Slipping into a New You
					
Stalking the streets  
in search of music
and human spectacle  
under New Orleansı French filigree 
you catch that cooly-cool boy
whose brass bell 
flares soprano
jazz.  

All five-foot-two of you   
celebrates  
the horn that gleams
your gray eyes into moons. 
A familiar gesture
lengthens your neck,
not quite the curve 
of a trumpeter swan.

From the daily
commute, from workaday 
Greenwich Village, 
from the five-floor walk up 
over the falfal place
here to bloodbrown 
bouillabaisse and Cajun soul. 

Tongue catches 
the last sugar of a sweet
begniet. Without looking up
you glide moltenwhite 
arms through
and button on
your new persona.

Everybody rise 
        a fanfare  O Lone Wolf

Carol Levin's Questions:

Is it in the right order?

Does the change of rhythm further interest or bring it to a screeching halt?

Libertyıs 335 Steps 

You are cool green 
in hot July.  
We mount slowly
in a clogged human 
spiral, up,
straining 
under your copper skirtıs
inverse-folds, 
built by Eiffel. 

Our knuckles grip 
cold steel railing 
we choose not to look 
at the crowd massed 
below, trapped,  
just as we are,
stymied from above. 
It seems this hour 
lasts years.

Chins stretch, 
eyes taut sighting 
the top as we trudge 
fearing we donıt have stamina 
enough to reach 
the window of your crown,
to be insiders 
looking out 
at last.

Carol Levin's Questions:

Are the references fully developed, is there more to be said?

THE WOMEN WITH A BLACK THUMB

Body crouched,folded, 
chin to knees, thorns to head. 
Her beaky nose breaths                  
dirt,drenched,where        
subversion slugs 
churlish and repulsive,
through shriveled
now black 
blotched leaves 
in piles of
defoliation.Branches
coated white,sour
as a hang-over tongue
shade domed gray
mushroom-stools
mycologicaly unsound.

One godlike,
double, black/Red 
rose, a trophy,
velvety   
in a house-of-horrors
bed. Its 
insinuating voodoo 
fragrance forces 
her eyes closed 
as she holds her breath
and savors the ecstasy 
   of heaven 
       in her horticulture hades.

Carol Levin's Questions:

Is the extremity of the language an invitation to continue. 

Does it invite playfulness or do you feel like an elephant sat on you?