Poem with an Attitude

I want to be the poem you wouldn't lend
To your younger sister to read,
The poem you wouldn't dare bring home
To introduce to your parents

A punk of a poem with a Mohawk haircut
That sports a dirty gray tank-top that says
"Don't mess with me.  I'm psychotic"
A poem with a pack of cigarettes
Rolled up in its right sleeve.

I want to be the poem that slaps you
Alongside the head and bellows

"SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"

I want to be the poem that declares Jihads
Against Kardashians, against the cast of Jersey Shore,
Against Fox News, corporate whore politicians,
And that most persistant of all evils, rhymed verse.

I want to be the poem that drives the fast car
With exhaust manifolds loud enough
To rattle nursing home windows.
I want to be the poem that runs Stop signs,
That won't slow down in school zones,
A poem that knows no speed limits,
The poem that flips off cops as it roars past them.

I'm the poem that doesn't want to work.
I just want to loiter on the street corner,
Smoke cigarettes and leer at women
As they cross the street to avoid me,
Being fearful that I might accost them.

I want to be the poem that sexually harasses you,
The poem that you lock your door against,
That you fear enough to install a chain-bolt lock
To make doubly-sure that I stay out of your life.

I'll find my way in anyway.
I'll rifle through your drawers, lift your diary,
Then sell your secrets to the world.
I'm the poem that will steal your money
Your books, your stereo and flat screen TV,
Forcing you to stay home with only me
Left to read for entertainment.

I'm the poem that longs to lead you astray,
The poem that will persistantly stalk you,
Relentless as an estranged lover,
Obsessively possessive,
A tad bit vengeful.
I want to infect your world like a virus
And swell into the cancerous tumor
That begins to devour you
Until you think of nothing else but me.

I want to be the poem that camps out in your head,
The poem that you'll keep repeating incessantly
When Alzheimers has your mind in thrall,
Droning my lines in a sing-song voice,
Your head bobbing to the rhythm of the verse.

You may have figured it out by now.
This poem is trying to seduce you.
You know you like the bad boys;
Byron, Baudelaire and Bukowski,
Poets with chips on their shoulders
The size of boulders and passions
Hot enough to make your heart smoulder.

I want to be a poem like theirs,
A two-fisted drinker of a poem
That swaggers into a bar and takes
Possession of it by sheer force of personality.

I want to be the poem that drinks Dos Equis.
I want to be the most interesting poem in the world.

I want you to notice me.

I want you to want me.

I want you to love me.

I want to be your poem.

The Dream-Piper

He heard it off the island of Naxos
Avered the old sailor, his skin brown as baked earth.
It was a voice, strong as winds presaging a storm,
Yet the sea was calm, with moonlight shimmering upon it.
"Mikos," the voice thundered.  "When you reach land,
 Go proclaim that the Great God Pan is dead."

"Christians have pulled down our temples,"
Gumbled Mikos, "and have replaced them
With their stark lonely image of a mast and pain.
No more are our rivers and forests
Home to fair nymphs and dancing dryads;
No longer can a wanton maiden
Blame her full womb on a God's ravishment."

Mikos had been fooled though. 
The Chritians had transformed Pan
Into a demon with horns, their scapegoat
For their creed of suffering and remorse.
Pan sought his refuge behind the veil of dreams.
Now that puckish deity sounds his pipes
To awaken our subconscious desires.

Our dreams, like frequency waves, roam freely
Beyond the Puritan blackness of night,
Beyond the confines of logic and reason,
Beyond responsibility and time.
The Goat-God's smile is inviting
As he picks up his flute, and with a few notes
Beckons us to enter his nocturnal realm.

There erotic forbidden visions dance
Frenzied revelries of somnambulance.
Satyrs cavort and centaurs prance
To a musical exhortation to romance.
Dryads whisper tales of divine dalliance
To nymphs who long for their own chance
To catch a God's lascivious glance,
While intoxicated lustful Maenads dance
With abandon and wild exuberance.

The delicate gossamer webs of dreams
That I spin in sleep vanish when I wake
As though swept from the ceiling of my mind
With a broom dipped in the river Lethe.
This morning though, I awoke with a longing.
A strange melody of unknown origin
Was raising passionate havoc with my mind,
Drifting in my thoughts, just beyond full recollection,
Were wonderful visions of the Plains of Acardy.

A Portrait in Love's Gallery

Your perfumed vision drifts into my thoughts
Stealthily, like fog's enveloping embrace.
From the ivories of my mind's drawing room
The mellifluous music of desire
Wafts a passionate sonata to my soul.
I drink in your harmonious presence
Hungrily, like parched dry earth soaking up
The welcome moisture of a summer rain.

I respond to you like a plant does to light;
You've given me the impetus to grow.
The bright radiant warmth of your being
Has become the chlorophyll connection
That has coaxed this dull, sullen weed to burst
Its seed of self-absorption, to ascend
From its damp sepulchre of black despair
To dare the blinding bewilderment of love.

If I could paint the ecstacy of life
In love in words, I'd do you a field
Of fragrant clover wet with morning dew,
An emerald carpet of sun-drenched calm
Where rabbits frolic, their fur soft and warm
As your touch.  But my words are lifeless oils
Of inadequacy, doomed never to attain
The passionate eloquence of your kiss.