Prima Ballerina

Here is your overture
Orchestrated grand entrance
& exaunt
this stage
Littered with thrown roses 
petals they've lost


There are some convincing moments
when lips meet meditatively
there for that moment 
when lashes flutter
before the eye
darting off
towards future blocking
greasepaint lighting
swan song
and final
applause

Crossing Across Space

I've nothing for you
Take my empty hand
No boots
No dresses
No beauty parlor visits
No foreign money orders
No running through the airports
No crowded photographs
No long lost embrace
I'm wearing no sleeves
No sack on my back
Working in the chimney
Covered in soot
I've only a heart pumping blood
A brain for collecting image
A tongue to taste
Sweet words of the lips
And eyes
To capture the light
Of your heart
And the warmth of your
Love
Which is more than enough for me
Enough for any man
To live out his days
thousands of miles of railroad tracks
Away from the epicenter
Of your garden
How the garden swells
In the spring
What wondrous
Gifts the gentle rains bring
The music of the spheres
The trumpets of bees
While worlds away
You and me
gaze deeply
hand to hand

pmpope 2011

I'm Not From Around Here

If tomorrow you are offered
A gift beyond value
without tags attached
From the hand outstretched
given freely with knowing
no such gifts exist, as such

If the next day the entire curtain is lowered
All the seahorses are released from their bowls
all the prisoners set free, the blind to see
cripple and lame are dancing in the street
the noise of life stifled by the gentlest sigh

The news services declare
All poverty, crime, & murder have vanished
into the thinnest of the purest air
no hatred for money
no hatred of race

I pray thee, beloved
remember thou me
for such an otherworldy spectacle
is that for which I arrived
and that for which,
I long to see

pmpope 2011

Space Junk and the Inevitability of Catch Up

When your hair is bouncing in the breeze
You'd never think to see
Head held back to stare at the sky
Look up there!
That cloud looks like a tombstone
Yet on closer inspection
Hurtling from the atmosphere
Old space junk satellites
How was it when in the 70's we first heard Lou Reed
sing of Satellites of Love
But today no one could believe how all the junkies
With their canes and their permanent
Game Over! Mental codecs
Shuffle throughout the E. Village And Alphabet City
So much discarded refuse
That broke our hearts & now the rain of space junk
Is reported by news crews
While smiling and reminding us:
If you see any space debris
Call the police immediately.
After all,
It is government property.

Silver Day, She Rolls

Down the slope she strides with an easy gait
taking in changes erupting monochromatic
with the verdant as vibrant
as any sweet sprig of spring's eternal emerald
now she paints it chrome silver
singing its' jangly folkloric lyric
reserved for blindingly blue days
next to approach will be the white
cold beard scrounging through the bricks
during festivals of blood and wine

pmpope 2011

Translucent Kind

Looking through is quite the thing to do,
or so t'would seem to anyone who was born on this planet
in the last hundred years or so. Look through the leaves
of black and white newsprint and you may find something
to pique your interest. Glass comes to mind
as an elegant solution to increase your chances
of looking through something without causing much of a fuss.
The great thing about looking through
glass, is that it forms a physical barrier to an other dimension which,
you could, if you so desired, become an object within and in doing so,
change your entire reality. Look through the lenses
of glasses or cameras. You'll notice three versions of time
occurring similtaneously. Look through a magazine or a deck
of cards, your imagination will soar with all sorts of possibilities.
Look deep into the eyes of your pet. You may unlock the very mysteries
of the soul. Looking through your list of friends
may give you an indication of who you are
and what you hope to archive in this life.
Take a long, deep look.

pmpope 2011

Mindful of This Never Forgotten Day (9-11)

There was a day when we were called
attention was captured
United collectively
Froze welded into a peoples' being

This series of tragedies occurred
not because of any of us, individually
But who we are, were, and will be
Will ever draw the ire
From the fuse of the fire
Lit by the fingers of hate
And fearful greed & jealousy

Mothers began the wail
Raised into the heavens
On pillars of smoke

Brothers and sisters stopped
Dead in their tracks
for lack of belief

Fathers, feeling powerless to explain
Began planning a rescue
Of all that were left

There will be a day
When the smoke will disapate
The rains will come
All that is broken
Will be swept away
Even of memory
There will be a day

pmpope 2011 9-11

Some Lovely Memory Stuck

There was a time to think you could've
Gone that extra mile to the fair
Away down the frozen aisles

Between the river and the field
For the flair to sport
I couldn't think of one thing finer
Than your watery gold dripping
through my fingers

A night so capped with yearning for the next
Atop a sunken ship
So full of stars & stops