Susan Kahil singer/songwriter/poet is originally from the UK but has lived in Southern Spain for the past twelve years.  In a secluded mountain valley on her olive, orange and avocado farm. Surrounded by nature lots of animals and wildlife is where she gets her inspiration for poetry and original songs.   
Susan likes to look for the beauty and infinite potential in all things.
 
https://www.facebook.com/susan.kahil
 

​                     SHATTERPROOF HEART
 
They said her heart was unbreakable
Bullet and shatterproof, scratch resistant, impenetrable
Against the wrath of hail, fire and brimstone
Then how the hell could ‘Love’ leave its mark a binding tone
With one delicate tender warm breath wave, whispering an
‘I love you’ of sanguinity
Subtly absorbed inside past a labyrinth of defenses unlocking
The doors to affinity
Releasing a kaleidoscope of fluttering butterflies
Flittering wings of lighted lashed eyes
Once a shatterproof heart now without encased armour
Freely beating to the rhythm of her consummate charmer

​                                   BECAUSE I
 
I don’t love you because I need you
I need you because I love you
 
I don’t love you because I want you
I want you because I love you
 
I don’t love you because you are me
I love you because I am you
 
I love you because I  

                            RED ROSE PETALS
 
​
He gave his love a red rose
With a perfume that was heaven scent
And as they smelt that red rose
They knew their love was meant
 
As he marched off to war
She had tears in her eyes
And as they fell upon each petal
Her love he was crying inside
 
She pressed each rose petal
In a page of the good book
And sent one in each letter
Which he her love he took
He placed them inside a pocket
Close to his chest
When they brought him home
They laid him down to rest
 
She scattered red rose petals
Upon his resting place
And whenever she smelt a red rose
She remembered his beautiful face
 
When the time came for her to join him
Her final wish to be
That between their two headstones
To plant a red rose tree
 
Every year at autumn time
When the winds they did blow
The petals were scattered upon them
As a symbol of their love we know
 
The perfume from countless petals
Saturated the earth below
And after their headstones had crumbled
The red rose tree did grow and grow
 

​                                   Errors of fate
 
I tip toed across cotton-fluffed clouds
Skipped with the colour strands of the rainbow
Hitch hiked on a falling crisp golden leave of autumn
Skimmed sliding over the mirror of Venus a frozen lake
Did high fives with gushing waves as they rolled into shore
Pushing them back into the belly of the ocean
Danced under the spotlight of the suns veil
Held the breeze and shook it like a clean sheet
Until the ashes and dusts of wailing lost souls
Into my infinite became a turbulence of resurrections
Pleading their cases of a much to soon passage of tempos stolen     
Swirling and whirling humming to the tune of Henryk Gorecki’s
‘Symphony of Sorrowful Souls’
Picking up gathering their collections of lost hopes and dreams
From the deep mucky sediment of tear soaked screams
Now mosaic pieces embedded within the earths crust
Silence of their past awakenings echoed inside the errors of fates
Justice for the rhythms that were interfered somehow modified
A time-dependant equation with quantum potential of spirit
So I the weaver of destinations that were, shall be and are
Unclogged the eroded gears of horrors into reverse transposed
Squealing this beat less heart I pushed and resuscitated with cosmic breaths
Until rusted worn hands moved towards the wise direction of anti
Reset to make something out of absolutely nothing
All reserved spaces in time filled by the wretched unfortunate souls
Murdered, slaughtered, diseased or by accident waiting their dues
Only by the grace of a heavenly scent and a whispering willow
Did every speck of dust blown into obscurity become written
Penciled into the pages of the book of loves compassion
Into an understanding that all sufferings, destinies and joys 
Are but chains of events wrong or right good or bad interlinked
That there be an intelligence far beyond our mortal perceptions
Which will aggregate into a shimmering cluster of awareness
With a spring in my step I disappeared as a dampening mist into the evermore and the souls followed

Kasy Long is a senior creative writing major at Ohio Northern University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Otoliths, The Sucarnochee Review, Glass Mountain, The RavensPerch, and Polaris Literary Magazine. In her free time, she watches I Love Lucy, reads Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and dreams about the beautiful Lake Chautauqua in western New York. After graduation, she hopes to work in communications for a thriving cultural museum.
 

                              To Miss the Mark
 
I let the arrow soar;
it swings through the trees and I watch it disappear.
I pray no animals are lost, then I hear the groans.
I turn my back and raise the bow.
 
I shoot the arrow into the air,
then wait for it to meet its victim.
I whisper an apology.
 
The release is intoxicating,
the snap of the bow as the arrow flies into
the forest woods.
Faint whines bounce and echo in the trees.
 
I lower my arm,
let the passing fawn wander.
 
 
 
                              Chinless Star
                                                                  For Dorothy Kilgallen
Am I right in assuming that you withheld information for your next news article? That you went to the grave with a poisoned throat, a tainted tongue, a swallowed heart? Am I right in assuming that you feared for lost opportunities? You aimed for quick wits and justice. Crimes excited you; answers fueled your brain. You knew who shot JFK, didn’t you? You knew who put a bullet in his brain, who drained American politics, who was a part of the Oswald team. People answered, “What’s my line?” in your presence. Or rather, you asked them questions to figure out the clues. Tell us, what’s your line? You hid evidence behind closed doors; you found joy in scribbled documents. Pencil shavings sprinkled your newspaper desk. A fresh piece of paper remained locked in your typewriter. They found you, dead in your New York apartment, fallen in chaotic bedsheets with an empty pill bottle resting in your cold hand. Tears releasing droplets of secrets on your velvet pillowcase. Ssh, ssh, the secret is too controversial. Ssh, ssh, you should’ve stayed quiet, chinless star. What’s your line, Dorothy Kilgallen?
 
 
 
                                    We’ll Be Fine
 
                                                                        For Langston Hughes’s “Life is Fine”
 
Sweet Daddy came to me in a dream.
I sank deeper into my midnight musing,
his face greeted me in the dark.
 
I came up from the trance and screamed
into the night. I saw him drowning
in a cold bed of water—dying with his eyes
closed tightly in fear.
 
I shivered         in the cot.         It was cold!
 
When I shut my eyes, I saw him rising
above the ground. He called to me,
I wished to bring him to me.
 
I cried for him, my sweet Daddy,
I hollered in my dream.
“Daddy, no! Life is fine!”
 
But I was         trapped in here!           Trapped so deep!
 
But living is what my Daddy dreamed. So he chose
to live for me. He chose not to sink in the water.
I’ll be angry, sweet Daddy,
if you try to leave me. Don’t sink, float.
 
We’ll be fine!               Fine as wine!               We’ll be fine!
 
 

                     Ode to the Gentle Dancer
 
Firefly, firefly,
when your dancing light twinkles and shines,
so does my pulsing, beating heart.
 
It waits for your tempo, your cue,
your rhythmic appearance in the nighttime sky.
It sees the dancing light and responds with delight.
 
Firefly, firefly,  
stay with me tonight and shine.
Be the ancient star under the moon’s glow.
 
Light on, light off.
Light on, light off.
Twinkle, twinkle, little dancing star.
 
Firefly, firefly,
you bring rays of soft dull hope
in the darkness of my midnight musings.
 
A beauty like yours is so rare,
shine for me, gentle dancer of the air.
 
  
 
          Ode to the Remington Typewriter


​Dripping with themes and metaphors
about nature, songs, life—the olive green tool
calls to my mind, summons the ghosts of past
ideas, and brings them to life.
 
The machine clinks and clanks
toward inspiration—sending knowledge
to the black keys and ink ribbons.
The sewing machine tick-tick-tick of the keys
chimes words into my mind.
 
This Remington is not perfect;
small scratches cover its edges,
keys stick and jam in place, words with
noticeable errors on the page.
 
The typewriter resides in nostalgia shops.
A vintage treasure-keep,
a rusted tool, a friend,
a muse, a watchman over my insecurities.
 
Stealing words from minds,
turning them into voices.

​ 
                          WINGED SYCOPHANTS

winged sycophants
feathers studded
with real diamonds
that refract faux stars
against a reluctant milky way
violent zigzags
with every turn of the wing
feather-strobe lights
a thousand seizures
 
winged sycophants
skin white as the kind of tooth
known to slice through every soul
in sight making halves
of halves of infinitesimal halves                                              
the keys to whiteness are
a) sunlessness
b) drinking pure gold
from the master’s blood-red lips
 
winged sycophants
sneer for hours
at chained nobodies
in muddy robes
streaked with tears
paper skin faces lined
with blue-black veins
hidden in hoods
one endless moan
 
winged sycophants
stretch mechanical wings
over empty highways
over vacant shops
over leafless forests
where trees are crooked spines
broken vertebrae
where branches sag
beneath the weight of absent birds
 
 
 
                             YOUR WINDOWS

Sidewalks yawn and stretch,
dry as worn-out lips
beneath passersby
who pass by
like nameless shadows.
 
I watch their little legs
that move in blurs
and their top hats
like thumbtacks
and their petticoats
like eraser smears.
 
Who are all these people, anyway?
Are their footsteps light,
or do they drag their boots against the pavement?
Are their vocal cords tied in knots?
Are they feeling dismayed?
Have any of them just fought with friends?
No, they’re too little to have any problems.
 
But then the rain begins
and drives them away--
sending them shivering
to their homes.
 
Now everyone is gone.
No one will notice if I leap
from my window
and brave the falling waves
and ring your doorbell
and hand you my letter
or read it out loud
right then and there
with your contorted face framed
in the door
and pull you outside
and hold you
and embrace you
and wait
for the downpour to wash us clean.
 
You’re so close—right across the street
I see your bedroom windows light up:
two glowing squares through the downpour.
I pretend they’re your eyes watching me.
I watch them back.
I watch hard, very hard and for very long.
 
And then I see a flicker of you
just a flicker of you maybe
maybe it’s you, I’m not
sure, for you’re smaller
even smaller still
than those passersby
who were on the street.
You’re grayer than everyone.
 
I want to stay and watch,
but I must turn away, I have no choice--
I can’t let this go on.
As my neck moves it creaks
below my skull, creaks.
My muscles
tense like steel
in times like these.
 
It’s a heavy-breathing night
with water panting down,
but my own breaths are shallow
with hope. Warm and dry,
it wraps around my shoulders,
tingles down my spine,
scratches lightly at my vertebrae
in its familiar way.
 
 
 
                                     LA VIDA DE UNA ABUELA SOLA                     

New day.
She gets up slowly    so
slowly and puts on her slippers.
Without thought    with movements of routine,
she boils water for tea.
It is early, and still her world is blurry    so blurry.
Fruit covers the kitchen counters    she sees the colors--
the reds and greens of the manzanas,
the oranges of the naranjas, the yellow plátanos--
But     she     doesn’t     see     their     forms.
 
Each week she buys 23 apples, 17 oranges, and 14 bananas
even though she lives alone.
Each week she smells the sugar of the fruits melting
and becoming a syrup of decay.
Her grandchildren would always eat fruit,
fruit after every meal, and would run, run a lot
through the house, animated
by sugar. They’d leap into her arms   with light   and energy.
But now.
Now her arms are as weak as the limbs of a barren orange tree,
and her grandchildren have moved to America
where they are very busy, very, very busy
and don’t know much Spanish anymore, not much at all,
except “te quiero” (“I love you”),
words they tell her through the phone
every now and then.
They are far away with their new language,
and she lives alone, alone
with her kitchen and her table with many chairs
and her heaps of fruit
and her mirror that she neglects because she does not want to see,
does not want to see her fragile body,
too weak to take a plane.
 
New day.
She gets up slowly    so
slowly and puts on her slippers.
Without thought    with movements of routine,
she boils water for tea.
It is early, and still her world is blurry    so blurry.
Fruit covers the kitchen counters    she sees the colors--
the rojas and verdes of the apples,
the naranjas of the oranges, the bananas amarillas--
But     she     doesn’t     see     their     forms.
 
 

                             WHEN YOU LEAVE

blond tendrils
stuck
to my forehead    ocean-curled
salty skin   
         seaweed legs
sun
      slips beneath
a royal sky
into a sailboat moon  
     sea deeply breathing
waves
fire pit on the sand
beers
        popped
whispers      
         shouts   
belly laughs
       crooked cartwheels
 
when twilight takes a nice long sigh
the sky turns starless black
and everyone goes fast to sleep
everyone except me    lost
roaming through
yet another neural
        labyrinth
 
Happiness--
when you’re here
you’re familiar as my childhood
       blanket
soft
       as Mother’s fingers
on my forehead but
 
Happiness--
when you’re gone
I forget your face
forget your name    long for you
beneath cold sheets
as the waning moon eyes me
through half-closed curtains
my stomach    my jaw    
my hands    clenching
       nothing
tension    clenching
and then
       nothing
I wake up sore   
        hurt
needing something
or someone
        to hold
 
Happiness--
when you leave
       I wish
I could mark on my calendar
the date of your
       return
for counting down days
months      years
is easier than
       not knowing
if we’ll meet again
 
 
                                BEAUTY V. LOVE

Beauty is a tomato sliced in two.
Red, sweet, and wet,
pulsing like hearts.
The pink pearl-seeds
seem as wonderful as love.
But I have yet to learn about love.
 
Some girls know love well.
They’re drawn to round things
that are whole like tumbleweeds
or the world or pregnant bellies.
These girls fall in love with a seed,
help it blossom with their tears.
 
Some people have love in and out
and all around them.
Others are gray and brittle
as driftwood.
Some people wanting love
mistakenly search for beauty instead.
 
They think love and beauty are the same.
But beauty is thin to the touch
and perishable as a crocus petal.
Love is thick as rope bound to a boat,
wrapped round and round,
round and round.
 
Love is round. At night, I curl
inside my comforter, tight as a snail
or a ringlet in my mother’s hair.
Sometimes I wish I were still a fetus,
a tiny seahorse in the waves,
a rocking horse in the dead of night.
 
 

​My work has appeared in a number of journals, including Midwest Poetry Review, Coal City Review, Poetry East,and Negative Capability. My most recent books, Leaning: A Poetics of Personal Relations (Left Coast Press/Routledge), Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing (Left Coast Press/Routledge), and If the Truth Be Told (Sense Publications), call upon the poetic as a research strategy.

 
 
 
                                      Wish
 
 
Crawling toward
your final hour,
dragging a fool’s
history of
errors across
everyday’s sharp
glass, trying to
grab another
day, you utter
another wish
as if desire,
that sliver of
sun, might soon melt
your frozen heart.

 
 
 
 
                                      Final Years
 

 
Others walk around him
as if his age can’t be
touched
 
Others sit, fidgeting,
wondering when enough time
has gone by
 
Others speak, leaning in,
loud and slow, as if to a child
who won’t listen
 
Others attend, checking,
worried, concern
covering every word
 
Others drive, after buckling
him in, as if care equals
containment
 
Others show photographs
he can hardly see, believing
his life is memory
 
Others forget, as if stopping
for a moment
is the same as regret

 
 
 
                   What the Skeleton Resents
 
​
 
Being an object lesson, labels
pointing to all its parts, gathering dust
in doctor offices and school rooms,
or hanging from a limb on Halloween nights,
standing sentry at tombs of the unknown
 
being dependent upon the hinges,
the connecting links, how together
the parts would move, each twist calling
for another part’s turn, each reach carrying
the weight below, without asking for consent
 
being bound to protect the heart, the brain
knowing how they could suffer a blow, a crack,
to keep all safe, how all the other parts get
the body’s credit while its marrow does the labor
of replenishing cells and healing the sick
 
being placed in plaster when broken, made
to suffer written rubbish above its wound,
or dropped in the ground, dirt thrown
in its face or burned into bits and pieces
knowing that once it was more than itself
 
being structures that let lives live, being
abandoned, left like fallen bricks.
 

                  There Was a Snake in My Garden
 
 
Snakes in the early dawn never intend for good,
But maybe the dewing wet in the seep of this garden
Have cast your willowy shadow on this lawn
To cool the bates in your slithering, looping mood.
 
Snakes in the early dawn, when the sun is coolest,
Is a boneless outcast passing round and round
Until the birds of the air descend on my backyard,
Who squawk for losing another meal, or provide him Nature.
 
 
 
 
                                 Winter in Love
 
 
I love you in Winter, and in all seasons.
 
I love you in your black, now silver, snow-scraping coat
That now shines like a crystalline gown,
As the silver, free-wheeling laughs you shout
Are only heard by me, the sleeping city and hushed clouds.
 
I love you in Winter till you are toasty.
I love you like only love can be loved
When we can only be this human,
And can only be this young.  
 
The smoky wisp of neighboring chimneys
And the breath of the moon
Only brighten the twinkle
In your snowflake, tickled eyes.
 
I love you in Winter, and in all seasons.
 
I love how you leap in bushes of snow
As we roam in the flurries dumped by the sky
That give reason for your red scarf,
And another for why we hold another so tight.
 
 
 
 
                   Night Watching the Universe
 
 
Gift me everything about you
On this roof-top.
 
Let me know if you think
God is up to something.
 
Tell me your familiar things,
Tell me your scary things
That would make this world
Seem like small space,
Or death.
 
Or would you like
To roam the cosmos
Finding stars before the
City Light countdown,
Or until the universe drops itself?  
 
 

                                   Your Stories
 
 
Bring me your stories, and I will be your keeper of tales.
 
From your towers damselled in distressed,
Let me scribble not theirs, but your escaped lores and fables.
 
Away from everywhere, in the midst of this empty, plastic domain,
Paint me your passionate parables impressed on your purpose,
For I will stain and dye your untamed spectacles on chronicled lines.
 
Share with me those long walks in autumn,
Where the golden trees hang like mythic shadows.
Or perhaps where you dropped those last pieces of leaves
In those metropolitan cities, where language is wordless.  
 
Allow me to capture the welling tears of an unblinking martyr.
Tell me His Kingdom, as in Heaven has come. Tell me that God is dead and done.
 
Let me linger in your abandoned howls from midsummer, from beginning to October end,
As this weary patience dangles on the fringe of explosions, without escape!
For I will seek what you abandoned to hide,
And bring your double identity to light.
 
For in all the crumblings of the tellings and findings of what you thought you knew,
I will scratch your adventures of living proof for a world and heaven complete,
But all I ask, is that you please continue…
 
 
 

​                                     Alcohol


Sometimes,
My roommate's live-in roommate
Tries to replace me in my very own home
 
Sometimes,
He sneaks right by
And leaves a dirty sock
Takes a corner of her closet
Goes by a new name:
Controlled
 
Other times,
I wake up on the street
My clothes in a soggy pile around me
And the locks changed.
 
Either way,
I lose my home
 
                                   Reckless

He runs around the half court
In green gripped socks
Sweat soaking his new favorite shirt
            (hospital gown blue)
Laughter fills his basketball
And the rest of us lunge around the room
Rather than let the time bomb fall
And deflate

                            Forever Combustible
 
Bathed in rays so bright
They burn your dark lip-rings and your hair
Melts into malted tatters
At the feet of the quay ferries that used to pass Denison
now blind and butchered
So incoherently used up that the world
Cannot comprehend
And your homeless
Ambiguity makes all beasts randy
And your ears as hoped up 
As warp-speed starships
Leak attitude
And the place you occupy can't stand your vile
Irritation
But someone loves you,
like a flu that will not quit
Like an eye watering sting
As flies engulf your face
Filth and cow shit happy
Your endlessness stinks of rotten seventies goth
Before goth was rancid
And forgotten
As everything will be forgotten
Over and over again
And again and again...
 
 
                                        Life of Codes
 

Secret codes bathed
Deep within the words
Hints at humanity
Cryptic dots and strikes lace
Lines of interpretation
Suffocating fragmented misunderstanding
Toward dawn and all
That is therefore awakened
 
 
                           A letter to an old friend
 
To begin-
My mother said
That-
                                     Your mother said
                                                         That

you had a rough night
in Spain...

I would like to express a deep consternation
For the safe keepings of your soul and that of your wellbeing.

You can never be
~TOO~ careful
In reckless diligence
Whilst gallivanting

Keep your eyes peeled
As if they are ripened oranges,
For there ARE
------------FUCKING VULTURES------------
everywhere...
Fucking Carnivorous flying beasts
poised to strip you
of rotting flesh,
with phantom bones and tusks and razor whiskers of daylight horrors
Protruding from silent beauty
Lust,
Lush
With breast
of the most incredible copulations
Seething to counterbalance wretched 
Monetary systems
Structured so vastly
So indestructible
With pure goals
Of strict wealth displacement,
Prisoning them in holding patterns.


                                                  Action

Welcome Chaplin and Chan
And Godzilla or king Kong,
-Not only with distrust
But circumferenced (by)or circumferencing all that may
Swoop or dive,
(remember even Leroy Brown had a soft side)
And you too may learn to fly.

Home will always represent
Warm safe things
Even on the coldest nights
But the lacerations
From hacking fingers violently from feeble hands
Will never hold
Such viral
Infectious
Joy as risk
Taken so mindlessly light-hearted as they do whilst drowning.
 

                       The Interstellar Kingdom
 
Sometimes I saw the sky smiling at me
The clear empty and clouds of flowers
like my old soul
watch my figure in the world
 
The earth beneath my feet is a colossal ship
towards to the Interstellar Kingdom
The cities where giants live in
blossom on the Milky Way without dusts


                            The Huge Paradise

 
The giants of soul flashing
have a pair of invisible wings
Can fly over the Milky Way in a dream
to those mysterious Kingdoms
 
Bring the words of the gods
Let the stonebe transparent and smile
Let heaven and earth revolve wonderfully
become a huge paradise


                            The Giant's Song
 

Give me a mirror of heaven
let me see my tomorrow
Give me a pair of eyes of the gods
let me see the prehistoric city of giants
 
Oh , the golden country of legend
The angel garden above the clouds
Your soul bird returns from the outer space
Has carried the giant's song for you


                      ​The City of Angel's Smile
 
​
The silvery and white words of the kingdom of the moon
flashlight in the dream last night
The king of giants
in the huge cities of prehistoric times
presented me the gem book of the soul
 
I will build a garden in the desert
fill the jade bottle with sweet spring from the kingdom of heaven
Let the rivers and lakes shining
a city of the angel's smile

 
 
 
                      TIME TO PLANT TEARS
           
 
                        He died for a long time—and then again.
                        His tricks were slick—underhanded, but kind
                        as cats. Making his breath slower than her eyes,
                        he’d slip away, recarve his headstone and
                        laugh under dirt—then cough. She’d never find
                        his living corpse but she didn’t try. She’d feel
                        alone—briefly—then cook or watch TV
                        or shuffle Tarot cards. Her days would grind
                        along. He came back—faithful as a tree--
                        and she served dinner knowing he’d clear
                        their clean dishes. It’s the game of their years--
                        or his. She played with her cards not his fears
                        and she was sure it would happen again--
                        She’d forgive—again—then uncover mirrors.
 

 
                              OUTSIDE EDEN
 
 
                                    This moon
                                    makes things cold.
                                    The air’s brittle
                                    as dry twigs and
                                    leaves crack
                                    like snail shells.
                                    Adam had a name
                                    for these days.
                                    Adam
                                    had a name
                                    for everything.
 
                                    The fire’s
                                    burned low and
                                    glows red. The boys
                                    and their wives
                                    are quiet--
                                    the girls, moist,
                                   and boys are soft.
                                   I feed
                                   sticks to coals
                                   and think
                                   of my first boys.
 
                                    The round one--
                                     He laughed like lightning
                                     and got quickly mad.
                                     He always smelled
                                     like dirt.
                                     His skin was cool,
                                     soft at his middle
                                     but his hands were hard--
                                     clumsy as rocks.
 
  
                                    That other--
                                    I never warmed
                                    to him. He chased
                                    animals—sure
                                    that boys should do that.
                                    He made Adam
                                    smile—Adam
                                    had a nice smile,
                                     but I never liked
                                     that boy.
 
                                     So I rock
                                     on my heels under
                                     a cold moon. I
                                     feed sticks to a fire
                                     and I wonder
                                     if my little, round
                                     Cain
                                     will ever again
                                     visit his mother.
 
                                                                       
 
                            A SORT OF A SONNET
 
 
            The mirror shows no mercy
            reflecting this stranger.
 
            The mirror is a cold construction
            built of silver, built of glass.
 
            Where could the mirror hide mercy
            for her forgotten and imagined flaws?
 
            The mirror will show no mercy.
            Her eyes look cold at reflected eyes
 
            And they show no mercy.
            Beaten she leaves the room
 
            seeking the heart of mercy.
            I turn on the cruel mirror, I say--
 
            That is my beautiful Love
            and she does not need your mercy.
 
 
 
                                                CONTRAPASSO
 
                                                The janitors in hell
                                                always miss just one spot
                                                on the Inferno’s hot doors.
 
                                                That is the punishment
                                                for a perfectionist.
 
 

                                       AHIMSA
 
 
                                                I cup my right hand
                                                            over my ear to capture
                                                a lost mosquito.
 
                                                How did it get trapped
                                                            in this warm and throbbing cave?
                                                Can it ever leave?
 
                                                Blindly, it bites me.
                                                            My hand opens like white blinds.
                                                It leaves, bearing blood.
 
 

                                      Quebec
 


The Schwartz brothers owned the
Sporting Goods store
where Grandma did business
even though they were Jews
and Jews were no good
because
Grandma said
they were not modest
(were not allowed on the beach
in Quebec where she lived as a girl
there was a sign NO JEWS)
but the Schwartzie's sold good stuff
plus they liked Grandma because
she paid all her bills on time,
sent them out as soon as they arrived;
one of the brothers was dour as an undertaker
unsmiling with a blue closely shaven face
the other, bald one, made wise cracks out the side
of his mouth
the side his cigar was not plugged into;
I liked the wise guy best
and did not care if he was Jew or what
I liked the smell of the leather of the ball gloves
and the rubber of the bicycle tires
and the fumes of the stogie too.
 
 
 
                                          Feed
 


on nights she forgets to feed me
I go into her bedroom
and slap her face
until she awakes
some nights even after she wakes
she rolls over
and goes back to sleep
on those nights I head-butt her
until she gets up,
the dirty slut.
Some nights, though awake
she falls asleep again at the table
in which case
I rub my parts against her
and give her little licks
and if that does not do the trick
I bite the bitch
which usually works
gets her moving to put
food on a plate
and the plate on the floor
where I can reach it,
and then the lovely girl
returns to bed
where I will join her
later.
 
 
          The Brown Chair
 

my ass sinks to the floor in this chair
I have sat in for years,
slept in for weeks,
a horrible brown and stained chair
worth $10 dollars at a lawn sale
maybe less
but priceless to me
I miss it whenever I am long gone,
too busy to sit;
I have gone to Africa in this chair
have fought the 2nd World War over again in this chair
tried to have sex with a girl in this chair;
I wonder if I will die in this chair,
should probably get up and
out of this chair,
go and sit somewhere else
or stand
maybe walk around
go somewhere I cannot get to
by chair,
wherever that is.
 
 
 
                                          Piels
 


my beer was Piel's Real Big-Mouth
Draft
the bottles shaped like hand grenades
the opening a half-dollar sized
hole
like a little pond
I could take a dip in
to cool off
or swim across
or float on my back
but it always seemed
that
by the end of the night
I was face down.
 
 
                                         Lights
 
​
We got stopped by cops
in a show of blue light
and a cop told my cousin
“step out of the car”
and made him walk a straight line
touch his toes
then his nose
and my cousin,
as shit-faced as he was,
somehow passed the tests
and we drove off
to the club
where we picked-up two girls
and then drove up to the mountain top
with them
and parked;
the wind howled around the car
non-stop
the lights of the town dully glowed
in the valley below;
my cousin and his girl went for a walk.
My girl had bow-legs
and a pigtail;
she unzipped my pants
then pulled hers off
then straddled me
as I lay back,
then she sat and guided me
inside of her and
moved up and down
and lifted off
just as I shot
and the wind wailed
and the car rocked
and down below the lights winked
on & off.