with drunken steps
you reach to such place
where a pillar is famous
pillar that cries yellow

weariness of night burns
a black trails goes on in the other direction

and there lay
a body
stinking
so very dead

come, come with your drunken steps
and lie down next to this dead body

ah! liberating isn't it?

and that's it
the painting is complete

the lonely side filled with
secrecy of stinking dead body
and flowing yellowness
under this pillar
and breaking thirst
with just being

and put your name
sign it
let it hang
right there
let it be crooked
let it get crawled over by spiders of memory

your job is done
painting is complete

An enormous
tragedy of grief  

sits on
the old man's

bent shoulders
his young son's

sudden demise
is always before

his weary eyes
it rises up

before him
with the dreary dawn

greets him
in the ticking

slow hours
of the dull day

(grief is like that
they say)

then sits with him
until the night owl

hoots him
to uneasy sleep

(his son's soul
to keep)

each time
he sits

to write
his worn words

his son watches
over

his bent shoulder
(or so he wishes

or hopes)
seeing his father's

fingers press
the keys

to conjure words
to soothe

the hurt
(they fail

but help
in one

untidy mess)
and maybe

his son's
ghostly hand

will touch
the shoulder's

ache of grief
(bringing in

the old man's
aged belief)

and maybe more
his whispered words

(with hint
of Mutley laugh

for sure)
to cheer or lift

his father's lowly
spirit high

saying although
the body's dead

the spirit's here
it does not die

and although
an enormous tragedy

of grief sits
on the old mans'

bent shoulders
it seems to sit

less heavy now
(although

deep hurting still)
somehow.

I saw you on the stage today
covering your *******.
You looked like me in some sad way,
bruised white thighs and bony chest.
I saw you on the stage today;
my belly filled with dread:
You looked like me, but gimmicky
and grimly oversexed.

Great hawk enshrouds tiny ring;
swallowing silence in the reflection of spring;
Your shadow bemoans my gentle home;
where wax wings and iron legs of sternness roam.
Between shattered glass and petal's dance
whose schadenfreude--makes you sound like an ***?
Oh, what a ******* intellectual chore
when even poetry doesn't make sense anymore.

The way in which
my stomach stirs
is just as when
I touched your face
where you lay
while you slept
with your head
tilted back
and your eyes
closed-skyward--
where were you looking?
what did you see?
did you behold me?
Oh, something
has touched me--
reached inside
with fingertip
and touched the surface
of my waters;
they spin there,
stirring, stirring,
waking.  Oh,
what is happening?

My teacher gave me a piece
by Hindemith
when I was newly a freshman
in her studio
and she told me to study it
and play it.

I took it from her
warily
and dissected the thing
until
I thought I might die
but didn't.

Yet today
as I was weary,
I spent a long time
simply playing intervals
until they were perfect and then
playing them until they were even more perfect
and made myself breathe all of my life into them until it felt utterly natural,

and then I thought that maybe I could
actually stand to have another look at this at this awful, bizarre,
beautiful music of mourning; after all, it doesn't sound so bad these days...

That is when I understood
why my teacher, in her wisdom,
had forced me to undertake this foreign,
fragmented funeral suite in the first place.  For she knew then

what I see now
when I remember
and what I hear
when I practice
and what is like the ecstacy
of laying down a finally completed task--
with a secretive knowing that you'll return to it again by choice one day--
when I perform:

At the outset,
I was not good enough
to play it,
but I was good enough
to learn it.

The vibrant blue paint on the walls seems
almost like that emblematic Technicolor
blue.  I've had the blues, but they didn't
look like these.  The house constricts--
the ceiling seems to dip towards my head
closing in on me.  I fly.  Back in Jazzy's room,
I notice, with humor, a label on the spice:
"Not intended for human consumption."

the other day
seated in his office
I asked my stubborn, mean-looking
bushy-eyebrows editor
if he’d consider two books:
“Short Stories for Real Short People”
and “Truly Tall Tales for Tall People”

and he sat back with that air
(actually, made you think he wanted to release air)
and he said:
“You’ll get shot for titles like that…
'Short Stories for Real Short People'
will directly offend people
who are vertically challenged
And the same people would shoot you
for excluding them by implication
in the epithet 'Tall' –
They’ll sure shoot you for that…
They’re both just politically incorrect”

And I leaned forward
(releasing air myself –
anything he can do, I can do better!)
and I said:
“Sure, it’s not politically correct – but it sure
ain’t psychologically correct, given our times,
to speak of shooting while we are in an office”

I hear the Editor no longer works there
and is now in some publishing house
who are specialists  in books on Accounting
and Engineering
where he knows, for sure, I’m never likely to go