SEER

Between the game
and my aim
lust fills the moment.

Your reply’s flame
does the same,
fulfills the omen.

WORD

I started this work in cuneiform
but I couldn't undam the poem.
The stone wedged it. Bereft, mute, tuneless,
the task I adjourned to papyrus,
The flooding rendered it all a smudge,
its squiggly hieroglyphic unedged.

I converted to parchment and quill,
betook myself to tonsure and cowl,
to abstinence and flagellation, 
but manuscript illumination
of my holy writ couldn't complete.

Printing press further repressed my wit,
O! Its backwardness and reverses
transformed my tercets into curses.
Typing required guitarist fingers,
not these mallet hands of my nature.

Word processors came to my rescue
at last! Too late, alas, for my muse.

THAT Y IN MISER IS ME: A MELODRAMA

I had thought to hoard your beauty,
to store it safe and proud
in that place where you'd amused me
and none else would be allowed.
But you crept out through the tower,
and you burst out into World.

Now you perfume your universe
with circus, peacocks, clouds . . . .
while I stay locked in duty
with my memory and my
                              (shroud
    almost I wrote/ A miser's booty
    lost!!! Hyperbole for the horde.)

PARIS ERECTION

His cock had set the hour
when Paris’ city would die.

Eiffel made a tower
to mate Paris with the sky.

GAZA REDUX

This time there is no honey left in the lion
and there are no brass shackles on Samson.
Arise, mace and chariot of Dagon!

Trouble began when mythical brothers
confused their identities as others’
shadows and mirrors, instead of doubles.

Dagon resented the enemy’s reign.
Injustice and neglect made him insane.
“They’ve laid waste our land and multiplied our slain.”

Nova morning burst and then exploded.
Nova dancers flared up and then went dead.
The sun worshipers fled while others bled.

Samson was ordered to regrow his mane
and to resume his judgment, now unchained,
and yet remain blind to the others’ pain.

The jawbone of an ass – heartless orders --
Samson deploys 30-cubit shoulders --
the heaps upon heaps of children smolder.

Samson expands an eye for an eye
to peacock’s tails and needles’ eyes.
Gaza is as flax that was burnt with fire.

Burn all the wells! Keep the corpses hostage!
Grind up humanity into sausage:
tabulate but don’t value the lossage.

Samson/Dagon said: “Though you have done this,”
(each said) “yet of you will I be avenged
and after that” (they promised) “I will cease.”

Samson said, “Now shall I be more blameless,
though” (Dagon said) “I do them displeasure
to do to him as he hath done to me.”

Soldiers and martyrs measure their service
on the basis of duties, not mercies.
Each world regards the world as its world is.