Ode to Jetblue

Wonder of reason
We stroll and flounce,
Prance and joke,
Down the aisle
Where I don't have to turn
To proceed to my place,
Throne in the sky.
I place my tuckus
On wide cushions and feel
...almost human.
Other domestic airlines
Make us feel like
corpulent Mounds.
Gelatin squeezed back
Into toothpaste container.
They say it's the progress.
The future?
Liar!
Whore!
Disease dump of wall st
Festering fuckers...ahem,
I am sorry Diva Blue,
I lost myself, but I am back.
Back in your wings of love.
You did charge me for my bag,
which was kinda shitty.
But I can't stay mad acchu'
When I want to roll
my face in your seat.

Bukowski's Prophecy

In the immortal words of Bukowski,
I fart better than I fuck now.
It was only a matter of time,
only a matter of digestive declaration,
winning out over the cock's foolish pride.
The pendulum swings toward
a comedy of errors.
Vigorous and loud splatter
sonic boom wrinkling the sheets.
My dark backside glamour,
voluminous Papal puffs
from a holy balcony of flesh
wafting blessings to the crowd.
Flatted fifth trumpeting.

These and Those Animals

/
Take offense to looters smashing storefronts and kicking car windows.
Compelling cinema on your hi-def flat screens.
The masked thug marauding through nightmares excuses your fear.

Drunken mob.
Biker gangs.
Lynch party.
Unwashed hordes.
Deviant Huns.
Mau Mau Mongrels.
Animals (according to my friend)

Shaka Zulus decapitating orphaned babies out of Darwinian mercy.
It's more primal to fear animal behavior than human designs.

/

The abstraction of evil lurks in the line items.
Bill riders, amended clause, and fine print.

The fine print is not evil.
It is just so small that you don't see the damaged planned. 
Etchings on the back of the eyelids extincting cultures in legalese
so clean that the abomination seems preordained.

No one has nightmares about the fine print.
Basic user agreement and the long scroll to the bottom.
Click the 'yes' box.

/

Animals haul TVs and computers out of gashed security gates.
Viruses carried in the microchip unleash more carnage than any riot.
We don't fear the TV maker, manufacture, or media mogul.

But if violence and bad dreams disqualified one from the human race,
then I know a few parliaments and parlors as gilded zoos.

Small Torture

Even shorter than short.
Tiny.
It's between you
and someone else
...and we all hate her.
The list is so small
you're almost not there.
It's just you and your shadow.
Now.
We have not made our minds
but the list is Liliputian.
So micro that you wouldn't
even know if you were on it.

***

It was a close call.
You missed it by that much.
Nano-fractions.
I just made up the word
because none exist to describe
the infinity of chances
in a fateful splinter.

***

Did you feel that?
Luck just waved her hand
right above your head
Almost touched a hair.
You didn't feel it?
Maybe you're just numb
to close calls,
and the short cent.
Almost maybe's
in an endless sprint.

Vulgar Folks

1st whip n' piss of spring on my subway.

Goat-stench of a man staggered up,

yanked his licorice black cock

into fluorescent view.

Passengers scramble to the other side

but I stayed close and cozy,

a curious need for depravity.

Warm waves from his spongy pink slit

splashed across the floor

lapped against the steel pole.

I considered tossing Old Faithful out,

as he was in the high-tide of mid-piss

...but that we would be rude.

Stuffing his exhaustion back into jeans

the goat-man grabbed a glob of vaseline

from his wet pockets and smeared

the yellow congeal over his face into

a shiny mask of petroleum.

he spread across his head and down his neck

I got off train and the streets were blocked off
police tape and roving cops circumambulate

an ominously isolated van in middle of road

and the words 'SWAT Team' being mentioned.

And all this after a folk song musical

that Disney-fied Woodie Guthrie and his life.

The most vulgar act of the night was the musical.

A Fading Orchestra

Slender sore throb of vibrato in delta marshes.
I tune the strings, plucking notes sharp and flat
high C electric at the bridge, dips my shoulder.
Baritone G flat grumbles in the red shell of my knee.

The orchestra plays out of tune.
The orchestra plays in the gap.

Each instrument adjusting rusted brown strings
termite infected sawdust in bass chest.

The orchestra musicians don't need a composer,
they don't even need to practice staccato timpani
accompanying piercing piccolo stabs.

Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue:
opens sour and sarcastic clarinet
curves akimbo, loosening the register.

The orchestra Traviatta and Figaro
in my splintered wood.

I become the sunken symphony chamber
clamoring the air with scored sheets falling to feet.

There is no orchestra playing, only notes now.
Each instrument a concave mirror
imploding into a coffin chrysalis.
Musicians smash their bows, crack dripping hands
slicing taut drum skin as it pours out dark vintage.

Echo notes. Mayhem crashes all around
and then the last fading ache
against the pitch black deaf. 

NYC Ghazal

*a ghazal is an Arabic form of poetry in un-rhyming couplets where every second line is themed after the preceding one*

U rarely c fruits in papers,
unspooling fertility monuments.

Every burnt offering a sinuating song
leminscate serpents swallow their tails.

Plague theorem lamentation
pivot, ratchet, hatchet blood cycles.

Even Apollo's brilliant shadow too much,
so Gods trouble themselves unless disguised.

Hidden in allusions, catacombs in us,
unconscious divination of a penitent.

Old Woman in My Head

Her teeth fell into her soup
"Gotdamnit to hell Good Lord!"
unfurled Panegyric plangents
twanging the twi'lit nimbus
as she fished white choppers from stew.

The kippered shriveled orifice
twisted like a hank of flesh
Black rheum gravid with ribaldry
swallowing white dentition.

"Wearing me to a frazzle!"
this shilly shallying life,
anger and acquiescence
appall and appeasement
lit recividist revelry
cigarette's lissome pale reeds
tumbled silver blue trellis'es
quivering hieratics
spelling out her life in smoke.

"Let's get whisky stinky!"
she blessed her meal in rapture
and flung the damp paper bowl
in her wake and to nirvana.

Gray decanters clanged on plastic taiga
brown gulches in styrofoam
 filled to the stippled tip
invoking the Dionysus
she petitioned for dice luck,
and whor'ish nights of passion.
Appealed for sharpshooter's aim
employ gravedigger's wisdom.

"Our father who art in heaven
shoot 'em six, roll 'em seven."

Uppity

Uppity (a form experiment)

By Aurin Squire

Abuse.
I did
intrude.
Disturb,
disease,
refuse
to serve
the needs,
with please,
and use
my voice
endure
2 score
your core,
your soul
with sores
from poor
in war
of black
on crack
the ways
and means,
machines
grind blight
from bones
of plight.
and birds
of pray
nest in
the way
we greet
and meet
our kin
our friend
women
and men
but then
a-gain
the same
refrain
we sing
and feign
ourselves
ordained
to say
this plain:
'hey sistah
'hey mistah.

(At this point, the 'act' felt incomplete. I paused over the last 2 lines, looking for an appropriate conclusion or summations. Then I started writing the words out in reverse order, swimming back up the waterfall. UPSTREAM...)

'hey mistah.
'hey sistah.
this plain:
to say
ordained
ourselves
we sing
refrain
the same
a-gain
but then
and men
women
our friend
our kin
and meet

we greet

the way

nest in

of pray

and birds

of plight
from bones
grind blight
machines
and means,
the ways
on crack
of black
in war
from poor
with sores
your soul
your core,
2 score
endure
my voice
and use
with please,
the needs,
to serve
refuse
disease,
disturb,
intrude.
I did
Abuse.

The Black Mismanagement Mafia

They are here, they are here. 

Have no fear. 

They come to take a check,

get a bump,

grab a mic, 

and make some lumps.

They are the black mismanagement mafia. 

The black mismanagement mafia!

Now mis-serving and swerving,

under-educating and coon-gesticulating

misleading and bull shit feeding you

your local outrage, 

your latest social media share, 

your scandal and "oh, no she didn't-s"

Just pay no attention to the tiny hands in your pocket, my sheeple. 

Doing deeds in darkness 

but it soon comes to light.

Doing dirty in alleys

but the streets will make it right, cuz

the black mafia vampires its next victim.

Down goes another black org.

Black-on-black corrupt,

Black on black back-biting

Black on red bankrupt.  

The black mismanagement mafia strikes again. 

You know the BMM: old-timers and has-beens

with trunks stuffed with 'way back when,' stories

and 'when I marched with Dr. King.' 

And they've been riding that same march ever since.

They got a thimble full of management skills

 and ferocity to defend.

No, not you or advancement.

They are protecting their turf,

lifting their hind legs

pissing in your eyes,

pissing on your head,

pissing in your ear,

leaking that tangy hot stuff on your tongue.

They are marking their territory. 

They serve as honorary board members

for corporations needing a muzzled black face at the table,

spend most of their leisure squatting on 'blackness.'

They'll run any org into the ground

jamming cronies in every nook and cranny. 

Then they grab their burglar sack and head out

begging to the community for a bailout.

BMM runs the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh, 

many of the NAACP chapters in this country, 

the SCLC

CORE

and even some HBCUs. 

They accept kickbacks and airtime, 

but no responsibility for bringing down 

stanchions, columns, and legacies created to serve.

They got their crowbars in your pocket. 

They got their shopping bags out

Pay no attention to the tiny hands 

running up and down your thighs

between your woman's legs

in your child's mouth

picking out loose morsels

with no morals. 

Pay no attention to jheri curl perm 

shaking like a tree after April rain

shaking with laughter.

Pay no attention to the wetness.

behind your ears.

Join hands in the spirit of Umoja

Join hands for thee ancestors

Hop on the good foot. 

Ashe. Ache. Ashanti. Asti Spumante

And where's my gotdamn pimp cup?!?

Until one day you're walking down the street

minding your own piss and stickiness. 

and the mafia meets you, cuz!
They are here, they are here,
strap up your gear.

The black mismanagement mafia greets you, cuz!

And, cuz, they got a hostage:

bedraggled and demented. 

Toothless and hoarse-voiced. 

Stick 'em up or black history gets it

right between the eyes.

Stick 'em up cuz…

you'll never get it. 

Moving Water (by Rumi)

When  you do things from your soul, you feel a river

moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling

disappears.  Don't let

others lead you.  They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope

of God.  And what is that?  Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness

people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness.  You've seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment.  Now 

see the invisible.  If you could leave your selfishness, you

would see how you've

been torturing your soul.  We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don't

insist on going where

you think you want to go.  Ask the way to the spring.  Your

living pieces will form

a harmony.  There is a moving palace that floats in the air

with balconies and clear

water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained

under a single tent.

Christmas Quatrains

In infancy and when we are grown
be it angelic or curmudgeon-ed tone
in millions murmured morning hums
let gifts, presents, and holy wishes come.

From the North, South, East, West
overtime workers and those in holiday rest
best of friends and enemies grievously wrong'ed
shine a beacon of warm light and a simple song.

Let our music inside arise and play
issuing a dance the body must obey
as joyous words circle and sail like gentle doves
and hearts precipitate passionate love.

Children look into cotton clouds overhead
for flying reindeer and men in Arctic red.
'Round knight tables and bachelors breakfast'ing alone,
make this "Merry Christmas" your very own.

- Aurin Squire

Dinner at Midnight

He asked me if I’d love before

so stirring stew beneath my nose,

I pondered wandered through

evicted rooms and ghosts of smoke.

Thinking...fanatic certainty at one time.

Perhaps several. Twice? Once?

Or maybe just infatuated

with lust, or a crush, flings and flirts

fumbling baubles, dangling buttons

kisses that lose luster

over measured stanzas they muster.

The curry brew wretched,

an odious blur to my sense

as the spoon kept turning

looking for answers at the ocean's floor.

And in the silver ashes,

a few vague candidates appear,
faded from an inferno
Who I could have, would have...

had the timing, reason and season

been in alignment with my horoscope

with my work schedule

with my location or vocation and

other...others, I looked at his inquiry.

with sad and tired eyes. 

Here we sit at this vector in time

sharing food. Laughing, smiling, entangled hands

underneath the tablecloth

along with melancholia and

history’s fumbling fingers

dancing on my knee. 

Have I ever loved really meant

do I love you now?

...

No. Not in the least. 

And you do not love me,

which is what makes dinner

so nice and frivolous,

which is what makes my stew

so cold and noxious.

which is what makes my heart

so still.

which is what makes this affair

like a bookmark: holding a place

in between the pages.

Have I ever loved meant

did I love you then?

I’d be lying if I said yes.

With sorrowful eyes I glanced

across the table and squeezed

his hand. 

Have I ever loved meant

would I love again?

…

I am...

turning the stew again and again.

raising up a rolling red mist

as the spoon turns again and again,

fanning the vermillion clouds

veiling my smirking lips,

turning a dark night into a scarlet noon

I nod slowly as I stare at a horizon

turning again and again, again and again,

again and again.