hmmm. if you haven't read this one lately, curl up ....

curious

sh-bop bop doo wa went the finger-snappin boy
curious bout the fine fine place that let him
creep, let him crawl let him do his twistin dance

snap de dum dum strong fine fingers did
their shadow puppets, curious bout the
hammer flat raffin chords his ole daddy

stole when he was a boppin be-boppin lad
layin the land, makin the 2-step, showin
spectaculars to the audience, curtain-callin

his exits, bringin down the house-husband
cheers bravos mores ain't-he-somethins
curious bout that son-a-bitch but muggin

to the suckers, takin dimes from the cousins
was a day behind the times, cause he was
curious bout the flow, flimmin flammin

didn't put the cherries in his bowl, pucker up
his velvet lips for kiss-em-quicks, butter
'n honey tongue for casual speculations

he was a master commander fireman chief
engine-man, chubby checkerin in this fine
fine place that gave notice, counted the applause

slowed it til it beat his heart, ooh ooh ah
only chorus boys go toe-to-toe, wrap the
world in key of g, oh how he was curious

I've had a number of e-mails about my last little snippet, 'neo-taoism'. Essentially, I'm asked, "What the bloody hell does the title mean, and how does it relate to the work?"

The very asking of the question means that it can't be answered. At least not within the context of a blog or through the direct means of what we'd usually consider an 'explanation'. I forwarded these questions on to a Zen master in Hokaido and here is his response:

"Poet, say to them -

when i sail against the gale i drink green tea
but when i sail with the gale i drink black"

Let me also paraphrase an old story often used in teaching:
Two travelers met at an inn and were asked by a monk:
"What is a flower?"
One traveller went down a path into the forest and saw
a small yellow flower just coming into bloom. He sat down
before the flower and became the flower. The other
traveller went down the same path, saw the flower,
and cut the flower from its stem to take back to his
room for study.

who are you?

neo-taoism corrupted

and my breath is fading, falling into crusty sand flats
where little devourers lie in wait, come hungry to the feast,
wearing their salacious smirks as they make their rows in

audience

foundling

a foundling sang within the dunes, and i stuttered
in his grey-blue eyes, tossing castanets aside
buying seasalt from the hermit crabs, to shimmer

on my lips, bribing buttery flies to pay some small
amount of homage, whispering gris-gris ballads poorly
harmonized, to bewitch and magick what days have

wrought, have meddled in my enchantment, and i
bartered with the pawnwomen to redeem one hour,
purchased hungrily when i thought them surfeit,

but may this foundling be a false concoction
a lure of glamours, of capricious entrapments
and i a foolish mockery of comedies never staged

but also may the sun draw into darkness, and the moon
despaired be swallowed by aged and anguished locust
and sirens in their clamor take my longing to their nest

for though my samba spins a lonely pirouette, i still taste
the fantasy spun by wailing of the gulls, and bend before
young winter's thievery, like every young and supple

willow, so dissembles day's last failure, so beglimmers
what abject hope yet clothes me, and i stray into these
sand locked tunnels, tossing my falsettos one more time

a lessening of zen

there fell in
to the sea
one yester morning
a moon unkempt
and readily discarded

Voting began today at http://poetisphere.com for our poet laureate of blogs. Go go go and cast yours.

sitting

i often sit, in those oddment years, among the crocus,
listening to my lilacs, waiting for the peonies to raise
their raucous cries, raise their abject poesies

and i moderate the querulous daffodil, intemperate
neighbors all, forever frenzied with their pollen-heavy
dramas, so cantakerous in their mise-en-scene

and i bow reproached before my sibilant pansies
little humblers of the mongrel rhododendra,
but with the tiring of the day, its awkward and

poorly staged repair, i long for plaintive songs of
calla moths, malicious monologues from velvet
millipedes, sly and pornographic rhumbas by the

luna flies, and how i aria with exultant tse-tses
leap dangerously across my iris-addled fens
until there rises in the glistened banyans

mourning-calls, hesitant asyncopated cantatas
flighty thistle g-minors, swanning through the
berry bogs, where court all manner of fruity aphid,

and beget in victorian fervor my moony and corpulant
cater-wings, but til and only rouse a quorum of pandering
mimosas, feckless whisperers of actionable delight

and i often sit, when lamentation bitters all the dark
caress my muted lips, with my ungenerous lover,
simply unremembered, brushed like chalk across the sand

'next' has been dedicated to her magnificence d. ricca, belle of new orleans

next

morning becomes his wailing wall, newly
enstoned each rising, newly and arcanely patterned
with a night's excretions, newly sterile, enclosing

day in that other place, where windows see his
golem, molded on the tidal flats, woven by the
fortune flies, then clothed by ancient dressers

wise, and knowing to his ways, where to
shadow, when to down with frugal smirks
houselights, that might show his overripe

mascara, his archly painted flowered lips, his
lashes, found neglected in a backstage box,
slice into yester evening's rouge, wrongly and sublimely

colored, arouse some arrogant demi-monde lying
waiting, leeching his a.miller from the balcony
reeling him into wings that could subsume him

and so he piccolos for cues, anxious to a drum roll
that would move his feet from shadows, move
his narrow instep into choreography badly

rhythmed, twirling whirly-gigs to send him front and
center, some rawly and contrived pirandot, some
boulevarded bette, understudied for a closing

arthouse, and morning becomes another cattle call,
tra, one two, la, one two, louder, one two
higher, one two .... one two ....

next

the next audition

he turned, drawing that sardonic grimace away, into
shadow, into his hungry place, where i am lost, ghosting
on our chalk marked stage, some mere and pallid refuse

and i have no lines, but it is unreadably scripted, worn
written in another summer, summoning some other lover
paced for a clever fox-trot, i'm a stumbler in clumsy

three-quarter, bruised by an erotic tango that will never
love me, can't lead me, can't swoop bow spin dervish me,
but in the curtains i can breathe my little haggard asides

take away this face that leaves his audience in sniggardly
conversation, thumbing my inadequacy with hoots and
callow razzes, tossing their reviews into our set, into my

humiliation, take away this face before the house lights
give chase, and cut across the illusion of my role, of my
perfect inability, and he keeps my costume for the next

audition

he hides

he hides in plain and full, middle-day
enshadowed in that harsh bare light
winter passed, fearing hour on hour

summer's ignominy, cavorting in little side-steps
turning from the windows, blanching at the peepsters
eyes acast, adrift, breathing out his neo-natal

whispers, fulfilling his sing-song perambulations,
skip, trot, turn-quick fluttery and buttery tra-las,
pastiched into the sidewalk, a little and unnoticed

extravaganza

Hmm, faithful readers. I've been nominated as the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. I've 11 concurrents, and you can view this oddity at http://poetisphere.com/.

toes bare

when did i lie, yesterday night, pushing
my toes bare on that gravelly wall
zagged with a calligraphy of dark-time webs

i was found out, maybe unclothed, maybe
dancing in my ill-rhythmed samba, maybe
eyes closed beneath the stairs, badly hidden

waiting, but i am ever awkward in my
waiting, an erratic fumbler of buttons,
tasting of tongue marks, poorly timed bruises

where did i grow graceless, little flutters of
puccini-clefs, or was i even unawakened,
a ragged quick-be-done, left in oblique twilight

but where did i lie, impatiently used,
randomly and quixotically trifled, tat-tat-tattered
a bothersome lisp for a schoolyard bully

and where goes the sun, little humbler, little
famous braggart, when your hungry face
has found its full, its satiated place

i am forgot, loose fondled ephemera
needing no response, well worthy of ingratitude
toe prints on a zagged gravelly wall

ps, dedicated to m. cunningham

when i'm young

tomorrow i'll be young, again, fluid lithe imaginary
short rapid shadows on the window, derisive and harsh
beardlessly iconic and wrapped in blue cotton denim

a siren, again, pubescent scented, an anxious and fallow
field, again, summer-faced down in dallier's lane, bare
footed, bare necked, the sweat of remembrance beneath

your sheets, the salt crusting on your lips, i'll be rinsed
away into the sea, ebbing tequila drops burrowed into
your tongue, asleep unseen beside your heart

and so you'll follow me, tomorrow, somewhere i can
magick you, draw life from you, succumb bewitched
an incubus spare bleak in stark ochres, unsorcelled

so i will dance that phoenix rumba gig in a butchy
boy finale, spinning dementing and when you love
me, my breathing's done, dissipated, when i'm young

Provincetown. Snow, rain, fog. 'By the Bay' redefined. Yes, San Francisco, I've left. I'll sign this note with a hint toward anticipation. Return, faithful readers, late tomorrow night for a new work. Reserve a nice bottle of wine.