Whitman in Amsterdam

High

In myself delighting

Lights shimmering from Canals
I wander into a small house

A short-bus

Gathered are the Dutch

Locals making music sipping

Watching from the corners

Of their eyes

The man on the bed

Four-poster

The man with the long white beard

Delighting in himself

Masturbating

As sippers sip as

Voyeurs get wet

As I delight in the ambiance

Of Amsterdam

Jack 2/29/12

444

Four hundred forty-four doves

Alight upon my backyard

Pecking the green

Pooping black and white pellets

Fertile on the fallow soil

Who would say it is a sign of

Peace in the world all these

Doves congregated cooing with

Vibrations of love in one place

 Not I for had I but pieces of

Bread I'd toss them from my porch

The doves would turn and peck

Bird flesh fighting for morsels

They should never eat as we

Consume such oddities that make us

Ill 

No matter for the doves panic

As if I had fired a gun or some wild

Dog had charged barking among them

Though there was nothing

And all aflutter flapping and mad

The doves soar away into the white

Cloud shaped like a dragon

Jack 2-23-12

Waxing and Waning

Photo by Dar

Kalani

Waning and Waxing

There is lunacy in love

Like the tide blood

Moves toward and then away

From the blood of each other

You increase in my mind

Like the Crescent Moon

A sliver of my life and then

More as your light fills my vision

As the ever increasing sphere

Of the moon increases filling

The sky blocking out the light

Of all those stars we have adored

Until my life is full of you

And the fullness is the sphere

Of our existence sacred 

Blinding

Then like the moon

Our love recedes back into

The night the unconscious for

We know the moon is no less

However much its light yields back

The stars and wandering planets of our

Lives

The moon recedes until there is

A Crescent in the dawn

Rising over the sea just before the Sun

As the moon vanishes

We are sure the cycle will repeat

That we shall share the fullness

Love gives us

Over and
Over 


Jack 2-22-12

Voice

How she tried to dance

The girl in the magenta blouse

Swinging her arms up and down

Tossing her long blond curls 

Smiling with teeth like pearls

Bumping and thrusting her tall

Girl's body against him

The guy in the olive T-shirt

Black glasses from the Fifties

Not even wanting her maybe

Wishing he did as the singer

Full beard lean body sang

High pitched voice full of pain

His body bent by his youth

And his age stirred with alcohol

Eyes focused on his song

Not the girl flailing as if drowning

In her own pink desperation

Nor the lanky boy aware only

Of his unfulfilled self embarrassed

Just enough to walk away not hearing

The plaint of the singer's voice

More beautiful than anything 

He or she would ever know

Jameson  2/13/12

The Moon and the Wanderers

With wonder I saw tonight the near full moon

Rising in the East and overhead Jupiter Zeus King

Of the gods fallen from grace seldom seen now

And to the West dazzling Venus Aphrodite in the afterglow

Of the Sun fading behind trees bare in the Winter that

Did not come veins reaching to a sky no one looks at here

Gods that I have seen all my life on other continents

In the other hemisphere on islands in the Pacific

Moon planets stars that have been my truest companions

Immortal still unmurdered yet by humans as I

Wonder how a planet molten and burning like Venus

Could be so beautiful across the abyss separating us

Have we all lost perspective gazing rather at the voids

Between us and others the incomprehension of our world

Spinning to no purpose as we pollute the sky

The ocean the landscapes everything we once called sublime

For thousands of years because in our ignorance and our

Selfishness our desire to be gods ourselves

We destroy destroy destroy

Each other and our world 

And still there is this wonder of  two dazzling planets above me

And a moon veiled with a wisp of cloud that give me joy

To know they will be here when I am not.

Jack 2/5/12