Rag Basket

When the swing goes over the top

so that the universe is turned inside out

like the glove you left in the vestibule,

I will drop the disguises

and the basket of cleaning rags
to follow you to the end
of the next sentence you speak,

Days turn into years
with all this scenery skating by,
our hair turns grey
just counting our change in the check out lane,
angry weed clusters break through the asphalt
when we return to the car
with our bags full of grace,

Half of what was purchased
was an expectation of tightening the screws
on a platform of a reasonable trance,
the other half being
aware that neither of us are dreaming this dream,
our eyes are open, wide as a camera lens,
noting what has gone and what was replaced,
the grey dirt that gathers
in the rain gutter,
the leaves that carpet the walkway,
the paper torn on billboards advertising
places to visit,when money permits,

You say you'd prefer the sunset to daybreak
and then ask
why I am always yawning,
my bones ache,
my knee is weak and creaks
with the rhythm of the city as it
battles the music I want to hear,
car horn vs saxophone,
air hammer body slams vibraphone,
sunlight meets horizon,
the night is better
when there are no dreams
to give it scars.

Cecil Taylor In War Time

Nothing fits the cadence that 
quits before a fist can pound 

hard ivory blocks for truth 
that is both black and white 

and a chronic wash of rifled tones
flying in formation around the
shape of your head as you forget dreams
and addresses of friends you need to call,

drums lay it down, high hat , snare rattle,
a road that takes you out of town

to further reaches past the beaches
and downtown corners where you
cars and their screeches
as they stop for pedestrians
chatting up phantoms with
empty cell phones, wasting
minutes as they cross,

fingers building and knocking down
chords and melodies to the rhythm

that has ceased to be a way to move forward
and is now a quaking way to meet
the man in the moon,

piano jazz in the thick of cocktails
that muddy the distinctions between
a screaming blues sting
or the sideways , shard -ridden
gray-hued murk of Dachau's
lost voice and string quartets,

a music that's constantly waking up
in night sweats, angular and hallow
in the chest,

are there shadows dancing
with one another as this
music plays? 

The night gives you magic

The night gives you magic
you can see between the leaves
that cling to dead limbs,
the city is a profile
that leads with its chin,
night birds sing the songs of chimney ash

and cinder fireflies spiraling  in hot red-yellow streaks
before vanishing into the black tarp,
 
the blues harp
moans from the window
in a house set against a mountain side
that is getting ready to rain,
but it is always raining in my heart
when your lights go out,
 
a small notes tells me
that you've gone for the night
 
and maybe the week
and that leaves me
staring out the window
through the screen
at  clouds and madness
that is a rime of light
cresting over all our business
 
when the city pulls up the
covers and reads
the word by flashlight.

Where to walk and where to sit

the grave yard

would be

an obvious place for me

to drop by

for some hours of the week,

more friends

than ever have their names

engraved in the

last place they’ll every park,

the history of every kiss

betrayal

and hours of

speechless joy

is going increasing

underground and

soon to be forgotten

as witnesses to where

you and I have have

tread fall over like

bribed boxers,

fall like ships

off the edge of

a 13th century map of the earth,

take on a sleep

so deep in dreams

of black ink

that even the word

“calm”

is an over statement.

THE LOVE LOST BETWEEN THEM

Woe be gone in song

of the wandering violinist

as he moves among

the tables, annoyed

as bows the neck

at the haircuts

that bob and shake fists

to his melody

of two Black Forest Lovers

beset by a pack of wolves.

Bristles are the cuts

on the head of this throng,

he bristles himself

and often longs

for a seat

nearest the podium, starting off the evening off right,

on the mark, on time,

a tempo  to  signify the

romance of his moods.

Yet his songs are too sad for

his present crowd,

they like it in chords

that blast and clash the anger of gods they

can't name,

Their rhythm is violent,

not suited

for violins

and the sentiment they exclaim.

The kids want to see Industrial Cities

slip into

boiling Great Lakes

as a backdrop for a riff   on

the E Major scale.

Yet they're all stuck,

they by blizzard and

the need to eat,

and he by hunger and

the need to pay rent

every thirty days,

and together they make

the best of

the love lost between them.

They sit, listen, and gnash their teeth,

while he plays frantic cadenzas,

dreaming of applause and kisses from

the balcony from men in tuxedos

and ladies

in long white gloves,

Together they
 make music t
hat's

jagged

and
     dirty...

Another Side of Long Distance Calls

"...religions are beautiful because of the strong possibility that they are founded on nothing. We would all believe in God if we knew he He existed, but would this be much fun?..."

-- John Ashbery

Somewhere along the line

something was said

that made

an awful lot of sense.

an utterance so

stable in verb and stance

that my head jerked up

as if on a string

moved about

by a cruel master.

The guy who said

was smiles

for miles his white

teeth could blind.

William had his glass at the tip

of his lip

as though a toast

were to emerge from

his studied gestures,

he repeated

his wisdom,

"Jesus lives in a house on

the moon

and he can't go outside

because there is no air..."

The table spun just then,

three fast fandangos,

and in the swirl

three thousand or so years of

thinking came undone like

badly sewn stitches across

the seams of thin, historical clothing,

every fig leaf has fallen

from our shoulders and

waistline,

Philosophy and faith

are seen finally

for what they are

through the bottom of

William's bar glass,

a little man in a corner

holding a wet paint brush.

Poetry will ruin your life

some of us many of you
love poetry as blackboard
and no chalk, toe nails and back flips
through a bent H
and screaming rocket calculus
as numbers pounding at the door
when dinner arrives,
saying
"fuck you and your attempts to
define poetry, you are squares
TOO EASILY DEFINED
and remember
JAMES BROWN IS DEAD."

too many of not enough of the rest of the city
believes parades are for them
if it's the third tuesday in a leap year
on a day named after a Norse god, goddamnit,
but some of the majority of the slim pickings
have opined
that newspapers are dead to everything
except the bottom of a
bird cage so therefore
poetry is the attempt to make language
an even crustier clump of cliches and dead mackerals,
line breaks
needed plaster casts,
similes that cannot find a soul mate,
genders and pronouns
unpronounced by married
inspite of the loneliness
that finds you like
that helicopter spotlight
that very night when
you slam your poem
across the side of the head
of a famous coot
who rhymed
like a trained seal
does
when the fish smells like
The Star Spangled Banner.

Every single every other of us still standing if not sitting or what have you
sigh and don't regard poetry at all
because
"PEOPLE ARE DYING. GODDAMNIT, CRAZY FUCKERS
THINK THEY CAN JUST UP AND LEAVE WITHOUT
A PARTING GIFT OR A LAST SLAP AGAINST THE FACE"
but poetry absorbs all this
what ever hoarse voice and harsh verbs that choose us,
guitars ,harmonicas and bicycle bells
are the sound track makes that big racket
against the black night air,\
the big black board scratched by stars
and smeared with
ashen tears as spirits rise and voices cry
and finally something like a song
of loss emerges and our hands come from our pockets and from behind our backs and we raise to the
nowhere that is our idea of heaven
and mourn the loss
and remember the joy
and write a poem in
between a toss of the dice
and a the release of breath
that it's always closing time
somewhere
on the planet that rumbles on , spits out gears, shivers and quakes with it's organic mechanics festering
the ground with spores and seed,
gas tanks go dry
and there isn't a dry eye
with so many miles still untrod
and sleep coming over us all the same,
cooing, eschewing the rules and agendas,
crooning a lyric, a word of every  song
you knew only half the stanzas to,
it all says
that it's time to rest,
it's time to come home
it's time to become the poetry
that was your pulse
and is now your name
when someone
new decides to get good and pissed
and full of themselves
in the life they find themself in.