I AM THE LAST MAN STANDING

At the last stop
On the outskirts of Sodom
Waiting for my decision
Like a late bus, to arrive

Everyone else left long ago
Clambered aboard the 1:45
They all left me, she too
The cankerworm I married

They seek the fortunes
Buried within the famed tunnels
Of king Solomon?s mines
So I continue our journey, alone

I think my mind is made up
To break free from the herd instincts that tug
Before the Negro fingers of night
Catch up with me

Already I feel the strangling
Breath of their closeness, in this place
Where 21 inch reflections of the lake
Of fire crowd the night sky in ghastly motif

Where foxes spoil vines and souls
Fire flaming on their tails
Bearing ashen tales
From the first Sodom

Where camouflaged sidewinders
Offer a no-win choice
Between forbidden fruit in endless variety
And generous doses of scalding fangs

I hurry to leave, catch up
With an itinerant star, the one we knit
From discarded wrapping paper and nativity tales
One cold December night long ago

It beckons
To the narrow path that winds
Through needles? eyes, emerges
In the Light, the Kingdom
Within us

 

 

TEMPTATION

Voices trail me
Like a schizophrenic
Even into the comfort of dreams
Sowing surreal solomon?s songs soaked
With sensual sensations
To entice me, Hapless Elephant onto
The Royal mat that conceals graves
They call me for a ride
All expenses paid, on spacious buttocks
To Hades, where red hot red carpet receptions
Await.
You put juju for mouth I spit, sniffing
Their perfumed breaths as if I know
What juju smells like. They laugh
At my innocence, naivety
Who?s talking about mouth when down
Below we can give you heaven
They say, ploughing my fertile desires
With their eyes. I know
Where all this leads to
Many have prologued uncompleted pages
Of their lives with ?a se ori mi o pe?
How many chapters have I written
That I will be thinking of concluding
I have to fade, but just before then
I must see the faces that torment
So I can tell the world to run
But while I yet look I forget
What they look like
They roll off my mind like wornout adhesive tape
Even their voices sound like movie effects
Go away fly away
Join your mates in Italy, anywhere
Where busstops brim with souls
Waiting for free rides at the speed
Of lust.