I’m not brave

I imagine being brave

Standing before a pair of soldiers

Boys holding fire in their arms

Fire to burn through me

And fire in their words

And fear in their eyes

And ice in their hearts

I unclothe easily

Showing no shame

Bold in my nakedness

In my home of broken walls

You think you

Humiliate me

In my nakedness

Oh no soldier boys

And you are boys

Pawns even paid

It’s your clothes that humiliate you

White and blue round you wrapped

In some imagined privilege

Take it off I say to you soldier boys

Let’s be naked together

After all we are foreskin free

You and me

And all this I say unspoken

Between each blow

Because I know

I’m not brave

Over time and over land across the sea

Beneath the dust and layered rock

There are those that lead to you and me

Grandparents galore

Abuelas y abuelos

Gran peres et gran meres

All were there

Conceivers all

Locked together

In the long and leafy tree of

Delight and love

Toil and misery.

They were many

And are still there

To be seen

To be known

By a mindful viewer

A true time traveler

We must all claim

The skeletons we find

And those we’d rather not.

Our kin, shifters of bones sifting for marrow

Our kin, seed and egg makers

Our kin, lifelong love makers

Our kin, lost in loveless forever pairings

Some were herders who came home

After nights of small fires under the great star blanket

Some were gatherers who never knew a dry spell

Others cursed the earth and the sky

When the land made them leave and walk away

There were shes who could smell healing

Bringing sons and daughters back to life

Who, once saved, told their children of these mothers

And saw they could heal as well

A gift from all to all

Taken hither and yon

We are here by chance and purpose

Persisting together

Pairing and birthing the ancestral variety

We’re here because

Back there

Along a river

Because of love

Plain and true

A woman came to a man

Free to choose

Like the wild mare

And here also by cruel timing

Came an unwanted joining

Near another river

The woman our mother

Who stumbled from that river

Carrying a new woman

Another forebear

Another we share

Shes

Choiceless along much of civilized time

Shes

Given over and again

By heartless tradition

As payment to the order.

Or we’re here because

A man, a he, prowling his urges

Driven by desire

Siring others

And hoping for males

A he of property

An owner of an untrue heart

Fathering yours to be.

We come from gasping warriors

And workers grasping at straws

From broke back women and men

And from a cave child wearing jewels

And from a singer and his muse

We come from fire makers

Some burned for food

Some burned for loot

Many were heart breakers

Magic makers, liars and fakers

Picture makers, caretakers

Voices that captured, that led to good

To bad

To song

Soothsayers to please and scare the mighty

So, traveler, speak

How was the journey?

Will you come back again?
Will you sleep tonight with the people you’ve met
Sleep with the Nameless
The Anonymous
The Essentially Yours

Insuring your being?

We are progeny of that vast past

When we travel to them

We become the poet’s multitude

The everyone.

I met a woman or maybe it was a man

Claiming to have seen all time and space

How’s that mamsir? I asked.

Propulsion my friend.

Propulsion of the mind.

Rocket yourself through books and dreams

Ancient trails and comet tails.

Go before paper and clay, scribblers and scribes,

Past caves and magical hunts

Run in savannah and live in trees

Flower yourself

Become fruit to feed the persistent mole

Scurrying at the foot of giants

Enter the smallest of oxygen breathers

Mothered by pools of oxygen makers

Witness the airing

Witness the watering

Witness the birth of a burning ball

Go there

And go beyond

Float in the stardust of yourself

Take a whiff of that first moment

Hear the hiss of hydrogen in god’s first breath

While dreaming I came across two soldiers

Blood soaked and breathless in their bodies

Entwined on a battleground cheek to cheek

One had fought nearly naked

One in bold regalia

One is yours, one is mine

Both ours

A pair of a careless species

Whose leaders are dealers

Peddling words in stories

Ripping reason right from our brain

Words to turn our heart to hate

Words to throw our life to fate

Words to accommodate

Words to offer us as on a plate

Upon a pyramid altar

Let the wind of the past

Roll him away

A weed of song

Euphoria and sorrow

Sung tumbling over his way with time

Heading toward tomorrow’s place

The great unknown.

Once there’d been a time to repair

A period of patience

Where a kindness was requested

When the soles of his shoes were silenced

When he lay watching and listening

It lasted not long before he up and left

The settled down

The fixed in mind and matter

Never minding he’d lose

In the dust he’d throw off

The stuff of everything there'd been.

Why should I care

Why do I even have to know

When what now is so visually perfect

In panorama and particular?

The river sparkles

And sails sprout here and there

Randomly ordered

Filling and flapping

Soundless to the river bank

Why does such beauty beckon me

To imagine those without god luck

Drinkers of dirty water

Roofless?

I turn my eyes

To the broad gray dock

A barefoot woman lies on her back

Taking sun and traveling in a day dream

Her skirt melts between her legs

Her ankles cross.

A pair sit

Lovers in waiting

Heads touching

Hands holding

A promise to come

And then I see

A well built man

A graceful good looker

A rower red as bronze can be

Standing and making ready

Shaded eyes and shaven hair

Wearing a tight suit of shorts and shirt

A wrist watch to measure his effort

And I think there may be diamonds

Tiny ones in each ear

He prepares himself

An exhibition of ritual

Paddling in air

Warming muscles

To slide over water

To propel his boat

Needle shaped and bobbing

Waiting like a racehorse

For him to ease upon.

Together they left the dock

Gliding on sunshine.

I never saw a butterfly

From such a distance fly

A fancy starlight bouncer

Flirting with the sky.

Just a speck

Of traveling light

Bending in flight

And winding up

Along the way

As substance form and surface

Carrying pigment a palette would die for

It fluttered there

And found a flower

To fill itself with sustenance

A durable marvel against all odds

Delicately strong

Ordered and intricate

Entirely lively and lovely with velvet wings of colored dust.

In the inner space of butterflies

Is the atomic plan of all things known and unknown

Revelation and surprise

And more

There is always more.

The ghosts of the smallest particles are simultaneously

The spirits they are born from

The parts and sums of atoms are like nothingness eluding itself

In the disguise of somethingness.

These emitting, darting, vanishing, vagabond charges of minuscule power

Explode into home run crowds

Into beats from a drummer’s hands

Into a valley of waving wheat

Into friends saying farewell at dockside.

Into more an more butterflies.

© Armell

This is a street

Of many trees

And now just now

The loud sound

Of a big wind

Blowing like a brew

Intoxicating the oaks and maples

Mingling like never before

Drunk from trunk to top with wind

Unashamed daylight lovers

Twisting wild and half spinning

Like plumed dancers on a Fat Tuesday

Quickly

Without hold

They stroke bark to bark

While leafy fingers sigh.

The sky behind

Neither bright nor dark

Makes like a bed

© Armell

It's the wind in the air

From where I listen

From where I stare

Inside a stand of trees

To the ebb and flow of rustle, rustle.

The overcast day

Holds the shadows at bay

Except my own

Which is my work

My chosen way

My things to do and touch

To change to act do much

It's time to leave

It's time I go

To the ebb and flow of hustle hustle

I lay in a pool off a path

Three days up and up and down and up again

Three days of twenty on the way to Jomoson

I'd gone from rice to corn to wheat

From valley to ridge

Collecting sweat turned dry and salty

Clothes unchanged except for socks

But today this day I lay

In a pool so cool to the hot sun.

So cool she dulls its burning advances

And waits for the dark of night

And for the air she knows as her cool lover

To move over her

And make her shiver

And become alive in the dark

Yet here I was

Mid day on the mountain

In the land of mountains

And I was hot

And hot for the sun

And hot for the cool pool

And with her lover absent

She took me.

© Armell

In a house of sorts in Portugal

Along the bar I met a man

Who said he came cause he couldn't sleep.

Talking and drinking in our common Spanish

We spoke of lust

And love

And women.

In English he whispered revolution

Of sorts in Portugal

It was then another time

And for me as well

A few days on my own.

Then a woman whose presence excited me

Asked if I would buy her a glass of red wine

I did and we toasted and we talked.

She smiled and told me

She held down two jobs:

One being standing and drinking

The other being laying and thinking.

She laughed invitingly

I laughed

I walked

Happy enough just to have laughed

It's late at home and almost morning here

There was a time when yes

Was the only answer
To the only moment

It's a different time now.

A different beat

A different heart

© Armell

The Joker is out in our village

Dressed like Ripley believe it or not

Spinning tales to dilute our awareness

And tie our time into multiple knots

He walks and talks us through our day

On a square of light we own

And flashes tales so clever

Making sure we're not alone

And with decisive elocution

He might read a written line

And add a photo for our vision

Then beg off for selling time

Ripley's got us figured out

He holds our eyeballs tight

As he fastens us to fictions

Of titillation and delight.

What we learn is serious

If it helps us form a bond

To a world of insignificance

And ignore the great beyond

© Armell

CARIB WATER

Slow me down

Oh slow me down

Give me Carib water

Green and blue

Give me mango and papaya

Give me beach

Give me playa

Slow me down

Oh slow me down

Give me Carib water

Give me Carib water

Green and blue

Give me fish and sweet plantain

Give me sun

Give me rain

Slow me down

Oh slow me down

Give me Carib water

Slow me down

Oh slow me down

© Armell

I love the radio

And the radio loves me

When I turn her on

I get what I want

And so does she

With my ear to her

I hear her breathe

The breath of music

I become thoughtless

And full bodied

Immersed in rhythm

Soaked in song

It wasn’t like this

When I was here before

Leaving weeks of snow on Boston streets

When winter up ‘til then had seemed so long.

Until I’d got to 89

And hit a stretch of empty road

Of beauty unblocked

Winter’s nasty reputation gone

Now finally naked

Endlessly enticing

A cold thing worth being drawn into

Into its snow light

And its deep and dark evergreens

Close ones and distant ones silhouetted

Like fur upon a sloping mountains’ shoulders

Breathing and moving their own way in time.

No, this time it’s Spring on 89

With beauty still unblocked

But less bare

Covered in new life

Fresh

Like the visions I have

Of building new days. 

Aqui estamos

Donde?

Aqui en la piel de la manzana

Entre el rojo y el blanco

Aqui es la historia

Pero mucho mas

Que nosotros

Los recien llegados

Nosotros

Los de nueva ropa

Nosotros

Escondiendo abuelos y abuelas de otra manera

Ellos de un tiempo perdido

De una manera de conocimiento natural y profundo,

Ellos quiens son llenos

Del conocimiento de oir y oler y ver y sentir

Viviendo y sabiendo el gran placer

De comprender lo que les sustenieron

Y lo que amaron.

In every heart lives a poet

Most are quiet

Some have the knack

To spell it out

All have the feelings

Pictures of pain

Memories of pleasure

The child never leaves the heart

Wonder and hope abide throughout

Yet sadly

Mostly

Often

The poems rest

In solitude

Under the weight of years

Under a world of tears

Under a blanket of fears.

The face of a killer is no different

Than the face of the man you passed

Three blocks ago on 5th avenue

A face you never really saw anyway

Cause there were so many

But his face was there

A face found everywhere

So it’s easy to understand

How you might not recognize

The killer in Vlady’s face

So clean and neat

No mess allowed

A plastic surface over

Darkness

I see it all

It's plain to see

I am of earth's

Bi ol o gy

I live on her

And she in me

An orb in space

A generous place

Where time is grace

No time for haste

What's that you say girl

I hear you pray girl

But you're not here to see it all

Pick up your box girl your special world girl

I’ll take you there I’ll grace the fall

Now you can lose your way thru time

Show off yourself show up online

Learn how to love

My fine design

Call me Manchine

I am devine

You are not flesh

Nor bones nor breath

A string of digits

That coalesce

To serve your servants

Their happiness

Don't be a fool boy

That time is gone boy

Your mother nature can't save you now

Get with your box boy your worldly toy boy

Come play with me I’ll grace the fall

You’ve got your box it’s got your time

Put on your face and live online

Learn how to love

My fine design

Call me Manchine

I am devine

The time will come

When systems rust

And your call to all

To mammon’s breast

May come to naught

And hopelessness

You bore this child

You cannot tame

Who now runs wild and bears my name

Get with your box kids and all your pics kids

The game is mine I'll let you play

Just step inside and come my way

Reveal yourself and live online

And learn to love

My fine design

Call me Manchine

I am devine

We're catching on

We know your game

You do no wrong

You have no shame

A machine you are

Built to contain

First you like me

That's all I need

I'm data daddy I'll spread our seed

To swipes of likes and click bait kids

You're in a bubble I'll never let burst

You're number one I'll love you first

Just move your mind to live online

You'll learn to love

My fine design

Call me Manchine

I am devine

Remember this

That you are thing

And nothing more

Your fate depends

On what we adore

We see it all

It's plain to see

We are of earth's

Divinity

Thank Goodness for the average one

Whose greed is satisfied by a solid roof

Whose lust is met by a loving lover

Whose big lie is unpaid taxes on a $1000 lottery win

Whose disappointment at the big game loss

Is welcome news to his priorities

Whose anger is over quickly with a fuck it and goddamn!

Whose sanity is the only thing between us and oblivion.