Eyes sweep left
they bob, reel right
mindlessly observing
spinning briny bales
unfurling foamy white

Rolling blue thunder
yields a crisp, veiled horizon
powdered with crystal mist
oxygen roars on a corkscrew jet
crashing…
a salty-surf hisses,
whispering: dissipate!

Drowning the din
the months
of full and monkey-mind moons
twisted, furled, entangled
ruminations…
vanish!
like a purging breath
‘neath the thunderous
ocean’s boom

The rain pelted, popping
…like corn
exploding ’gainst
steamy crystal window panes
while‘n exquisite, pungent
bellowing
spice of asparagus
clung, lingering …
arousing a longing, arousing a hunger
for the hard, nameless
brawny swain’s
glimmering, limering eyes
where had he come from?
what could it mean?
how could I seize its clinging
insatiable, its lusty allure
and bottle it…
forever?

Thank you for your love
Thank you for your light
Thank you for the path

that leads me out
from shadows’ might

The only reason
we’re all here
right now
is because we believed
we wanted
to
be.

Waking
from a muddled haze
on any yet, unfathomable day
proffers patent proof for the
edacious

desire
to push on

In the outer-cape town of Truro
where rubbish removal
but a fusty, fabled, foreign myth
known only to the provinces
of far off fairylands

Evidence of life
and a blue moon’s month
of passed over profferings
to the putrid, fetid
junkyard pyramids
bursts at the seams
of my creaky, aged
wooden garbage bin.

Pungent, wafting
maliferous bouquet
the spirited olfactress
hovers hauntingly to gloat
a tiresome reminder
a bullhorn of reproach:

“On the insipidities of life
you’ve been swimmingly
under-focused,
on the things keep others ticking
efficiently and fluid
all but bound together
like the waxing, waning lunar pull
on the ebbing and the rise
of ever-shifting ocean tides!”

A question of attending:
lent laimbrained concentration
on life’s vacuous, abhorrent
and tedious details?

Waiving white a loathe confession:
“What I’d rather do is jump!”
avoid the gnawing mission
to the dreaded, humdrum dump.

J: “I’ll have the Mediterranean Summer Salad with Feta and Shrimp, but I have a shrimp allergy, so instead, may I please have the scallops?” 

W: (with dramatic, feigned furrowed brow of empathy and regret) “Why I’m sorry sir, unfortunately we cannot make substitutions on The Mediterranean Summer Salad with Feta and Shrimp.”

J: (with equally feigned furrowed brow of incredulity and a subtle smirk of defiance and self-satisfaction) “Hmmmm, OkAAAy, well then how about The Mixed Green Summer Salad with feta and scallops?”

W: “Well that, we can certainly do sir!”

J: (inner voice) Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?”

W: “Excuse me sir! How is The Mixed Green Summer Salad with feta and scallops?”

J: (beaming with enthusiastic curled-corner-lipped sarcasm) “Fantastic! It’s almost exactly the same as your Mediterranean Summer Salad with Feta and Shrimp, but this one instead has scallops, and is shrimpless.”

W: (with oblivious sincerity or stark theatrical brilliance) “Why I’m happy you’re enjoying it sir, and I apologize that we couldn’t have accommodated your preferences on The Mediterranean Summer Salad with Feta and Shrimp, but I will most definitely inform the chef of how much you’ve enjoyed this one!”

J: 😳

Fiore, Italian for flower, is also the name of the beloved local Ortigia artist, “a man of the streets” as he likes to refer to himself. When I asked him his real name, he told me: “It’s Roberto, but I don’t like to tell people that because I don’t want them to use it – reminds me of my mother when she was angry with me.” As I sat in his studio, brimming with old, new, still drying and works in progress, the smell of fresh oil paint, stale cigarettes and the acrid sweet of evaporating alcohol permeated the air. I was there to pay him 300€ for the 2 pieces I had bought a few days earlier, and as he impatiently counted it, reporting with shrugged shoulders and the satisfied smirk and impetuosity of a child opening a wrapped Christmas gift: “In Sicilia we count the money for the paintings we make, eh?, grazie!” Then he gave me the 2 ceremonial air kisses, one for each cheek, and proffered me a drink that he poured from an interesting green bottle he’d pulled from his ancient fridge. I declined, telling him I’m allergic, he mumbled: “gli americani sono tutti allergici”, but he insisted it was good luck for him to have a shot after every sale, so we sat and talked about what makes his work tick. He stated succinctly that his favorite subject to draw is the fish, “because it’s easy and drawing the shape reminds me of being a child, I need to feel as free as a fish, I’ve never liked fishermen though, I don’t trust them, because they trick the fish into loosing their freedom. I like birds for the same reason, fish are birds in the sea, and cats, because they are always watching and so are very wise. Watermelon is my favorite fruit and I use it a lot in my work, mostly because I love its color, I like it more than any other.” I had called the number painted on his studio door about 5 minutes prior to the slender, 5′ 2″, suntanned, agile 80-something-year-old’s arrival on his squeaky rattletrap bici, something out of a WWII period movie, wearing fitted black jeans covered in the drips of pastel colors, a tight black T-shirt, black Ray Ban Wayfarers, flip flops – black, showing black-painted toe nails, a wide closed-mouth smile – in all, a package painted in a certain vintage perfume of alcohol, cigarettes and a license to live.