The music's best on the dark
side of town, I heard. It seemed miles
from home, after waiting in a long traffic jam
But the lights finally changed
from glamorous shining to dull neon, covered in smoke
drifting up from drifters outside the Black Cat.

By the fluorescent green sign, a cat
was painted, its fur dark
as the alley I stood in, engulfed in smoke.
The cat perched atop Miles
Davis's trumpet. Bums hassled me for change
and a few drummed on buckets, jamming

with a harmonica player, synched as jam
and peanut butter. I stepped into the Black Cat,
and from the facade saw no change.
The lights turned low, the club dark
as the alley outside. A Miles
record hovered through the smoke.

The people chattered like bees, smoking,
waiting for the players to jam.
At last, the bass player laid down a line miles
long, the drummer chinked in, and the cats
began to groove. They chilled my bones with dark
melodies, pounding through spooky chord changes.

Soon sunbeams shone through the storm, they changed
to an upbeat swing tune. The horn smoked,
hitting riffs unheard, astounding the dark
faces gazing on in awe. They jammed
endless as the ocean. The cats
started to play a popular Miles

song.  The crowd hollered in Miles'
memory as the horn steered through the changes
with the skill of the legend of the Black Cat.
The band, nearly invisible through the haze of smoke
thick in the air, strawberry jam,
soon faded to dark.

Miles Davis’s ghost flowed through the smoke,
awakened by the chord changes, grooving to the jam.
The hippest cat alive or dead, now he plays in the dark.

her face is tiled
or is it of bricks?
it is chinked with
the finest mortar
as as to last a while
but without cracks
in a sidewalk,
the city cannot breathe.

Log cabins are built with raw hardwood
Strong , seasoning , deflective
Chinked with mud to fight -
hard days
Shining Oak later becoming yellowed , weathered
Filler eventually hardened , cracked
A shell now exposed and abandoned
Secrets made evident
Curtains racked in the breeze
Shelter reengineered , barely standing , bound in sheer memories* ..

When I smell nicotine
I think of her,
and I think it's kind
of funny her nickname's
Nikki.

Men thought of her
as half smoked stogies
they can get a buzz from
and just flick away.
Her mind set was,
if they decided to abuse
her, hey, it's not her
that's gonna end up getting
lung cancer.

But really I shouldn't be comparing
this woman to cigarettes.
She's more exotic than any
American spirit or
no. 27 that you could find.
She's straight, she swears
but she ground her hips
against mine just as fine
as she grinds her ****.
My lips were attached to her neck
and when we switched spots
she laughed as my moans echoed out
the open window.

Now this woman. She has the highest
level of confidence
or self-esteem I have ever seen.
But she could shrink her
waist in a week
if someone commented
on how skinny I was.
She's had her body held in a cage,
but they couldn't tame her.
She's not afraid of anything.
Not with her chinked eyes,
or methed out shake,
I don't think you can intimidate
someone after they've had
a gun held to their face.

She deserves so much more
then she has been giving herself.
So when I smell nicotine I try to place
the memories of the flavor in my mouth
on us trying to cover up the **** smell.
Her memory shouldn't be brought up
by the smell of a cancer stick.
But then again,
She's just as deadly as one.

You say you like the way my lips curl into a smile,
and the way my snake bites fit my lips,
and the way my mostly emerald eyes become chinked up.
You say you like my curly purple hair,
even with the streaks of  royal blue and dark grey.
You say you barely notice the bags underneath my eyes,
or that weird little hip dip of mine.
Instead you notice the vibrancy and life you say my eyes contain,
and that weird little hip dip of mine, is nonexistent in your eyes.

It all simply baffles me.
I don't get it.
Even at my worst you can't say I don't look perfect.
What do you see that I don't?

Maybe you see in me what I see in you.

the man in the fine suit
gave me three hard quarters--those Washingtons were smiling at me, waiting to be swallowed by the machines at Horn and Hardart's Automat, where

there was but one old lady
standing, still as a statue, in front of a machine
her reflection on the glass staring back at her,
a haunting twin, from a different

mother. I could taste those ham sandwiches
waiting, but when that first quarter chinked its way into that dispenser, the old woman and her reflection turned to me, hungry

for something I couldn't taste;
so I gave her my other quarters, and hurried
into the night, chewing my food,
still hungry when done, but far
from her tired eyes, far

Dark skies and broken hearts fill my journal pages as I sit down and write a lasting letter to whoever finds it.

I'm tried. I've been fighting for so long now....fighting for food, for sanity, for money, for validation and for love.

Once more into the breach for the love of love. Battle chinked armor, bloodied hands, scared face, full blooded urban soldier.

My piano is this pen, my songbook is the journal with "Kilroy was here"

I bend down and pray to myself which is how I know God watches my back.

This is another battle, another fight, another trudge through the minefield of emotion, of work, of heart, of soul.

I'm tired of being tried, I'm tried of fighting, but we don't retire into the quiet.

Johnny get yer gun, grab the sword, find your marks.

Muscle up soldier, we have one more fight.

One more battle.

I've said before in a poem that I had one last fight in me and one more after that, and several more. As long as I can stand it seems I'm in some form of combat.

I sacrifice my body for this because it's a personal victory, or loss...at this point I can't tell the ups from the downs anymore and it's simply because I don't care to look.

It's nothing I haven't done before, nothing I haven't seen, nothing I haven't done, it's old hat to me but that doesn't make it easier, it doesn't make it something that gets easier to cope with over time.

I grab my bottle, I climb to the top of my ivory tower of self isolation and I take my throne.

It has been said that when one does something right, you won't know they've done anything at all, this is our gift and curse, this is the chain we've wrapped around our necks and hung ourselves by.

So yes, one more battle- and a million more. Alone because no one else can, or will and someone has to hold back the high hell waters.

One must sit at the gate and make sure it operates correctly, one must fight until they die from it. Until they exhaust from it. Until they burn out from it.

From the top of this tower, from the bottom of my heart, I give all I have in every fight because that's whats required, I rebuild myself because I'm just that strong, because someone has to be, because when everyone falls to pieces, some must pick themselves up and dust themselves off, wipe the blood from the mouth, pick the shrapnel out, look in the mirror and do it again.

When you've got nothing to do and you can't do anything, you do what you can because it's what's required of you. Most of the time no one asks, no one steps up because it's not needed but the void must be filled and so we fill it.

a million dead hearts left behind, so we pick up what we can and move onward. Onward into the fight.