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

The 3:23

It ain’t the Phoebe Snow
and
it ain’t the magic carpet made of steel
and
it ain’t a longing from Folsom Prison.

Ain’t nothin’ romantic about
this son-of-a-bitch.

This ante-diluvium,
ante meridiem,
three-twenty-three.

With an air horn
that pierces ear drums,
as a wake-up call,
a disturber of the peace
and a dream stealer.

This mile long behemoth
grumbles through town
with sounds to
warn the wary
and wake the weary.

In direct line of sound
and Doppler sound waves
that let you know:

I am comin’,
I am here,
and I will
leave you with a long good-bye.

TP.

Fade to White

The surf mimics the clouds,
the ever shifting foam
forming, reforming, deforming,

as clouds above
seem to glide along
on waves of wind
onto unseen breakers,
creating shapes, forms
and imaginative images,

as a sonata of surf sounds
whose tone and timbre
seem tide-timed,

while the winds aloft
orchestrate these
humid hulks
in mute movements,

I add sound
to this silent scenario,
the sounds of the surf,
with crescendos and rhythm,

the clouds pay me no mind,
like “herding cats,”

as I strive for a symbiosis
of sound and movement,

the sun sets,
I am left,
undone.

TP.

M-Day/MMXIV

I was in the Army
and now I’m not.
They were in the Army
and are not.

I am a vet
now and forever.
They were never vets
and are gone forever.

So I memorialize
those I cannot see.
And a photo I see
is a memory.

What can I do?
I served and left.
Now I wear a Poppy
on my right lapel.

Ave atque vale.

TP.