Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Dance of the Yin-Yang Skeletons

Dance of the Yin-Yang Skeletons

They dance every black night within the ghost light of the moon,
They’ve danced since ancient ages, and they'll not be stopping soon,
Earthworms have eaten all the brain from inside of their heads,
They do not understand, nor care, so long have they been dead

Clicking and a clacking, spin around and ‘round and reel,
Immortal skeleton lovers spin in crazy dharma wheels,
When she dipped she lost her head again, about an hour ago,
He fixed her broken ring finger with his left third little toe

Yinnie and Yang-ling, so fast, they effortlessly twirl,
One cannot tell which one’s the which, the guy, or that the girl?
Yinning and Yanging they blur and disguise all the world,
‘till left and right, all wrong and right, are dizziness and swirls

Each dances in support of their old ancient skeleton lover,
The love eternal that they share, is caring for each other,
He catches her when she falls down, lifts with a ghoulish grin,
She takes his hand when his white ribs are exhausted of wind

While having loved Yin, Yang makes schemes to do away with her,
He plans to grind her bones someday, and into bread flour stir,
Yinnie too much too loves her Yang, thus his life’s too at stake,
For while she gnaws upon his heart, her hunger goes unslaked

Back to back and arm in arm, they count off twenty paces,
Then shoot fat holes into each others black gap tooth-y faces,
They’re the dual in duality, the ways of earthly means,
They give birth to dead children who cry horrid banshee screams

Over potters fields lost they strut macabre promenades,
Treading on old tired ghosts, who cling onto their rotting bods,
The skeletons there consummate their sworn vows to divorce,
By breaking specters from their flesh, and stomping on their corpse

And on anon the skeletons dance,
  Their jig of crass romance,
You ask how long on can they go on?
  Have the living any chance?

When all the Earth’s dust’s blown away,
  Still Yin-Yang skeletons will dance


Saturday, October 27, 2018

Fragments of a Skeleton

Fragments of a Skeleton 

For eight years,
He has come to mean Halloween
  Outside our home,
As much, even, as the Rabbit or
  That Jolly Tubby Man
  Embody their Holidays

Most the year he spends hung in our garage,
Across on the wall from Blue Polyethylene Mary and a Joseph
  With their swaddling baby, who it is foretold
Must suffer naked nights out in December’s cold
  Then back in here for hot summers of cruelties too gruesome
  To be mentioned in Dante’s annals of Hell
 
He’s a skeleton whose ghost is gone
Lynch like he swings from dusk to dawn
  Upon a tree branch over our lawn
One yellowed tooth now lost and missing
  Which the whistling wind makes hoot and hissing
  As if possessed by owls and snakes in song 

From seven years’ October Suns
He’s discolored to a gray ash yellow,
  As gone is the green night glow that he once shined
When was first purchased and was new,
  His blinking eyes having both gone hollow
  Since a leaky battery corroded his mind

These rank October days and Sun
Bleaching crisp his haggard bones, everyone,
  While the desiccate wind scales him to bits
That mow and leaf rake will till in
  What hallowed ground will take him in,
  Not much longer until he’s gone

So lonely to hang with him here,
We had like zero kids last year,
  My bones too have grown stiff and creak
My tendons ache, I’m sore and weak,
  With him it’s all I can do to sigh
And mourn the season in a world
  Where even skeletons must die
 

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

The Billion Dollar American Haircut

The Billion Dollar American Haircut

I never play the lottery
This week I played the lottery

I thought
  What it would be like to win all that hair
     Shimmee-and-a-shake in a Beatle wig

I let them take a little clipping
  Which they put into a basket, then
Other people let them take little clippings
  Which they put into that same basket

They put that basket into a bigger basket
Which went into a bigger basket
Which went into the biggest basket ever in the world

And we all thought
  What it would be like to win all that hair
    We could make a new Woodstock and close the New York Thruway, Man!
   
  Nobody won all that hair

  Repeat

Mean while, 2/5ths of the hair went to government wigs,
  George Washington had a whiter wig
  Lincoln had a fuller beard
  Hamilton did a Broadway jig
  Jackson was replaced by Harriet Tubman
  Grant had his nose hairs plucked
  Franklin had a new fur collar on his coat

Don’t believe me? Look at your money

And we all thought
   Wow, that’s what it looks like to win all that hair
      Let’s get King Louis pompadours, and call it macaroni

  Repeat

Except this time
  Somebody won all that hair

Nobody I knew won all that hair
Everybody I knew was balding
I’m balding

We don’t resent them
  Like sheep to be shorn we stand on line again
We stand on line again to be clipped again
  We stand on line again to give hair we can’t afford to lose

We all thought
  Wow, somebody somewhere is in a room with all that hair
I wouldn’t know what to do with all that hair
  The things I could do with all that hair, like maybe …

My ears are cold,
  Did I ever tell you ‘I love ‘Ewe” ?

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Savor October

Savor October 

As the sun sets sooner
  Upon a cooler day,
As nor’easter blows will beckon
  Damp and wet like weathermen say,
After the last lawn mow, before
  The leaves have blown away,
This aroma of mildew and compost and rot
  Has blended in a hummus
Delicious enough in to dip a carrot
  Or paste upon a pita,
(Could a breeze be so substantial
  as to spoon spread) then
Washed down with ginger beer
  And black Bermuda seal rum

Tastes
  I will re-savor
When boldly standing here again
  Come crisp winter’s sterile air



Sunday, October 14, 2018

Lullaby of Summer

Lullaby of Summer

At times insects come with winter wood,
Making scenes, and they but rarely one good

Such as the ant colony awakened,
Thawed in here by heat the wood stove’s making

Chinese fire drill ants running all about,
What could I do but throw them all back out?

Tonight it’s a more tenuous chirping,
Creak like in the boards of the woodworking

Examining the legs beneath my chair
I found naught there was lacking for repair

And brought on dreams of past summers’ thickets,
Joyful buzz whirred behind clean white pickets

Seems this cricket thinks my hearth a
  Warm compline sun,
While winter night claims Earth
  And everyone