHING

  eye am searching for a quick way to redeem myself,

  searching through bold forms of art—paintings,

  the shapes of Melvin Edwards’ sculpture, the poetry

  that fired the imaginations of Pablo Neruda, Aimé Césaire,

  César Vallejo, Jean Joseph Rabearivello, the sacred prayers

  witch doctors, shamans, and voodoo priests chant,

  who absorbed the magical holy mantras wise men

  raise up to their Gods when evoking power of ancestors,

  who leap up on licking tips of flames as dancing figures,

  during twilight hours, their eyes red from traveling

  the great journey from the long lost past carrying words

  that need translators here, which is the holy task of poets,

  painters, dancers and musicians who speak history

  through riddles, metaphors locked in rhythms and time,

  and women evoke the twin magic too raised up through

  the very same gods but have different body shapes,

  and whose sagacity far exceeds the wisdom of men

  so eye have tried to reinvent through language a music

  laced and stitched with echoes that speak of the past though

  anchored in the present and seeking a voice that will evoke

  the future, carried there as if shot from the lost brain

  of a legendary madman electrocuted for burning dictionaries

  that only carried words of 5th rate plagiarists of placebos,

  who rejected the magical words of great poets, substituting

  in his dictionaries instead the doggerel of fake priests

  who only prayed for the living dead and only after

  they were paid with the flowing blood of masses

  with their severed bloody heads nailed up on pikes,

  surrounded by laughing fools pointing small bejeweled

  fingers up at the heads while vultures circle

  as a chorus erupts from giddy fools: “we want more,

  we want more heads, we want more, more, more, more!”

  eye think of the fact no one pleaded guilty for the murder

  of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, shot down for being

  a homosexual, a poet, in 1936, in Grande Fuente, Granada, Spain,

  where his bones are buried somewhere still unknown

  in an unmarked grave, his voice still resonates here

  today, lives strong in the poetry of poets everywhere, so

  what is it evil people search for forever throughout time,

  wedded through holes refusing to carry magical words

  in their sentences, some poets pass themselves off as fake

  priests who only pray for the living or dead when they get paid,

  what is the poisonous need—dream?—keeps them up

  needing blood to drink when the sun rises each morning,

  when werewolves and vampires stalk for blood when moons

  shine bright as pearls or rise red or white with their mythical

  voices howling in the dead of night, can you hear them

  baying at the moon from somewhere in trump’s White

  House, needing to see severed bloody heads up on spikes,

  his legions of mindless fools screaming: “we want more,

  give us more, we want more, more, more, more, more . . .”

  A POEM FOR AN OLD MAN WALKING AN EQUALLY OLD DOG

  an old man is walking

  an equally old dog

  or is it the other

  way around, no matter,

  they both look down, weary

  is the word written here,

  a description of them

  the man & his stick cane,

  the dog held by a leash

  though it might be something

  close—a rope, a thin chain,

  a line, or a tether

  because it’s cold outside

  today, the sun is out,

  shining through doubt because

  clouds cruising through the blue

  above it all reminds

  memory of large ships,

  or gray-white schools of whales

  thundering through the waves

  down here in the soaping

  foam, boiling in voices

  above these old spirits

  looking not left or right

  but down, moving forward,

  attached to each other

  by hook or crook, they know

  trust over the long years

  earned sweetness of friendship,

  love even, despite fights,

  a fresh bone in the mouth

  of the very old dog

  lodged in the memory,

  something mysterious

  like that, perhaps, will turn

  the trick, a switch hidden

  inside their brains will do,

  can see it in their eyes,

  the love in their sweet smiles

  looking at each other

  & this poem is a leash

  in six syllable lines

  connecting them to you

  reader, connecting me

  to you through these skinny

  six syllable lines, stacked

  to resemble this stick

  the old man is holding

  like faith in his gnarled hand,

  will keep his dearest friend

  walking there beside him

  there is nothing else now

  in their lives but this love

  they hold for each other

  A TANKA FOR STANLEY MOSS AT AGE 95

  Stanley Moss fights death

  with hundreds of poems he writes

  every breath spoken

  constructs defensive armor

  from every word he breathes now

  A WANDERING 7–11

  for my mother, Dorothy Smith Marshall, 1917 to 2018

  today the sky is gray black,

  dark as clouds sweeping death through my memory

  stamped on faces of friends lost

  fighting great storms of raging life—chickadees

  beat tiny wings like dots there,

  periods—their faces—like kites—once loved, float

  like soiled pages torn from books

  serve as brakes on dialogue, my mother’s face

  up there grieving with the rest,

  floating cold in blue ether, her doe eyes those

  wearing masks of confusion

  like these phantoms surrounding her, lips frozen—

  like hers—set in stone, silence,

  cast in memory these inaudible ghosts,

  without even a gesture—

  only when we recall them—their love, sorrow,

  whatever tales they left us—

  perhaps some hip words in a deep poem, colors

  brushstrokes of a painting, food,

  tasty as wet, soft smooches, my mother’s smile—

  warms me now in looping dreams,

  blooming sweet as her perfume seduced male hearts,

  beating drumming metronomes

  beckoning breath, metaphors swimming around

  all of us—sky blue ether

  from where my mother’s arms reach out, surround me

  in laughter from the misty

  beyond, that is what haunts me here now, over

  questions—where does breath go when

  it flies beating feathered wings, carrying clefs—

  like birds—splitting up in space

  deep as jazz solos creating diverse breaths,

  improvising off one beat

  as they dance like twin notes inside the music,

  do they descend down steep stairs

  leading to where neither comes back, though both run

  to catch the black, smoking train

  choo-chewing through space, where no one keeps return

  tickets, though now they still go,

  quiet as it’s kept, no one has a choice in this,

  no one ever gets to vote—

  not even the women who birthed—brought—all us

  here, we’re on our own to dance

  this bloody tango with faith—a skunk spraying

  funk over us—you reader

  there, feeling cold as winds cut through like razors

  where you live now alone, cold,

  carrying words icy as assassins eyes,

  you feel a deep need to be

  rescued here, because you read poems laced with ripe

  new metaphors stitched throughout

  with bold language bursting inside sentences

  laced with sweet mangoes—replete

  with premonitions, you want to hold on to

  what to do when everything

  switches in this whirling change, all the faces,

  colors, shapes, hair, informs us

  different narratives rule situations,

  leaves us—perhaps with some words

  mirrors deep poems in my mother’s smile, warms me

  here in looping dreams blooming

  sweet as her perfumed laughter reaching me now

  from the misty beyond—still

  what haunts me here is wondering where breath goes

  when it sucks inward, whooshing

  breath blowing hard beneath gray black high clouds, rain

  brooms sweeping cold through—cobwebs—

  memory echoing colors of music

  ricocheting from steel plates

  beneath shoes of bojangles tapping rhythms

  through champagne nights of harlem

  back in the day, still hanging around today

  so is it any wonder

  these seven-eleven stanzas are chasing

  a strict, slick style of being

  in the moment now, instead of combing through

  reruns of slavery‘s lore—

  chains hanging off our ankles, nails in our tongues,

  eye mean already been there

  done that song & dance, now we’re moving beyond

  hip hop, rap, whatever comes

  shaping language, after that will turn into

  a crap shoot—don’t mention new

  forms—sort of like wearing contemporary

  fashions—skinny stovepipe pants

  the color of scarlet cherries, blood orange,

  shirts wide open at the neck,

  black & white, pointy, checkerboard shoes made from

  leopard skin, suede, blue laces

  criss-crossing, like X’s stitching bullet wounds—

  eye tell you now the sky turns

  black at midnight, rises bright—sometimes—when light

  comes as a gift from the sun

  rising like faith, can be a beautiful thing

  if people could synchronize,

  turn their collective heartbeats into pulsing

  beehives breathing above us

  AFTER READING A HIROSHIMA NUCLEAR BULLETIN ON YAHOO

  ANOTHER 7–11

  the yellow tongue flame spit out

  from the blistered lips of Hiroshima, spreads

  full of radionuclides, a torch of poisons

  streaking through fire across Pacific blue water,

  though naked eye can’t see it unless flying above

  as an astronaut high in space

  with superman’s x-ray vision

  then you might see this dart plume of poison

  aiming its green tip lurking beneath blue waves,

  shot east toward—hollyweird—

  but, of course, no one will believe the words of this

  poem can be pushed aside lacking scientific proof

  because how does a poet sing anything of worth

  except words of truth deeply felt,

  singing songs of love this poem is telling you

  now life & death comes no matter

  whether you believe it or not it will arrive,

  you can take that to the bank & cash it

  ALL OF MY GOOD OLD FRIENDS

  all of my good old friends are dropping,

  dying flowers all around me,

  leaving as birds in the night suddenly fly away

  never to be seen again, they become ghosts

  eye see in other faces suddenly their smile

  plastered on heads of total strangers

  as we glide by each other, they are memories

  fading like old photographs we collect

  inside worn old picture albums we store away,

  like old songs we used to dance to when young

  before we knew death was surely coming our way

  CORONAVIRUS REDIAL

  a blooming fear wakes you

  envelopes your body,

  inside your mind, fear

   of touching there is no

  place to hide, as the silence

  of death sweeps like a poisoned

  broom through our lives, creeps

  a stealthy killer stalking

  through cities we adore,

  live in, an invisible

  plague with no smell or shape

  stalking death could be on

  lips of ones we kiss, love,

  there are no words to describe

  macabre scenes of bodies

  stacked, piled high in trucks

  refrigerated,make-shift morgues,

  mass graves on Hart Island,

  in retirement homes

  decaying, on parking lots,

  in dark streets in Guayaquil,

  Ecuador a bonfire of corpses,

  a crackling stench nauseating

  the sky blackened by vultures

  like a million fireflies,

  the wailing music

  of stunned relatives—

  mourning prayers

  incinerated flesh—spewing death.

  DARK CLOUDS BLOOMING UP AHEAD

  dark clouds blooming up ahead over a small town

  in heartland America, blocks out the sun as lightning cracks,

  booms across space, red maga-cap-wearing bucks gather

  white, circle around a car menacing a Black family anywhere

  in rural USA, beneath the sky a symphony of thunder

  midday claps of slashing swords—flash jagged fields,

  aqua-green summer grass crisscrossing highways ever-which-away,

  how some ever you look in front of you out here where

  grass has flattened like manes atop lions’ heads,

  right before their golden eyes blaze,

  their nostrils flare and history pulls the trigger

  of primordial instinct & they attack without remorse

  far away from asphalt, a warning sign,

  a metaphor if you wish—of what this poem searches for,

  a clue, a predilection of what’s ahead, as it winds

  its way through curving questions—hooked and

  sprouting tails, at the bottom of human savagery

  a hunger so deep in the psyche of human darkness,

  aggravating—mysterious impulses beneath

  spinning wheels of speeding automobiles,

  trucks circling in a funereal light, omens bright

  as a flashlight—perhaps, a philosophy of coffins