Halfway to Naked

by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Among hobbledehoys, some simple friends seem more adept at dressage
Than do slatternly peers with obdurate, chthonic tendencies.
Those others, who also perform the rites, remain all but larky.
Hardihood lacks sufficiency to face down persons engaged accordingly.

Consider that carnal factotums, after a time, disintegrate to dust.
Similarly, blackboots, selectively mute, can be found risen to grandeur,
Or otherwise assigned to mirandole princes devoid of ugly-minded gaffers.
When such peerage shakes, the world rushes to videotape their trembling.

As for the rest of us, we homunculi, no amount of alacrity gets us
Beyond halfway to naked; it’s a shamefaced truth that minions
Decenter their superiors time and again out of need, nefarious intent notwithstanding.
If only, liberties were equitably spread, we might better our lots, rejoice, rebel.

Israeli Jasmine, Manicured

by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Jasmine, hedge-high, bordering a beachfront bungalow,
Slung itself along the Mediterranean, in a land
Shaded by disputes of international stature, grows.

Pigeons, gray, brown-red, also white,
Opined witnessing to local, pedestrian issues
Missing all traces of ocean tranquility, take flight.

Conch shell inhabitants, tiny, maybe thumbnail-sized,
Chorused periodic flowery, feathery, or dysfunctional flash
Rumoring natives as no more than immigrants or tourists, slide.

Certain civic cases, cached by multinational requests for mollification,
Spun “insights,” didn’t offer counterpoints to foreign correspondents
Habituated in gifting bad press to residents, erupt.

Yet, all the beauty of sky-filled vistas, chain smokers, darting lizards,
Cedars, acacias, myrtle, oleaster, cypress, box trees, likewise elm,
Waylaid by dint of ill-intended, external aloquoting procedures
Designed to trump the population, continues on, unabated.