Ralph Malachowski

 

April 2004

One woman approached another who was failing to communicate
with her screaming son as he was climbing a very small tree.
Yes, he was hanging from a tree limb ready to pop.
The approaching woman came closer and stated:
"They call me Lipoma and I come from Barcelona."

Startled, yet still frazzled and totally ignored
by the fruit of her womb, she responded, "Naked is a state of mind."

"Have you read Weapons of Mass Deception?" asked
Martin Luther King, Jr. who was seated on a nearby park bench.
"No, but I realized years ago that since Mama Rose Bush
got her son, Jeb, to tinker with Florida, and get friends to
buy off the Supreme Court, Gypsy Rose Bush was sure
to relive the senior Bush's presidency all over again," replied
Cardinal Ximenez, who was popping up from the earth among the daffodils.
He added, "American lives may be a poodle, but their future
is a bagel with a schmear."
(I know. Some may say that much is lost in translation.)

From a passing radio was heard President Bush
(in one of his rare press conferences)
stating, "XYITHJABBETHRECCIABLED," to which the White House
press corps later declared in unison, "Of course. I see."

A scrap of paper, blowing by, had this typed on it:
"Edward Albee has said of your work, 'Fresh as a goat and twice as pretty.'
Your response to that statement?"
"I take his compliment with a grain of salt," replied E.M. Forster. "It's To the Point."

 

A New Africa

Remove your right-wing Christian hands
from my Black body.
My uterus is not your Congressional floor.
It is not your religious playground.

Zoysia blooms late, and so do we, spreading
our roots underground, gaining strength, to burst
emerald green in our own good time.

Wild roses bloom their red in their own good time as well,
covering June with their splendor.

Red, emerald and ebony, the colors of Africa, are yet to bloom,
changing the face of the United States
into an African beauty.

 

Battle Below the Clouds

Curve the bend, Chattanooga,
display yourself along the Tennessee, bending
wildflowers, fanning outward from central China,
arteries free, electric, looping morning till night
along the switchbacks, alive with birds, fish
and more than a few mammals born in the United States,
artfully arranging international artists on manicured lawns
while drinking their evening Coca Colas under feminine
cupolas served by steam-powered brains already high from
drinking cappucino and wine. Hot Helen Frankenthaler is over there
rotating on Lookout Mountain every two to four years. Allow at least
an hour, if not an entire afternoon, to take it all in.

Chief Joe, powering the Cherokee along
lustrous, dark green Chikamauga Lake (note the luxurious swimming
pool and restaurant), leads strapping braves impressively bare especially
selected by nature to show off their no-holds-barred manhood.
Their strategically placed ambitions provoking ambitious twosomes
in the trees or, in good weather, at one of our picnic tables.
Despite plantation shutters dusty pink, anchovies from
Maryland show up here and there at special places
serving park rangers prize-winning chili before
hanging from kites hyperlinked above.
Ulysses S. Grant said, "It's all poetry."

 

Innocence

Springtime smiles
Worn by the brows of lovers
Become parures,
Bedazzling the songbirds
Who in their haste
Dropped several feathers
Upon the lovers who bloomed like daturas --
Like rosebushes they bloomed -- in each other's eyes.
They cross-pollinated,
Conceiving a child for each
Wing of the Holy Ghost
Who flew them off to the Caribbean
Ensuring their innocence
Of experiencing the hoarfrost,
The frozen meat of adulthood.

Vacuuming, you freed me of innocence.
The vacuumesse wore a bathrobe
Which made her appear to be
A moving violin embroidered in gold.
Her two breasts, bifurcated saddlebags,
Depending from epaulets.

The lady's eyes
Danced over Serge's naked buttocks
Like laughter louder than the flag of France.
Her red lipstick on his white cheeks
Commingled with the cornflower of his eyes
Which closed to the full frontal kissing of his loins.

Hours passed
As her lipstick marked
Every inch of his body in glyphs.
Possessed by lamprey lips
He thought he would never feel
The stroke of midnight.

The lady tossed her embroidered violin
Onto an Ottoman.
He rebounded, magically, into Turkish taffy
Landing squarely upon
Her prominent breasts,
Becoming a taffy brassiere
Which buckled her amplitude stickily.

She now wore a splendid gown of phlegm.
She was, for once, beautiful.

 

September 11, 2001

Claudine lives in the beautiful villa
among rooms Russian white
lit by Stockhausen's Licht.
Throughout, flecks of air
carry the force of destiny
scaling Jacob's microwave ladder
to the king of the stars,
who lives at the top
of the roots of heaven.

The Queen of Sheba
had neither the elixir of love
nor the sleeping draught
as she and her he engaged in
the divine theatre of jewelled desire
begun in the garden of corruption,
under elms efflorescent,
in well-known scenes of mankind's
fluorescent childhood.

Baby Doe dances the dance
of the seven golden veals for Henderson,
the rain king, as cisterns howl
warnings dire with strings, clarinets,
conga mandolins, and chili drums
trumpeting Mississippi requiems
from streetcar Israel.
Next stop: Bluebeard's castle.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan
fiddled while tens of thousands died -
not quickly - during the early plague-ti