Peace for Palestinian and Jew

November sun peeking under heavy clouds
a reluctant cook checking the pot
but dinner’s not ready yet — just the same old fiery stew of debt, divorce and disappointment
a dish of frolicking poison
made just for my muse
I may as well have shown her to the door with whips

Mewling like a kitten,
gossamer wings wrapped around her tiny breasts,
she’ll get the hell out of Dodge
and hunt a new heart

In Prague a pissed-off youth,
heart fresh as a plum stomps the dirty ground
and feasts on a hot goulash of cigarettes and angst

look out kid

Meanwhile over here in the good old US of A
used cars plummet from the sky
sparrows dodge a metal rain
lying fish swim through storms of dead stars
and washing machines

Run like hell kid

Somewhere in the South Pacific
restless ghosts toss pianos from the sky
until they line a long black beach

Look

a colony of maimed wooden seals choking on the broken

songs
trapped in their wood and wire throats
their ivory tongues brittle beneath
the platinum udders of a milk-mad sun
busy burning the salty sandy lips of seventh chords

It’s no good kid, she’s around your neck now

Fickle girl, my muse
Go on then, Sweetheart
roll my naked cravings into up your holy clothes and flee

Take the cinnamon magic
you once brewed up
in the cracked happy pot
of a young heart

Go on, off with you

for

and here’s the point, again

I am old

rusty as trains trapped in the desert
dry as a goat skeletons
my days of lonely-dog begging under your window
have been swimming into fields of dandelions
planted on the wind

Come on, old man, she’s off with someone new, your turn to …

… be led by little Sphinxes

straining at their leashes like eager terriers

your turn to …
… to shuffle across the village square
and settle into thick flags of shade
furling from gently tossing trees

Sit, old one

Settle like a bird into the dust
and sit silent with the silent elders

Sit, old one, and …

… when there is peace between Palestinian and Jew

turn one hoary ear towards the fading shell of the west
see the shore where the sea throws incantations at the moon
the beach where benedictions
stand guard over dying dreams
and stray kind words
gather up their murmuring letters
and leap for the sky
like startled doves

Pour honey, light and a child’s tears in the other ear
until it tastes
the laughter of flowers

then and only then

can angels and hungry seagulls
lift your name

(and all your other foolishness)

from your book of butterfly wings —
each page patterned with gas-on-dirty-water rainbows

— and feed it to the bag of black flames
inside the cawing crow

perched on the ribs of —

                                       — god