Love Letters

Autumn evening brings
Back memories of
Colorful landscapes we
Drove about
Every weekend through
Forests and valleys and
Glens in Vermont.
Holding each other during
Interludes stopping and viewing
Just the two of us
Keeping warm by firesides
Loving our own company
Mellow moments.
Nothing else mattered
Our world was a fantasy
Pullovers and PJ’s
Quiet nights
Resting in each other’s arms
Saying little-nothings
Together forever.
Under those “twinkling” stars
Vermont at its most romantic
We thought we had it all
X marks we carved in the Maple tree
You said our love was sweet.
Zany Love.

TP/MMXIV

Joan (Joan Rivers: 1933-2014)

She gagged with revulsion
as I gagged with laughter
this daughter of the Torah
our own Queen Esther
Lower East Side wise-ass-wit
bitchy-biting blurbs
“can we tawk?”
can you wawk-the-wawk
and endure this noo yawk
jive and jibes that pierce
the pride of pompous princes
and pimps a 1927 noo yawk
Yankee Murderers Row
of home runs scoring
with pin-prick precision
Red Carpet that heightened
the blushing celebs who
looked like tomato-heads
with no script to respond
to veiled and direct and
right-on fun observations
and double-entendres
at their expense
in their expensive garbs
a stchick became a trait
that characteristic retort
to questions direct and
begged and self deprecation
masking the confidence
to dole out and take
the rough trade of
caustic comedy
poke-in-your-eye
deceptive lies you told yourself
that Joan saw through and
power sawed through those
petty white lies and
grand illusions of importance.
I gag in revulsion on how she left us.
©TPuma/MMXIV

Robin (Robin Williams: 1951-2014)

There once was a funny man
who met an unfunny end.

On stage,
in schtick,
frenetic.

Front rows disdained
as comic runs to rear.

“Now those of you
up-front have the
shitty seats.”

I now sit in a
shitty seat,
hearing a voice
from behind,
“Robin Williams is dead.”

TP/8-11.

Untitled.

“Your masculinity
is a challenge to me,
manly, muscular, male

your adorable duality
of soft spots on a hard frame,
a feminine side

smooth and rough,
your mass of being
moves primal urges,
quickens the senses

from ankles and toes
to eyes and tongue

to glide to your side,
to give to you,
to get from you

your scent
jolts my brain,
fires emotional waves,
sends me to you

to worship you in love,
to walk with you through all,
to be awakened.”


TP.

Sugar Hill-1991

I.

West Fourth Street
subway platform,
waiting for the “A” train
uptown express.

Yeah,
that “A” train,
Duke Ellington
and
Billy Strayhorn’s
“A” train.

A ride uptown
upbeat and gay.
Get on and get-it-on.

The journey
and destination,
to be free
upstairs onto
Sugar Hill.

II.

The light from the tunnel
is a dark Angel,
that rumbles
towards you,
this Spiritual
that will spirit you away.

It promises
to take you
out of this
down-beat
and ungay world.

Not
getting on the train
but
jumping on the tracks.

Puts you forever in
Sugar Hill.

TP.

Skaters

Colored boy and girl
zip past me
on Razor scooters
in a whirl.

The boy has
an angelic face
with a devilish look
about this (sibling?) race.

The girl, with braided locks,
colors of the rainbow,
that frame her
in a pastel halo.

Chattering in an accent
melodic to my ears,
reminiscent,
of southern boys I met
in my Army years.

As they U-turn
to be where they began,
the girl admonishes the boy:
“Now you be careful,
don’t run into dat white man.”

TP.

My Lunch with Buddha and Zeus

Patio.
Watching.
Listening.
Rain.

Big droplets
pounding pavement
lulling me into a trance,
empty headed,
as if I reached Nirvana.

Nothing matters
except that tattoo,
staccato sound.

I can’t leave,
I am transported
to somewhere
I do not know exists.

If lightening was to
strike me dead,
right now,
my only regret would be
I did not hear the thunder.

©TPuma/MMXIV