Three US peace proposals for Gaza
Bibi Netanyahu accepted every one
Sinwar of Hamas turned them all down
Then Hamas murders six hostages, gangland-style
And Biden-Harris puts Netanyahu on trial!
Where is the pressure on Sinwar and Hamas ~
Or is America’s ‘ironclad support’ for Israel just verbal gas
What is the gift in your life
Is it your husband or wife
Is it your children, your lover, your pet
The notion of someone you haven’t met yet
Is it the door that you shut on the havoc
The sanctity of your four walls
Relaxing with something with lemon and ice
The chatter when family calls
What is the essence of life
Is it the joy or the strife
Is it the gift of another new day
Is it the moonlight that wipes it away
Is it the senses that most take for granted
Til veils are pulled over your eyes
The joy of the breath that means you escaped death
And you realise your life is a prize
What is the price of a life
When it dwells on the edge of a knife
Is it dollars or cents as it sits on the fence
Before it stands firm or repents
Is it a penny ignored by the many
A glint to the partially blind
When shots overhead leave passers-by dead
As I kneel to see what I may find
So what is the value of life
When gangland reprisals are rife
And witnesses number not many
But my life was saved by a penny
So is this the value of life
Not a bargain store bear nor a Steiff
A penny: A low value find
But a glint to the partially blind
Satanic crimes are the most horrific and cruel.
They make gangland slayings look like nursery school.
Michelle Obama hammered Caucasians
for fleeing the inner city mayhem
she blamed it on racial malice
from her oceanside palace
a few hundred miles from gangland
Old friend Democracy
There you are again
Finally
We thought you might have left us
Forever
Breathe
God Almighty
Breathe from your knee
And rise for every one
Like a black statue of liberty
Over the old ways of Confederacy
Put away
The power that rules
The gangland world.
Inhale the air and take our fear
Exhale a new century of equity
Release a revolution of new riches
Made of healing and advancing
All
A cosmic rainbow of color
Arcing
Over the wheat fields to the steel cities
A baby’s coo from her mother’s cradle
Born from where the sun begins
Wrists slipped from shackles
Voices loosed from nooses
Boots lifted from the backs of necks
Soot cleaned from Mother Earth
Democracy
Rise from your knee again
Breathe
Breathe
A familiar kind of destiny.
To be free. To be free. To be free.
Frightened at what his eyes had found
Young Ben Wilson looked around
Shuttered windows, broken glass
drug dealers, the smell of grass
Each day he prayed that he'd escape
a culture of gang wars and rape
In school he earned the highest grades
Junior year, shot up to six feet, eight
A basketball scholarship was his for sure
and he'd be rich when he matured
All of Chicago was rooting for Ben
his senior year about to start, and then
Gangland style -- shot in the head
Ben Wilson's name midst the ghetto's dead
Thirty-five years passed, not much has changed
The shootings continue, just the names rearranged
Where's the smog
And the pollution
Only noise, the frogs
No gangland executions
Millions of stars in the sky
Nights crisp, fresh and cool
I can feel the wind sigh
Nature -- not man -- rules
Lack of excitement or buzz?
-- Doesn't bother me
I've fled Los Angeles
For God's country
Wiseguys
when I was a skinny
eight-year-old boy
I knew him as
Willy Shoes
it was Brooklyn
in 1950 and
some men had
strange names
reflections of personality
deed or look
he and his friends
never seemed to have jobs
but gathered on corners
played cards in social clubs
always friendly always polite
Willy Shoes was handsome
with large dark Mediterranean eyes
dressed to the nines
silk shirts pegged pants
gold cufflinks and alligator belts
jet-black hair combed
into a perfectly Brylcreemed
ducktail and pompadour
you could see your reflection
in the high gloss of any pair
of shoes from his infinite
spit shined collection
Wille liked me
hey kiddo he would say
here’s a buck
take this here envelope
and give it to Thomazula
the bootblack
one day when
I was about seventeen
I saw a picture of
Willie Shoes
on the front page of
the New York Post
handcuffed and trying to
hide his face with a
neatly pressed
pin-striped suit jacket
Willie “Shoes” Sansone it said
charged with the murders
of eleven gangland figures
and I remember wondering
if he would let me have
a few pair of his fancy shoes
while he was away...
Too much Edward G
You dirty rat
James Cagney
Mae West
Chicago gangland in her heyday
Portrayed with beautiful dames
Singing seductive songs,
wearing mink, diamonds, slinky satin
Belonging to their men
I was almost asleep one night
When I heard a car chasing me down an alley.
I turned and saw it; and was terrified.
I knew it was a past life memory
Also the mobsters in the car were after me.
Snitches get stitches.
My heart had never beat this fast.
They were gaining.
I turned down an alley.
Heard the car stop.
Terrified, I was looking for an out.
Hid behind a trash can.
Someone fished me out
Threw me down.
I saw two men in shadow above me.
One leaned down and I felt a knife
Cut my throat from side to side.
I knew I deserved it, so I closed my eyes
Max, the politician, wields a razor-sharp axe,
Slicing his chicken-bleep opponents' necks and backs.
"How dare they accuse me of power politics?" Max asks,
Innocent jowls masking the jaws of a shark's attack.
His gangland campaign staff for money never lacks;
Max' men shake down local pimps, and dealers of cocaine and crack.
As for the fuzz, Max is hip; he's got the inside track:
Scoring deals for them on the best ecstasy and smack.
First elected back in '72, Max walked the length and breadth of the state,
A reformer, he was, a renegade; at least the voters thought so and fell for the bait.
Ensconced in palatial power ever since, Max has glad-handed, partied, drank, and ate.
A 'politician's pol' all these years, his formidable paunch and polling punch have proven great.
Belly out over his belt, this balloon of a man once again challenges fate,
Can he hang on again in 2018, or will this be Max' last hurrah on the party's election slate?
I think I'll work on my abs today
Maybe run on the belt
Work some muscles that in 15 years
I haven't felt
Like a player in concussion
Like the caveman with no pelt,
I coulda been sporty
But forty is forty
Every day I look at the status,
Checkin’ for cracks in my dreams
Sometimes I get to thinkin’
I could only ever act in extremes
I hatch a scenario
Of Hollywood gangland schemes
A page from Get Shorty
Well I'm only forty
So now I’m in the bullring
But the bull won’t give me a glance
It’s a real tough situation
In the deep end of a romance
But my sword is feeling potent –
Why not give things another chance
with the one who gored me?
That’s life at forty.
2015
Neath the surface of the lake
there is a magical land
cool blue waters with a stake
of reeds and plants in the sand
Small silvery fish dart
prey for the bigger fish
careful to keep apart
not wanting to be bonefish
Follow them and wonder
what it would be like
to live here and ponder
on life while avoiding the pike
Here, even more, than on land
the rule is eat or be eaten
this is the real gangland
the lair of the mighty gudgeon
So, pause and reflect
life here in the raw
do not now deflect
else you end up in the jaw
Services Rendered
On the side street, where the poet
took his nightly walk, shots resonated,
yelling, and a car driving fast;
on the pavement a man´s blood
was running into the gutter.
The police asked what he had seen?
Nothing!
You must have seen something?
I saw a waterfall running down
a mountainside in spring and
the air was pure.
Gangland murder?
Weeks later an envelope in his
postbox, five thousand dollars.
The poet smiled at last someone
had paid him for his poetry
Oh no! Train again!
Perched upon parallels of steel,
You roll your way on heavy wheels.
Thundering through town
With a rhythmic rattle and clickity-clack.
Your deep throat rumbles diesel black.
Cars convey a cargo of corn syrup,
Commuters and coal.
You are an ant trail of steel
Packing prizes from a picnic port.
You are the artery of America’s life blood.
--Four full sets of dominoes
Laid in one long row.
--A segmented serpent
Slithering on shining steel.
--A bright-eyed Cyclops screaming in the night,
Awakening children with a fright.
--A termite traveling through boroughs
Beneath the “Big Apple”.
You are the canvas of gangland graffiti
And ferry for freight hoppers
Who dare to hitch a ride.
A network linking limits sea to sea.
Now, rattle past, and make it fast.
I’ve places I should be.
What pharmaceutical hypocrisy
Blurred doctor patient relations
Continuous with dealor-junkie satiation
Arent't we living to eat?
The safety regulators will come down harsh
Trickling down their axiom motif
With Ronald Reagan collectible trading cards
Who's poison beef still feeds
The vacant lunch room lot
And appetite feeds necessity
A supply/demand immortal praxis
So when economists don their hats
Rationally sanitizing the goofs
It's mighty easy the Federally pen
A Riker's Island estate
Keeping the wooly horses busy
While generations pock-marked
Throw themselves towards the dart board
Becoming gangland officiates
What we need is a cleansing rain
To wash the virtual records and shame
Letting ecology grow the way it should
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