Second Pilgrim's Progress in NY

Angel adust in the Atlanta airport

Went for a break from Piero's massive show

Taking my bus to get a connection to New York,

Where my second Pilgrim's, unpaid Progress

Is about to start. One more time, over and over

Until Vanity Fair sends me home

To finish up with my bones in a mortuary table

Artsy Catwalk

Gallant slouching  boorish courtiers

Fopping around in bassa danza steps

Taking a stroll on gentrified streets;

Informed boisterous, mute in Starbucks halls

Waiting for the King for a word to be uttered.

But no one is enough worth it to be treated like a king.

Flip-flops Wake

The maidens at the wake are born in soccer shorts and flip-flop shoes.

They have grown up seeing their mothers in constant war 

With dresses, with shoes, with crafty haircuts.

They parade between the funeral parlor and the street

And there's no solemn point for them on earth

Immune to their incisive statement about taste.

Only the flowers, the magnolia scent

-       Of bloodless death in formaldehyde, running fast to the brain -

Confront  this dowdy army in athletic suits, prevailing.

The Broom

The sound that awakened Lily-Ann that Saturday morning was that of the broom scratching the wooden floor. Rhythmic and continuous. One, two, three…,and silence. A one, two, three, four and silence. Silence. Silence? Thanks… And the sleep of Saturday morning gently grabbing her again by the hair, and drowning her - like a Neptune rapturing a nymph for brief instants - into the splashing around foam of the blue warm sea of unresolved dreams and warm sheets…

Broom. Once again…One, two and three, and four…and five… And then the rhythm increased. New broom, she thought. Only a new broom sounds that playful in her first day of work. Lily- Ann felt comfortably lazy, and cheered up for the broom…

´Mom…´

The primal word in her charming, spoiled glottal fry southern key, flew away. A voice between pensive, and mother-wit kin tuned, answered:

´Heyy…look at you, party cat...! Hungover?´

Lily-Ann smiled at her mother standing at the threshold with her eyes still puffed up for the sleep.

´Yeeeah…a little bit. Come on over here, Mom. Grrrls wrestling...! ´

The mother leisurely leaves the broom who - like a slender model with its clean new aura posing at the door frame - contemplates the scene.

The mother approaches the bed, her face rosy for the sweeping and the warm air of the premature spring in March, and the daughter, acting out the Neptune of her light sleep, grabs her by the wrists, and drags her into the sea of wrinkled blankets and springy pillows. The girls - mother and daughter - fight in a friendly battle of tickling and squeezing, nuanced with sparks of a so grave seriousness and Spartan commitment to winning, that the broom for an instant gets worried…

But for the girls, it´s only a Saturday ritual for getting uplifted. The broom cools down, and feels ready for something more. She seems to take a coquettish look at her mousy blonde stuck up new bristles, and hums the song new brooms use to sing when left alone at home:

“Sweep, sweep, sweep away the gloom, To the boogie rhythm of the new broom….”

´Breakfast?´ - the mother offers, surrendering gallantly to give way to the daughter´s not usual great mood lately, since her father passed away overseas. ´Yes Mom, ´ says Lyly Anne, and the mother leaves the room.

´Breakfast, here we go…, ´ says out loud the girl waking up and stepping out like a ballerina avidly to the shy, blushed broom, while her mother makes crockery noises the kitchen.

´Let´s go for a raid to the witches’ kitchen, Broomtail Horse, ´ Lily-Ann says, while getting on the enthusiastic new member of the family. And then, they take off.

Coward Love

She just wants to be loved, but her rage is a wall.

She works on all day long until the nighttime falls,

With the care of a spider constructing her own jail,

From sunset till the sun turns around with its rays.

How beautiful she is, but how bitter her glance

And how great is the bright residing in her eyes.

She´s so pure and clear minded, but so painfully shy

While watching thru her mirror for her prince to arrive.

How young is her appearance, but how old is her soul

How voluptuous her lips, but how tired her hope.

How infinite her dreams, but how caustic her words

When talking to the man she obsessively adores:

She sees him back and forth parkouring the dance floor

Indifferent to her and dancing Drum & Bass

In a perfect concord with every girl, but her. She blames

The unfair, dammed world, when to her he declares:

"Bash at night is my aim, and hangover´s to know,

How happiness retreats for cowardice in love."

Death and the Maiden

As if beauty was new, she lies in beauty,

Pale and serene like a Madonna lily,
Like an angel sleeping after his daily duty.

Cozy is the bed where resides her lividity,
And soft is the pillow where her head rests adorably:
As if beauty was new, she lies in beauty.

Warm is the silence of her breath and astray,
is her regard while her heart is dying softly,
Like an angel sleeping after his daily duty.

The moon stops weaving in her starry tapestry
And the rosy light of dawn is taking over slowly.
As if beauty was new, she lies in beauty.

Death wants to die for her ungrateful duty
Caressing with her cheek her chest, so gently
Like an angel in love after his daily duty.

Her winding hair she combs with starving avidity
And her still tepid lips she kisses silently:
As if beauty was new, she lies in beauty,
Like an angel sleeping after his daily duty.

The Roast for Charlie Sheen

I´m tired of writing. Not tired of stirring

My aristocratic bitterness in the marmalade pot

Of a Dramatic Monologue. Who invented that,

A Romantic Ossian? A Victorian Homer?

What a great explosion of pleasure I feel

What an incomparable shot in my blood it is:

The blast of its blow invading my cells

My highbrow remarks and opinions burst

In poetic rapture, total ecstasy

Describing the world and seeing the others

With the ineffable "smug look of a toad

breakfasting on fat marsh flies"

Or like a mean Angora cat in tuxedo-like fur

Stalking Chinese carps in a Ming garden pond.

Enough for today.

I already supped and skipped my wife over

But to get to sleep I need to denigrate a while

Something middle-classy in the idiot box:

It´s Celebrious´s Sabbath.

It´s Saturday Night.

So it´s time to inject myself with a

Looking-Down-on-Someone Speed Shot.

Charlie Sheen is being roasted.

McFarland and Tyson, Jeff Ross and Jeselnik,

Steve-O and William Shatner; Jon Lovitz, Kate Walsh,

The hot Amy Schumer and Patrice O'Neal.

What a pagan bunch against the Prufrock of our time!

One hour has passed and the question arises

Like a nighttime ambush in my matchless mind:

Would I dare?

Would I dare, I wonder

Me the poet - would I dare?

Show up on TV prepared to be roasted

The same way I roast?

Would I dare being

Tarred and feathered, wasted, shot, impaled

Summarily executed, plucked, burned, spiced, adorned,

Like a lamb or a goat in a Roman bacchanalia,

And be so Stoic, and calm, and cool cat

Smiling like a baked hog, ataraxic and wise

Serene Buddha cooked with an apple in my mouth

Not losing my smile, keeping my composure

While being mercilessly browned?

Would I dare? Would I have the nerve?

The wit, and the humor, and the quick response?

Could I refrain my lordly bitter highbrow,

The future revenge and the eye for an eye,

And transmute the alchemy of hate

Into graceful arrows of zippy sharp words?

Could I be serene and never resentful?

Would I have enough sportsmanship

When roasted by a gang like this,

My beloved buddies of binge and of excess?

Would I dare? Could I dare? Should I dare?

Woulda Coulda Shoulda, I the laureate?

Would I have the endurance, the military drill

The fox enlightenment, the mileage in battle

The skill to talk back avoiding the fury,

And finish this barrage with my small Rat Pack,

Well toasted, roasted to the bones,

Going to the funky bar across the street to celebrate

How we laughed, how we warmed up the brain

And battled for pleasure in the Norse paradise

Of Comedy Roast?

And break out a bottle of Nectar of Gods

In the name of our wounds miraculously cured

And reconstructed daily after such a slaughter

And say goodnight pals, my brothers in words?

How we love each other and invoked Loki

The spiteful foul mocker, ineffable god

The sharpest tongue ever, and sing his bar song?

"Before thee alone || do I now go forth,

For thou fightest well, I ween."

And see you tomorrow for another clash?

Would I dare, could I dare, should I dare?

Woulda Coulda Shoulda, I the laureate?

Now I have some fever, not able to sleep.

Everything is bigger, my TV has grown

Try to find a handgrip for my fear to stop:

Yeah - my wife is snorting -.

Or is not my wife, but the ghost of me

Cracking down on me for me to pay off?

Because, wait

Nobody said Prufrock and the Duke Alfonso

The ones that I roasted were part of my Roast

And I am the scapegoat going up on stage.