Kings County (Brooklyn 1959)

Zip Gun on hip.
Black-Jack in jacket.
Switch blade in slacks.
Car antenna as whip.

Cops were avoided.
Silence a virtue.
Family was all.
Pain tolerated.

Pubescent Wise-guys;
punished by Precincts,
penanced by Priests,
picked-on by Punks.

Street-smarts kept you alive.
We survived.
Some of us,
anyway.



TP/MMXV

Wedding Belles

Florida, Sunshine State
we placed our marriage Banns.
Goodbye to crummy wait
on the beach getting tans.


This year of fifteen
in my Tux of white.
I will make the scene
and squeal in delight.

My lover will be,
husband, wife or spouse.
I promised, on my knee,
to make a home of house.

To all, family, friends,
please wish us well.
As the Sunshine State bends,
to ring our wedding bell.

TP/2015

Seasonal Colors

Gray November
Black-Friday breaks;
Why do you taunt me so?

White meat of Butterball
sandwiches for breakfast.

Green-backs counted,
visions of broke.

Gold Master Card
my last resort.

Red clad Santa with
cherry cheeked children.

Green and red capped
enlivened elves.

Blue Spruce dressed in
silver garlands.

So, to hell with my budget,
in the black or in the red.

Happy Holidays.

TP/MMXIV

Keypad

Do not disturb
as my fingers
on keypad fly
to my B F
who sits bereft
of my warm hand
turned cold by text . . .

Rutherford Cemetery

What a sad cold stone.
What a poetic name, “William Carlos.”

Etched with dates of
life lived long.

A pebble or a petal
on this stone,
an image of remembrance.

©TP/MMXIV

Ephemeral Self

I know my self,
what I write today
has a past but no future.

For my self
is only in the moment.

I can only write
in that visceral moment,
when that moment is gone,
so is that self
that wrote the verse,
and is now a stranger
to my new self.

©TPuma/MMXIII

I Was An Outlaw

“back-in-the-day”
to walk thru a door
of any bar gay.

Now in these joints
half the crowd is str8.
What’s the point?
“wanna date?”

Cod-pieces on swim trunks
a sure give-away.
You need not be a hunk
to tell the world you’re gay.

How about
that rainbow wrist band?
You just shout
I am in that gay clan.

But, who cares anymore (?)
Except homo-phobes
and homo-amores
with homo probes.

So, it got better, I think (?)
In my Cardigan sweater
I reminisce on those shadows
so pink.

TP.