What does infinite longing
sound like?
Where is the vault that holds
the seed corn of sadness?
And how can we mute our fear
when the barred owls in these
dank woods sob in perfect
sympathy
with the night?

Here
the tense oboes find their range
silence pervades their thoughts
the drum marks a beat
while the string section weaves
a hieroglyph of grief
and resignation.

This symphony is called
the song of the night
and night proves to be
full of whispered life
rustling leaves
and the courage to face it.

But night is not synonymous
with darkness.
Its ways and means
harmonize with the light
render half the whole
parcel our sleeping hours
into dreams
and fitful moments
beneath the staring moon.

In the morning
a plaintive bird song
stirs thought
brings the sun into the east
and wraps night's dreams into
a silk handkerchief
where dreams are tightly bound
and forgotten.

The melodious thunk
of Thelonious Monk.
Nobody ever played
the piano that way
before or since
nobody ever imagined music
that way
before or since.

It took a while
for the audience to get it.
Longer for the critics.

And the Poor Man -
all he wanted was a
hit record.

His wayward mind
took him in difficult directions.
Left him with flint on his tongue
a fever on his brain.
No matter to the music, though.

So take it any way you like -
straight, no chaser.
Or after midnight.
Doesn't matter
the time and place
the drinks they're serving.

Not in this smoky little club  
practically sitting with the band.
Know what I mean?
Music like this
might once have been heard
on a planet
spinning in some wild ellipse around
Alpha Centauri.
But never here.
Never now.

So sit back and enjoy!
That's what I'm doing -
swinging slowly.
Join me, friends.

Book your flight to
my home town.
Bring your seven-cornered syncopation hat,
your saxophone or any other
musical instruments you possess.
You can sleep in a tent
beneath the fir trees
in my backyard
once the guest room is full.

And together
we can search for
the mystic connections
between interstellar music
poetry
truth
and love.

I saw her softly combing her chestnut hair
Each motion like parting smooth ocean waves.
I had to know her and how she behaves.
Yet my heart filled with terrible despair.

My friends told me to turn back,
but I braved the restless sea.
I seem to have a knack,
For finding any key.

I found her reading my favorite book.
She was delighted to know I knew it.
Nothing was more obscure than our love,
for a writer more obscure than his peers.

I dreamed of her every night
her passions warm
our victory right;
in either
dorm.

Every meeting with her I carried
my fantasies: a shell eclipsing the
very truth I failed to see, or so they
said of my nights' shameful proclivities.

We shared our hearts like pastries,
devouring one another's
thoughts until we
knew the taste
by rote.

Of course, we were so engorged upon the
fictions of our authored lives that something
had to be real; had to be tangible
beyond mere spooling tales wagging to tune.

Ignited like a forest fire was the lust coursing through us and
in gleaming moonlit fits of ravenous lips and tender bits
our bodies danced in only so many ways two
chiming instruments can rattle the soul
knocking and injecting essences
to quench the flame that
can never ever be
quenched...

Oh, Lord!

I lay there breathing wishing to die in
the moment I knew I loved her that I
may immortalize the knowledge thusly
ending potential doubt and teeming lies.

A month later, we were still burning and
alive and burning alive but we don't
threaten our haven, we just consider
ourselves lost in a wonderland of ***.

Then a man, a few years my senior came,
and he wanted words, he felt entitled.
He felt entitled to her, her mind, her
body, her genius, her love and her ***.

A month later, at a bar back at home,
I saw it all too clear and regretted
ever knowing her, ever loving her
every succumbing to the ***: that drug.

She's somewhere now, loving him, because he was entitled;
his name was on her history, in her language, on her
books, in her mind, on her, in her, every time
I thought it was just me, he was there
dancing with her, holding her
my hand was a ghost
all along.

My darling portends the end of an era,
but my life began with her and that soft kiss.
My darling portends a life of searching for,
cure to a heartbreak that mends with further pain.