Two Nudes Staring at the Sea

by Jerry Fishman

I see a painting
On the wall.
Icarus splashes in the sea.
Damn fool.

Drones from Obama’s crotch
Rain death on a village called Mysore.
The mother, three children,
Lani, aged 3,
Abdullah, aged 7,
And sweet-faced, snub-nosed,
Lanti, aged six months,
All die as
The steel-nosed drone missile rips
Through the garter belt thin
Thatched roof.
All three sweet children
And mother Nancha-Rui,
All die.

Never Taliban were they.        
Nor bowed to Al Quaeda.
The painting on the wall
Has a  bridal-pure
White background.
And two women
Nude,
Backs towards me,
Staring out at a gray-blue
Sluggish rippled sea.
Looking through a window.

The Drone Commander
In Torrance, California
Never met the
Pantajaub family.
He just pressed buttons
To kill
Mrs. Nancha-Rui Pantajaub
And
Her three children:
Son, Abdullah, aged seven,
Wrong place at the wrong time,
Daughter Lani, aged three,
Crazed killer,
Daughter Lanti,, six months old.
Weapons of mass destruction.

And so Icarus
Unwisely plopped
Into the ocean.

SNOWED

by Jerry Fishman

Looking out with my six-year-old eyes—
SNOW!

Snowjello has gefrozen the universe.
Humps and hollows and mounds and marvels.

Staring at the snowworld,
I imagine I am one inch high.
A worm of an explorer,
In a parks made for a beetle,
With skis made for a newborn mouse.

I plod and plod up snow alps and down snow valleys.

Shouting into the snow wind,
The cries of a polar explorer.
Staring goggle-eyed
At the snowworld,
I imagine I am
George Washington at Valley Forge,
Three-cornered hat turned to
A meringue sculpture.

Staring at the snowmundo,
I imagine I am
Flying the Enola Gay
Over Hiroshima. Flying away as the giant snowman
Munches the sky.

Staring at the the snowscape,
I imagine I am Plastic Man
Become a skinny skin
Stretched over the snow.
I am the snow’s skin
Stretching everywhere.
But I never lose me.

Staring at the snowworld
I see Iraq
Totally covered in snow.

Only one spot of blood
A red eye in the snowall—
Appears.
The bloody eye of a child’s face.

It pokes out of the snow--
A sugar-plum face.

With my six year old eyes
I feel like a snow eel
Slipping through
A snowstorm.

Snowjello has gefrozen the universe;

And me?

I am totalsnow . . .

The Moon Weeps Tonight

by Jerry Fishman

Gold lacquer moonpearls
Drip from the moon
Tonight.
And I
Swallow the drops of gold
Swimming in my tub.

I see
Of a sudden,
Proud, hairy Priapus
All raging
With taut muscles
Riding a chariot of silver
Across my sky.

This ancient eruption
In my so precise century
Slaps my face.

But I see into
The raging eyes of Old Priapus
And I long to soak his energy in my own precise body.

He flashes across the sky.
Poof! He is gone,
And modern me, bereft of awe,
Stuck in a tub
Under the sky.
Moon bathed,
But lacking the dryads, nymphs and
underground spirits of yore.

All modern in my precise tub.

I had but moment vision
Of the Ancient One,
And Gone is he now.
I alone with my gold polished moon bubbles.
Lacking the ancient awe.

My precise IPAD lies there
In the grass with my clothes.
O hideous instrument;
Magic box with
A thousand thousand eye scenes.
But the Shaking Glory of
Ancient gods
And mysteries lies not
In the prim, precise pod of purloined pictures
There on the grass
Amid my clothing.

All the whirling water around me
Spins golden bubbles
Under the Moon.
And forlorn, modern me
Trapped in the carnal emptiness of precise pictures, pictures, pictures.

I would give up my very life

To see

Oh to see
For one brief moment more
That old and raging, naked-loined god of old.

The wild Priapus
Whipping his foam-flecked silver horses, his shining quaint chariot
Across cosmoidal skies.

Wanton Blue

by Jerry Fishman

When I drifted
Out of mind,
I dwindled down
Through body;
I vortexed down
Into Soul.
Did not linger long.
Moved deeper
And deeper in.
Realized then
I was tasting the forty-two
Flavors of death.
Each flavor
A cold, chaste kiss
On my numbing lips.

I drifted
Down
Ebony staircases:
My bare, wet feet
Walking down
Steps of living spiders
That slithered my feet.

Down, down
Unrelenting, shivery
  darkness.
I drifted into
Each death harbor
Where only giant rats
Sat discussing Kant
On rotten wharves.
Each harbor
Was the wrong one.
And so down I drifted into
  newer, Stygian hang-outs.

Down at last
To the end of the journey
From mind to essence.
There
At the end
Lay only a pile of blue
Leaves:
Blue wanton leaves.
Each one rubbery,
Chilly to the touch.
Each one giving off
A small music
That moved
From violin to angel wing.
And touching
Each wanton leaf,
The faces
Of ancestors rose
And I became
Not me, at last,
But the last
One.
Unbroken chain
Of Ancestors.
Blessed be
The ancestors
Who birthed me.
And so I became
But one of them.

The newest blue leaf
On the endless
Human tree.
And death
Then
Was my home
On the endless tree.
I leaf now
Among the wanton blue
Leaves.
I too
Am ancestor.