Poems

Does everyone deserve to be forgiven?
However unoriginal our sins
and justified our passion to get even?
Assigned a role when jealousy begins,
or at the least when it is first recorded,
a brother's keeper failing at the task --
the rest of the affair is rather sordid --
when questioned, unrepentant, he would ask
the Lord himself if caring was his duty.
Still walks the Earth, eats breakfast, lunch and dinner,
appreciates the world in all its beauty --
no question who turned out to be the winner.
This parable attempts, but is unable
to mend the pain of Cain, the wrath of Abel.

A strip club: we're as far from seven veils
as time's uneven passage would allow.
Our Salome's though not quite nine inch nails
are keeping Herod's focus on the now,
by threatening his face as her waist ripples,
their crimson polish barely a shade lighter
then these large, mesmerizing mother nipples
mere inches from his tongue; soon he'll invite her
to the champagne room, where, he has been told,
he'll be allowed to suck them, though the guard,
a man absurdly huge, big bellied, bald,
did warn him that he cannot bite too hard.
He's not quite sure, although he's heard it said
that if she likes you, you can ask for head.

The more things stay the same, the more they change.
My issue unresolved, the app still broken,
its chatbot, though, displaying real range:
more empathetic, vastly better spoken --
it made me feel as if it really cared,
in properly accented local lingo.
So what if the TV pretends it aired
a headline claiming baby ate my dingo
and fiction is much plainer than the truth?
This world, meant for the brave, but often timid --
for us, the ones much longer in the tooth,
the ones that never really knew their limit,
it's strange indeed, but with these magic pills,
a fish can learn air breathing through its gills.

Craps table loud and crowded, raw emotion.
She giggles, makes a move as if to blow,
reverses and releases in one motion.
Designer glasses, blouse that's cut as low
as gambling den propriety allows,
and bright red lipstick. Mop has seen it all.
but chuckles; mops the dice towards the blouse.
She plucks them, real smooth, another roll.
Don't bet against the pass, her real game,
those lashes blinking willingness and pleasure.
The chances of success not quite the same,
but much, much better odds by any measure:
the promise of a tourist trip to heaven.
This gentleman will do. She rolls a seven.

My dreams are stitched together, a collage
of roughly cut out stills and celluloid.
They're guarded by a jealous entourage
that tries its best to keep out Jung and Freud.
But no defense is fool proof. On those nights,
when ravens feast on carrion and caw,
performing their unspeakable last rites,
I fight to try forgetting what I saw,
but cannot. With the shadows closing in,
reality a sweaty, foggy mirror,
attempts to hide what cannot be unseen,
and failing that, hold on to what is dearer,
protect it and deliver it from harm...
and rescued, at the last, by the alarm.

I swore to love four better, and far worse.
Results have been, I must confess, uneven.
I asked my love: but honey, why the curse,
the oath we took had made these loves a given.
They get more rapt attention, it is true,
and visits are as conjugal as needed,
but none are loved as well as I love you,
excepting as the oath demands, I pleaded.
Thrown out, alone, I'm wondering the street,
write poems, though it's not a panacea.
I should have told her it's autocomplete.
To make and print our vows was her idea.
It could have been four letter and four words.
The kind they bleep when they present awards.

Ten fingers on our hands, and five on each,
but oddly it is seven we most cherish.
We sanctify it, seal with it, and preach
the perils of indulging, lest we perish.
We sail the seven seas for seven wonders,
with expertly curated bucket lists.
A monk recites the chakras as he ponders
what evidence exists that he exists.

Three sevens in a row, the bandit teases,
its metal arm will ratchet up the bet
as soon as I release it. As it eases,
its jackpot rolls on by. Plays hard to get.
Old Fashioned losing flavor. Melting ice.
Craps table roaring. Seven on the dice.

Why must it be a virgin sacrifice
when those are in such limited supply?
Would somewhat of a novice still suffice,
or hymen absent, no need to apply?

Are dragons merely giant phallic symbols?
A penis with a wing, look at their pics.
The ceremony, cue the drums and cymbals,
and all the while we've just been talking dicks?

I must confess the following suspicion:
Dear virgin, dragons are a real danger.
But have no fear, a simple proposition.
To save you, just five minutes in the manger.

These fairytales, unless I've been misled,
are ways to get a virgin into bed.

A salmon sunrise greets the morning,
as gentle as a lover's blush,
then turns the color of a warning.
The sun, as if it's in a rush,
invading every nook and cranny,
and catching shadows, still uncanny,
as they are hurrying to flee.
Each minute granting a degree,
it climbs the stairway into heaven
without a gripe or a complaint
and all the while it seeks to paint
our skies the proper blue for seven,
so when at last the deed is done,
the night is over, day begun.

No doubt each of the wives of Henry Tudor,
the second and more famous one, the eighth,
got sonnets in the mail as Highness wooed her.
Most probably, those weren't about faith,
although the king was known to write a  carol,
and ultimately headed a whole church,
I think more likely intimate apparel,
a topic I continue to research.
Since history is muted on the matter,
while leaving little else to be explored,
let's serve these tidbits neatly, on a platter.
What queen does not deserve to be adored?
And here there are so many, count them, six.
Each queen comes with her ladies and her cliques.

Each queen comes with her ladies and her cliques,
and Katherine of Aragon is surely
the one that must go first into the mix.
The love the king confessed to her, most purely,
as genuine as any in the land,
considering that she's his brother's wife --
convenient when needed, at the end --
for better and for worse, and yes, for life,
he married her, and at the first, was happy.
But all she gave the man was Bloody Mary,
and so before the story gets too sappy
the king decides perhaps he'd rather marry
once more with feeling.  Eminent domain.
A lady is in waiting. Anne Boleyn.

A lady is in waiting. Anne Boleyn.
Though soon enough they will not call her lady,
but Majesty.  In trying to explain
to Clement, who had deemed the matter weighty,
the lustful king attempted to retract
his marriage to his brother Arthur's widow,
suggesting that she wasn't quite intact
at consummation. Clement kept his veto,
and Anne, as luck would have it, lost her head,
but gave us Queen Elizabeth -- we're grateful --
while Henry made the church into his stead.
Was Anne indeed, as is alleged, unfaithful,
and was it really worth it, all that waiting?
The part she loved the best? Anticipating.

The part she loved the best? Anticipating.
Is there a queen for whom this isn't true?
A topic that is surely worth debating.
For some the power strikes out of the blue,
but others scheme through their entire lives,
while salivating merely at the thought,
until the thought alone is what survives,
sustaining them through times both good and fraught.
Jane Seymore, though, by all accounts, in love,
and gave the king the thing he most desired.
If queenship was what she was dreaming of,
the queen that Henry surely most admired,
died happy, for she gave the king a son!
Of all the six, Jane got to be the one.

Of all the six, Jane got to be the one,
though sadly doesn't live to celebrate it.
A son is born and so the deed is done.
The queen is done as well.  Don't you just hate it
when fate, to solely demonstrate its power,
plays such a cruel joke upon our kind?
She keeps her head and skips stay in the Tower
producing a male heir as been assigned,
but soon enough, replaced by Anne of Cleves,
whose portrait failed to do her any justice,
and not even a year before Anne leaves.
(aside to portraitists: when you say "trust us",
a skillful brush subtracts too many pounds)
Her portrait, like her beauty, knew no bounds.

Her portrait, like her beauty, knew no bounds.
A generous divorce and it is over.
She'll get  -- per year -- five hundred English pounds,
and castles not a hundred miles from Dover,
but Henry is already on Miss Howard.
Another of the Cathies lays in wait --
apparently in waiting means empowered,
and all the queen's affairs, affairs of state.
A verdict of adultery was listed.
By then the king could hardly even move,
but memories of better times persisted,
with Cathy he felt younger, in the groove.
She helped him loosen up and to relax.
Eighteen and guilty, Cathy got the ax.

Eighteen and guilty, Cathy got the ax.
Was that a harsher fate than Anne Boleyn's,
who got a Frenchman, not some local hack's
idea of a cut? If that explains
the rumor that the king expressed regret
for Anne upon his deathbed, may it be.
But we're not done with wives, at least not yet.
It'll take another wife to set him free.
A widow, and a Catherine to boot --
you wonder if by now he got confused --
this Catherine was worthy of pursuit,
and when pursued she couldn't have refused.
So here is to the last one, and a star.
Four husbands to her name.  She's Mrs. Parr.

The difference between Sodom and Gomorrah
and your town, USA? Don't ask a priest.
Referring to the passage in the Torah,
some questionable beauties, but no Beast,
though plenty on the flaws in human natures,
both real and imagined by old men
and hastened into law by legislatures
that claim to know the details of God's plan.
His wrath? Oh, that's a common enough story.
His meting out a punishment: pure joy.
What softer hearts forgive as allegory
the harder ones call reason to destroy.
Our values, they will preach, under assault.
Please take these pillars with a grain of salt.

to err is human
to forgive -- decline