I need you to read this
because it needs your attention.
I am like an innocent visiting from afar
walking through speeding urban traffic
giddy and excited to be here right now
but not quite sure of how to behave.
Impatient as a rock band in church
I am eager to make your acquaintance
and starving for attention and kind words.

The blind beggar girl
coins for herself
a sense of the city.
Fear sits in her ear
and snatches each sound
as the day rushes by.

At home in an alley
as night covers the city
an old moon shines mutely
and blankets her sleep.

Underneath my window
in a lovely garden
the sleek guillotine
sings harshly.
Its bleeding gums
stain the world scarlet.

How can this monster
eat the people
unless nature herself
hums the tune and
consecrates each note?

Van Gogh severed an ear
(left or right?).
and made a whore its recipient
(made its recipient a whore?).

Van Gogh severed other things.
Cutting the final tie, he was adrift
finally in oranges, yellows and reds.
Not that he hadn't already known
enough color in his life.

Warmth returns as if it's Spring.
The sky's gray driven off,
the city wears a golden jacket
with warm pockets.
Smiles paper the air
wherever the eyes turn.

Except here where
a homeless man
hurtles by with angry eyes
his mind still in winter
his anger a comet's tail.

May have few common ingredients
but they all begin once upon a time.

A protagonist, often young,
in a frock, or robe or armor
sets out on a path, road or voyage
enroute to an unknown destination
as dangers and wonders loom up.

All those piquant causes for concern
that might threaten an innocent walk:
falling deep asleep after one bite
of an apple insistently offered;
being kissed awake by a Prince
or a Princess you've never met;
all the world's wily, wayward wolves.
Capped perhaps by a sword of power
pulled easily from an enchanted stone;
or sunk forcefully in the throbbing heart of
the fire-breathing, gold-hoarding dragon.

From whatever age visited, or revisited, fables
are places where imagination feels at home.

Reportedly, the first worn by an Emperor.
One who liked erudite arguments
which his foes in dispute often lost.
Who surely intended that the beard,
evoking so many hirsute Greek sages,
would lend him a philosopher's gravity.

Or, not. Perhaps it covered
some disfiguring scar or blemish
the way a large mustache hid
the herpes sores a friend acquired
in a careless act in a Tehran brothel
and then learned to live with as many do
without philosophy to console him.

Walking beside the water on an Autumn Sunday
afternoon, a breeze tousling his silver hair,
Bill pauses as a bevy of joggers breaks

around him. The sunshine is all pleasure,
like a kiss dissolving on his skin. The abiding
sound is the slop and smack of water against

the harbor wall. The patient gulls waiting
nearby watch for signs of bread. Loving
couples and touring families amble past.

He thinks of jumping in. A younger Bill,
very drunk, had once nearby at Fells Point
and then quickly clambered out, wet but

happy. The many intervening years,
keeping some, discarding much, had
remade the city and Bill even more.

No sign or police required now to
keep him a dry and decorous senior.
He moves, and moving, feels somehow

that a skein of past acts and choices
support and shape the vivid present
as much as the tumult of each moment.

These are the people:
samurai, wife, bandit.
What each one says
may seem true:
archly personal,
colorful with detail,
oozing ambience.
Each story convincing
-until the next.

Defrocked believer and recovered sermon addict,
one time evangelical adherent of fundamentalism,
proselytizer to sinners and the unredeemed,
looking for a new committed relationship.

Averse to unconditional demands for faith.
Immunized against exhortation and rhetoric.
Firmly anchored in the moment and the flux.
Skeptic now seeking a belief free of cant,

confession, and mind-numbing litanies,
interested now only in discrete consolations.
Looking for the freedom to make mistakes.
Will commit to improving on my failures.

A sparkling gem for the clerisy
to examine, savor and applaud,
that poem is a tony triumph
destined for anthologies.

This one is scruffy and uncouth,
cracking wise in dive bars & juke joints,
laughing and farting without shame,
recited cheerfully by the young at art.

Another poem digs down deeply,
committed to the obscure and the gnomic,
intent on escaping interpretation,
its center a persistently hidden treasure.

One poem however will find just-right words
that will instantly impress and charm
conjuring images that open eyes and minds,
living eternally as it becomes each reader.

she says she can deconstruct a come-on
faster than even the smoothest stud can speak it
and dissect the various empty styles of swagger
flaying con gusto those that most offend her,
the words hanging strangled mid-air and
judged. have you heard her?

she says she can dance a tango solo
across a waterfront thronged with partiers
dodging cyclists, trash cans and seated beggars,
accordion players and street preachers. her music
a full moon. storefronts and street lamps her all ways
lighting. have you seen her?

she says she can distinguish no fewer than fifty perfumes,
name the designers of outfits seen in passing on the street,
source the finest weed available in any metropolis,
sense the mood of the crowd before it turns
and find her way home unescorted and
safe. have you met her?

she claims to know the thoughts
troubling the mind that you leave
unspoken. do you believe her?