By: Radomir Vojtech Luza

American Original

I was born out of Hitler’s bloody disease
Stalin’s scarred and shredded knees

Raised in the Deep South
Where African Americans
Hang from trees
Like gray moss

Schooled in the finest Catholic institutions
Of higher learning where hypocrisy
Was the game
Not Jesus’ muted name

In which future doctors, lawyers and politicians
Called black people niggers without knowing why
Underneath a battered sigh
Uneven sky
Looking for a place to die

“Roots,” the groundbreaking television mini-series, was
Scoffed at and scorned because it concerned negroes not Notre Dame
Black folks not the alabaster same

Change coming as slowly as molasses
The brown Mississippi River molesting its lasses
Sweltering humidity and lack of lucidity in my
Hometown of New Orleans

Where art is always a part not a whole
Professional football a savage Sunday stroll
A culture massaging murder and mayhem as a goal

Slavery misunderstood by brutal souls
With hearts like holes
Chains and shackles enough to
Murder an enormous mole

And love painted by
A purple and gold jazz band sashaying
Into the French Quarter’s cement of sound

###

Jigsaw Puzzle

In Hollywood
Where producers give it from behind

Films take it
From the front

When they are not
Starting in the middle

Fifteen takes of
The same scene
Artistically green

Leaving me
Scattered and lean
Like a schizophrenic dream

Giving birth to the editor
More powerful than any director

Pieces of the pie out of order
Actor as hoarder

No audience until the premiere
This puzzle of our time
Licking nine
Staining rhyme
Never live
Camera jive

Pockmarked beehive
Casting in some pornographer’s
Basement dive

Dialogue, special effects and stunts
Five minus five

###

Vicious Winds

Packing vicious winds
You are an ominous sin
Drinking that bottle of gin
Like jealous kin

Perhaps the day is done
But your heavy breezes blow
Like an old Ford car show

Ripping time
Rusting dime
Eating slime
Molesting mime

When will you mature enough to hear
The roar of your fear?
Cadence of being near
On this deadly peer

Stars exploding beneath your stare
That non-virginal Mustang glare

In this cell of human rust
Jealous soul dust
Getting wet in the
Ocean of tragic lust

###

The Gallant Kind

Souls like iron playgrounds
Holes like crayon spillways
Hearts like torrid Tuesdays
Spinning in my gaze

Sprinting towards pain’s polaroid peacock
Wearing a potbellied smock
Working on the dock

Been far too long
Without being wrong

We are nimble and kind
Like Einstein’s mind

Betting all we know
On this garden we sow
With humility and a bow

We are the courageous kind
Licking time to remember the broken Rhine
Forgetting hours that do not rhyme

Not speaking of the past
Of making circumstances last

Erecting a mast to those who will last
Tearing down the nest
To murder the devil’s fest

###

Burning Blue

This royal blue marble
Has no beginning or end

Rivers merge
Water falls
And stalls

This asteroid
Hanging daquiri green
On an orchid scene

Leaving me in a Fellini dream
Like a logical James Dean

This turquoise orb
Bludgeoning sun and moon
Like toy balloon

Visiting living room
Like insane baboon

This earth giving birth to a
Bubble gum dearth