his name was John Coltrane, and when his long fingers,touched tenor saxophone keys, his notes slapped jaded, sullen attitudes, about jazz, including my own, musical notes ,leaped, bent, twisted, soaredin the air, as he played ,with eyes closed, as if lost in,a personal dream, the saxophone moaned, cried. whispered, told the good news, on the mountaintop, Coltrane was in the house, rocking it, he did it,simply, yet, unlike any other,ever heard before ,that moment, gone now, in the shadows of time, but his music, remains, still gathers new followers attention,pointing ,an indignant finger of cool, at those, who wish, they knew,coltrane, before he left, the station

The Crickets cackle “crisp,”
With an only interruption, being I,
Atop dust, whisper and
Desert highway.
I’d tell you if I were running,
But I’m not quite sure, not yet,
Leaving the Coyote to eat,
Respite, and devoured,
The singing Crickets,
A’howl later,
To deliver answers unimpeded.

I have a faint memory –
A snake’s grip promised, via hand and
Crystal contingency,
“Wiser,” once bestowed, the mystic;
An epic complete, atop 17 years of thunder,
Steel stained crimson,
Street stained whimper
And forever remaining,
“Under-construction.”

Symbolic a more relevant scaffold,
½ bamboo and the other steel, the tower,
Note ‘fore me, it’s only purpose –
Elsewhere, and anonymous,
While I tap my belly to some
Melody we’d once enjoyed;
Maybe something by, “Coltrane,”
Or maybe not; but music we’d both
Recognize and reminisce too.

It’s an awkward alchemy of sorts,
As the Crickets, post-mortem,
Persist if only to chirp, and the Coyote mulls.
When the dust continues to cake.
When the whisper finds newer ears.
When interrupt’s abrupt, erupts,
Pacifies and interrupts again;
My precious distraction –
An amnesia loyal in away from, “then.”
Somewhere beyond, “there,”
And onward, “anew.”

Hear the bass, grace notes race all over the place
Cymbals paced, hi-hats chase, weaving between the bass
The piano - chords struck with wide spanned hands
Poly-rhythmic, multi-layered sounds in strands

The timbre of reed vibrating against warm metal
Precision; a sixth, a ninth and an eleventh interval
A major, a minor scale; a frantic modal sweat
A small sound for mankind; but a truly giant step

Each note slices through the eclectic beat-drop
Singing and whispering this post-modern be-bop
Multi-phonics scream, like controlled feedback
The seductive saxophone – this weapon of attack

The boundary is stretched, new ground broken
The holy saxophone has never thus spoken
And I pay homage, all my deepest respects
Go to the man who made those giant steps

secrets at dusk
tasted vigorous as
Coltrane blues

in a smokey nightclub
under mysterious saxophone seas

this style is not my own
but it helps me swim better

I decided to adopt it
curious why it tugs ruthless
on spit fire sleeves

deliciously drowning me free.




forest moons at night

help you drop it all
bags of unwanted programs
flung from broken chimneys

violet threads pass perfect
through kitchen chipped glass

moth wings burning summer up
like her eyelash fluttering innocently on some other guy's cheek

shattering divisions snag
on moonlight betrayal dance

enormous sea hooks chop in
helpless lips seduced
mad quicksilver rush

reserve this room for my only friend

we have private letters to write
on a future night when
god dreams come true.

This is for you.





My only friend.


What weighs heavy is certain light
how it pierces
through troubled waters.

A million traces of faces
lit up in every beam.

One night I felt it bleed through me
using rivers of sun-fire screams.

Volcanic poetry spoke without a sound.

Jim Morrison breaking through doors
under spells of hypnotic waves
wild vibrant shimmering
on multi-colored sheets.

This style is not my own
but it helped me lava streak
across bitter shores.




Now,

my voice strays away.

Gone hunting

a broken well voice
picked up by an old cracked bucket
leaking simple worded wishes

deciding to voluntarily borrow her
stolen forest eyes.

I heard them speak translucent leaf
on a summer day
when clairvoyant kids
heard God speak

on pathways of brilliant blue lake

when sunshine
whispered us
in scintillating ripples

right before our astounded,
washed feet.




I am dripping funeral summer sweat
under tombstone studded trees

smiling while choking in
liquid clouded dark.

Alone but not alone.

Mighty Ghosts of heaven
holding my head up

making sure the Nile
doesn't gush out while
I still cannot even write or speak

turn my notebooks into confetti
nothing describes this mysterious sea

a new species of saxophone waves
has belted its killer wonderland
sound out across an entire broken stage.


*

I can picture us
walking barefoot
on star contacted sand

gazing out
under champion chandelier wonders

walking on Texas Lightning storm colors
bellies full on Rumi soul food

our secret flames
burning up
plastic playgrounds

violating propriety
on some nuclear guarded beach

schools of fish cut
by saxophone hooked seas

blasted by vaults of unwrapped poems
someone else wrote perfect
in our dreams

we hope one day
the unpredictable silence
of simple worded wishes

will help us

extravagantly bloom
new spring leaves
rain stamped on tender delicious works

after winter is done
savagely wishing us dead
we are touched by other worlds.

a note before i end the pending poem.

i know i'm not writing anything "in the groove"
or whatever urban tonguing i should use to invent
the new form of glue: to stick with the trends.
                    when people read candyfloss
literature i read lead literature,
  that's how it goes, i find too many poets
angry shouting down other people's throats,
i find them in positions where they think
they empower people: but rarely do.
   i write for the sole purpose of a demographic,
a democracy of sorts, i never want to hear
my voice regurgitated back at me,
i find it prickly, apart from the half-digested content
i am actually opposing being fed it...
  i can't explain why i don't entertain,
write one poem every two years either, apart from
the fact that: well, writing a poem and then
performing it? performance doesn't really do much
for what's an ongoing voyage, performance to
the art is like a Moby **** moment:
   you get to tell the adventure of a shipwreck,
rather than the proof that the earth is not flat.
the additional benefit, you get to see how your
thinking interacts with symbols, and how these symbols
will never betray the tongue that doesn't speak them...
   you get to do x-ray upon x-ray and find that
stuff like this: is actually equivalent to a bone in your
tongue. as with the moment: when artists are quoted
as having said: words are meaningless...
     i guess there comes a time when, with that said:
punching someone dead means more.
   oh this pithy sentiments that only empower politicians
and the media... i might have said
    a baby's gluttonous gaga drool and you'd be like:
yay! happy days upon us!
                      when poetry isn't performed it continues
into the nether region of thoughts: it's not jeopardy
of suddenly fizzling out into a state of a stale champagne
bottle... the residual power is confiscates from speaking
it retains a close proximity of actually writing it,
on the basis that it becomes prolonged, and more concentrated,
it cannot be allowed to diffuse into the open,
into a crowd, for a democratic hurrah on we go.
  i wanted to simply see poetry as an optical exploration,
rather than a vocal necessity of the art,
      philosophy was clogged up in too many truths
and untruths, and basically too many paragraphs,
   i wanted to make frank the medium that abhors paragraphs,
and by the looks of it: punctuation marks.
well, it's all about pedantry to be honest,
               but then i never desired the urban lingua
of keeping with the zeitgeist... i see how keeping up
with the times is enshrined with materialism and how
fickle it all eventually becomes... you can never reach
a status of cool reaching for the obscure,
but that's what all attempts at fame end up being:
a quiz show, trivia, obscure knowledge, 0 points
means the best points available, and after that, the realisation
that all is empty, and that attempts at fame
become questions in a quiz show where the aim of
the game is to: name the most obscure answer possible...
oddly enough the same show invites celebrities to
take part in the quiz for charity... *pointless celebrities,
first word, yep, that's the name of the show.
oh no, i don't shun television, i do admit that watching
a brick wall is more entertaining drunk than television,
but the sober me has to do something from time to time.
so poetry: a medium that's opposite of vocally necessary,
a medium to explore the bone inside the tongue
that writing invokes: ****** stalemate...
      would i care to say why every word has a meaning?
unless you can speak hundsprechen i'd say only this,
that sort of reasoning is dangerous...
            we wouldn't get anything done is units of language
was meaningless... (hold on, i'm going to create
a crescendo for this point)...
you can say language is meaningless when you're
singing... vocalising language from these depths of
what would otherwise be known as the graveyard of surds
on the pure basis of optics and all cognitive parameters...
      sure, from these depths into an angelic gospel choir
you can get a meaninglessness: because it's so ******
    pleasurable... you can't deny a good song, you
can't compare the use of language in singing to the use
of language in lecturing some obscure topic by simply
talking... for thus words are sounds, and not the dreaded
pluralism of conventional talking: i.e. meanings.
              unlike the Chinese who have a certain capacity
to remember about 3000 ideograms, we have a much
bigger capacity, but our words are shrapnel and what we
don't have that the Chinese do have is:
                 a capacity for the multiplicity of meaning.
i can't imagine any ambiguity with Chinese ideograms
in the range of 3000 symbols... but there is clearly ambiguity
in our system...
                      obviously we can say words are meaningless
at times when rules of using language are lax given
the lies of politicians and the media roulette:
the fact that media is not state owned is even worse,
shadow brokers and a tarantula venom disorientating people.
   singing is an escape route from the socio-political
conventions of using language, hence the ambiguity trail
of what's deservedly called: socially-acceptable mode
of conduct, something that doesn't receive the ****** frown
of what would probably look like a lemon smiling.
  yet, if language doesn't give you a chance to see a labyrinth
then you have the shallows of singing... mm, yeah, mm, boo...
         ye-ha! ******* cowboys the whole lot of them...
but it's what it's supposed to be, something to be sung
for someone else to hear... it's not something written
down for someone else to see... and subsequently maybe
think about... oh how dreaded that statement seems in
English, a bit like denken scheiße / shy-se!
          people only make statements about the meaningless
of language when they sing... but that's the point:
you're making sounds, akin to the rhythm of my heart,
hence i don't think and subsequently go into a moshpit
or nod my head with some pigeon-like "cool" approval...
language is a bit like Shrek talking about onions...
it has layers, "spooky" other dimensions, oooh oooh...
Casper asked for a weener so he could invert necrophilia
and ghost-**** that ***... it has layers...
         somewhere between the Antarctica and the Arctic,
perhaps in the tropic of Capricorn, but who knows?
but i'll tell you one thing... it's not a white guy thing...
i finally understand why i don't like rap...
a bit like saying: a crowd shouting at a football match
is not an onomatopoeia of whatever is **** sapiens worthy...
   i think that classification actually predates
the expression of it... it's out there, but on the fringes...
         it's like this standard of protestantism with the concept
of predestination: we might just get there by Sunday
in the year 2099, but who knows?
        now i do understand why i don't like rap...
never liked it... couldn't stomach it...
   then i come across a beauty... so all those things i said
before, it culminates into this...
    Akua Naru, ring a bell? probably not,
3mil is nothing in today's celebrity cut-throat backstabbing...
     http://tinyurl.com/lt8ayhg... now that's entertainment...
that's what i love, how every instrument is
actually heard... the bass kicks in to set the tone
with the tickly percussion accents...
                       she's baking a cake...
she's layering...
  it's unlike that ****-culture music of pounding pounding
overly rhythmic and for every band these days
   it's one guitar = 20 violins of an orchestra's worth...
                  this is the new-jazz, or what John Coltrane
insinuated with the words: a love supreme, a love supreme.
            i don't know if it's poetry...
                                   a weak message on a stage might
always require a backing band, like a weak voice
might require a backing band... but this little critique doesn't
necessarily mean i can appreciate it,
   and is the reason why i don't understand rap, and never will.

1.

From our
safe windows,
we crane our necks,
rubbernecking
past the slow
motion wreckage
unfolding in Homs.

We remain
perfectly
perched
to marvel at
the elegant arc of
a mortar shell
framing tomorrows
deep horizon,
whistling through
the twilight to
find its fruitful
mark.

In the now
we keep
complicit time,
to the arrest
of beating hearts,
snapping fingers
to the pop
of rifle cracks,
swooning to
the delicious
intoxication of
curling smoke
lofting ever
upward;
yet
thankfully
remain
distant
enough to
recuse any
possibility
of an
intimate
nexus
with the
besieged.

2.

From our
safe windows,
we behold the
urgent arrivals of
The Friends of Syria
demanding
clean sheets
and 4 Star
room service at a
Tunisian Palace
recently cleaned
and under new
management
promising a
much needed
refurbishment.

The gathered,
a clique of
this epochs
movers and shakers,
a veritable
rouges gallery of
ambassadorial
prelates, Emirs and
state department
bureaucrats
summoned
with portfolio
from the
darkest corners
of the globe.

They are
eager to
sanctify
the misery
of Homs,
deflect and
lay blame
with realpolitik
rationalizations,
commencing
official commissions
of inquiry,
deliberating
grave considerations,
issuing indictments
of formal charges for
Crimes Against
Humanity
while
remaining
urgently
engrossed
in the fascination
of interviewing
potential
process servers
to deliver the bad news
to Bashar al-Assad
and his soulless
Baathist
confederates,
if papers
are to be
served.

Yes, the diplomats
are busy meeting
in closed rooms.

In hushed circles
they whisper
into aroused ears,
railing against
Russia’s
gun running
intransigence
and China’s
geopolitical
chess moves.

Statesmen
boast of the
intrepid justice
of tipping points
and the moving poetry
of self serving tales,
weighing the impact
of stern sanctions
amidst the historical
confusion of the
asymmetrical
symmetries
of civil war.

Caravans
of Arab League
envoys roll up
in silver Bentleys,
crossing deserts
of contradictory
obfuscations,
navigating the
endless dunes
with hand held
sextants of
hidden agendas.

The heroic
Bedouins are
eager to offload
their baggage
and share
on the ground
intelligence from
their recent soirées
across Syria.

They beg
a quick fix,
the triage of a
critical catharsis
to bleed their
brains dry
of heinous
recollections,
pleading
release from a
troubled conscience
victimized by
the unnerving paradox
of reconciling
discoveries of
perverse voyeurism
with the sanctioned
explanations
of their respective
ruling elites.

The bellies
of these
scopophiliacs
are distended;
grown queasy
from a steady diet
of malfeasance
an ulcerated
world parades
in continuous loop;
spewing the raw feeds
of real time misery;
forcibly fed
the grim
visions of
frantic
fathers
rushing
the mangled
carcases
of mortally
wounded
children
to crumpled
piles of smashed
concrete that were
once hospitals.

We despondently
ask how
much longer
must we
look into
the eyes
of starving
children
emaciated from
the wanton
indifference
of the world?


3.

From our
safe windows
we wonder
how much
longer can
the urgent
burning
ambivalence
continue
before it
consumes
our common
humanity in
a final
conflagration?

My hair already
singed by the
endless firestorms
sweeping the prairies
of the world.

How can we survive
the trampling hoards,
the marauding
plagues of acrimony
fed by a voracious
blood lust aspiring to
victimize the people
of Homs and a
thousand cities
like it?


4.

From my safe
window I stand in witness
to the state execution of
refugees fleeing the
living nightmare
of Baba Amr.

The ****** of innocents,
today's newly minted martyrs,
women and children
cornered, trapped
on treacherous roads,
mercilessly
slaughtered and
defiled in death
to mark the lesson
of a ruthless master
enthralled with the
power of his
sadistic fascist
lordship.

I cannot avert my eyes
marking sights
of pleading women
begging for the
lives of their children
in exchange for
the gratification
of a sadists
lust.

My heart
is impaled
on the sharp
spear of
outrage
beholding
careening
children mowed
down with the
serrated blades
protruding
from marauding
jeeps of laughing
soldiers.

I drop
to my knees
in lakes of
tears
reflecting
a grotesque
horror stricken
image of myself.

My eyes have
murdered my soul.

The ghastly images
of Homs have chased
away my Holy Ghost
to the safety of a child's
sandbox hidden away
in a long forgotten
revered memory.


5.

From my safe window
I seethe with anger
demanding vengeance,
debating how to rise
to meet the obscenity of
the Butcher of Damascus.

The sword of Damocles
dangles so tantalizingly close
to this tyrants throat.  

The covered women
of Homs scream prayers
“may Allah bring Bashar to ruin”

Dare I pray
that Allah trip the
horsehair trigger
that holds the
sword at bay?

Do I pick up
the sword
a wield it
as an
avenging
angel?

Am I the
John Brown
of our time?

Do I organize
a Lincoln Brigade
and join the growing
leagues of jihadists
amassing at the
Gates of Damascus?

Will my righteous
indignation fit well
in a confederacy
with Hamas and
al-Qaeda as my
comrades in arms?

Do I succumb to
the passion of hate
and become just
another murderous
partisan, or do I
commend the power
of love and marshal
truth to speak with
the force of
satyagraha?

I lift a fervent prayer
to claim the justice
of Allah’s ear,
“may the knowing one
lift the veil of foolishness
that covers my heart in
cloaks of resent, cure
my blindness that ignores
my raging disease of
plausible deniability
ravaging the body politic
of humanity.”

6.

Indeed,
physician heal thyself.

I run to embrace my
illness.

I pine to understand it.

I undertake the
difficult regimen
of a cure to eradicate
the terrible affliction.

This
pernicious
plague,
subverting
the notion
of a shared
humanness
is a cunning
sedition that
undermines
the unity of
the holy spirit.  

The bell from
the toppled steeples
still tolls, echoing
across the space of
continents and eons
of temporal time.

The faithful chimes
gently chides us
to remove the wedge
of perception that
separates, divides
and undermines.

Time has come
to liberally
apply the balm
that salves the
open wounds
so common to
our common
human condition.

The power of prayer
is the joining of hands
with others racked
with the common
affliction of humanness.

Allah,  
My eyes are wide open,
my sacred heart revealed,
my sleeves are rolled up,
my memory is stocked,
my soul filled with resolve,
my hand is lifted
extended to all
brothers and sisters.
Lift us,
gather us
into one
loving embrace.

Selah


7.

From the safe
windows of
our palaces
we live within
earshot of
the trilling
zaghroutas
of exasperation
flowing from
the besieged
city smouldering
under Bashar’s
symphony of terror.

Our nostrils
fill with the
acrid plumes
of unrequited
lamentations
lifting from the
the burning
destruction
of shelled
buildings.

Our eyes spark
from the night
tracers
of sleeking
snipers
flitting along
the city’s
rooftops.

The deadly jinn
indiscriminately
inject the
paralysis of
random fear
into the veins
of the city
with each
skillful
head shot.

These
ghoulish
assassins
lavish in their
macabre work;
like vultures
they eagerly
feast on the
corpses of their ****,
the stench of bloated
bodies drying in the
sun is the perfume
that fills their nostrils.


8.

From our
safe window
we discern the
silhouettes of militants
still boldly standing
amidst the
mounting rubble of an
unbowed Homs
shouting;

Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!
Allah Akbar!!!

raising pumped fists,
singing songs
of resistance,
dancing to
the revelation of
freedom,
refusing to
be coward by
the slashing
whips of a
butchers
terrible
sword.


9.

From my
safe window
my tongue laps
the pap
of infants
suckling from
the depleted
teats of mothers
who cannot cry
for their dying
children;
tears fail
to well from
the exhaustion
of dehydrated
pools.

10.

From my
safe window
my heart stirs
to the muezzin
calling the
desperate faithful
from the toppled
rubble of dashed
minarets.

We can
no longer
shut our ears
to the adhan
of screams
the silent
voices that echo
the blatant injustice
of a people under siege.


11.

From my
safe window,
I pay
Homage to Homs
and call brothers
and sisters to rise
with vigilant
insistence
that hostilities
cease and
humanity be
upheld,
respected and
protected.


12.

From my safe
window
I perceive
the zagroutas
of sorrow
manifest as a
whiling hum,
a sweeping
blue mist,
levitating
the coffins
from the rubble
of ravaged streets.

The swirling
chorus of
mourning
joins my
desperate
prayers;
rising in
concert
with the
black billows
of smoke
dancing
away
from the
flaming
embers
of scorched
neighborhoods.


13.

From my
safe window
I heed
the fluttering
wings
of avenging
angels
furiously
batting
as they
climb
the black
plumes,
lifting from
the scattered bricks
of the desecrated
city.

It is the
Jacob’s
Ladder
for our
time;
marking
a new
consecrated
place
where
a New Adam
is destined
to be formed
from the
pulverized
stones of
desolation.

14.

From our
safe windows
we peer into
resplendent
mirrors
beholding
the perfect image of
ourselves
eying
falling tears
dripping blood,
coloring death
onto the
blanched sheets
of disheveled beds.


15.

From our
safe windows
our voices are silenced,
our words mock urgency
our thoughts betray comprehension
our senses fail to illicit empathy
our action is the only worthy prayer


16.

From my
safe window
I hear the
mortar shells
walking toward
my little palace,
the crack
of a ******
shot
precedes
the wiz of a
passing bullet
whispering
its presence
into my
waxen
ear.


17.

From my
safe window,
my palms scoop
the rich soil
of the flower boxes
perched on my sill.
I anoint the tender
green shoots of  the
Arab Spring
with an incessant flow
of bittersweet tears.

Music selection:
John Coltrane
A Love Supreme
Acknowledgment

Oakland
2/28/12
jbm

/notably concerning graduate education at the university of Edinburgh: why do these doctors think they can teach, who made them so, well, what's the word, useless, demeaned at having to teach? every time a doctor of chemistry was asked to teach it was like watching someone being tortured in an iron maiden... sure, a professor of chemistry could teach, just like every single post-graduate, PhD student should have taught, a doctor of chemistry didn't teach, unless he taught as Americans are prone to speaking in acronyms, and they say the Scots speak an undecipherable english... like **** they do, understood them like I might understand the zest pinch of a hobskotch chili! after all, the chemistry doctor doesn't exactly make use of his PhD students, but since they were the sheep first to the slaughter before the guillotine of knowledge, they could translate the higher tier chemistry to the undergraduates... no one sane enough would want to learn chemistry from a doctor of chemistry... those men and women are lost to their own enterprises, to their own Faustian romance, to teach chemistry at university, it would be best to be taught by those inclined to further adhere to advanced pedagogy... post-graduates ought to replace doctors in teaching undergraduate material... balanced out by the fact that the said doctors would not require the help of PhD students in research, with what already is time wasted on lecturing, what to them is, the ****** obvious... but then again... the supply and demand isn't there... even though PhD students could teach, they don't, smug chemistry doctors lecture in the guise of solipsism... theyd rather be engrossed in their research than give lectures... but since those trained PhD monkeys do all the trial and error, wasted time, which the doctors themselves could do... they waste their time on giving undergraduate lectures... because these recent protests at universities, where students complained about not having enough time spent with doctors in the field... I'd start by bemoaning not being given enough post-graduate time... after all, the people who closest to jumping over the waiting benchmark.../

in vino veritas:
due proof that snobbery
and that indie collection
of the smiths' reissue
only goes so far,
    comparatively,
Miles Davis' kind of blue
isn't overrated nor is
it overplayed,
notably a conversation
with Boris, the Russian
in Edinburgh,
who had to pick sketches
of spain as his favourite...
pop music versus ******
fetishes... people will be
ashamed of pop song guilty
pleasures than any bedroom
"deviances",
the boat the boat, whatever floats
yours...  
mine? seven years late,
Britney spears' criminal...
because John Coltrane'
a love supreme is easier
to digest than ******* brew?
fudged packed *******
and a perpetuated crescendo...
Boris could have took to
Porgy and Bess...
         or the birth of cool...
whatever it was,
high above Steppenwolf
   desiring the immortality
of a Bach... still:
       there's Händel...
but let's face it,
both sides lost something,
whatever the iron curtain
was, there was also
something akin to the,
jazz window...
                  because can you
even imagine jazz being learned
at a music liceum?
       i still don't know why
the Japanese love classical music,
or why it's Chopin rather than
List embedded in their heads,
not the gentle fingers of Satie
or Debussy...
         two Portuguese jesuits did
little to spread Christianity,
but music written by Chopin
found its atom, its universality
of translation...
                  even withe the Higgs...
something that is non-divisible,
not atomic, not sub-atomic,
                               über-atomar...
supra-atomic, which includes
the sub-atomic spectrum...
         a perpetuated ad continuum
     of ad per se, in addition to:
an addition, an addition,
        a void brimful of a lost
paraphrasing...
                          in the name of...
in the direction of (the) ortho-
   and of (the) meta-
    and of (the) para-...
                  amen.
                       the upright,
rigidness of: jump off a building,
see pancakes at the bottom...
the desire for a hier-und-nach...
well.. telegram cipher from 1930s
**** Germany,  in response
to heidegger's da-sein...
     da-nach...
                 no need to explore
the paragraph, just enough tease
to block out images of, "paradise"...
       para or besides norms,
    a phenomenon and
      an anomaly that's a res per se,
Kantian for: noumenon...
          a proposition without a school,
or tree of logic, which,
Husserl did manifest...
    in phenomenology...
              I can't help but notice
that classical music is only
relevant today because of movies...
listen to any classical music chart,
7/10 times it's music accompanying
a movie...
               comparing
kind of blue to midnight sonata?
yep, the later is overplayed...
   it's no longer a piece of music,
but a literary cliché...
      even in such wonderful books
like geek love by Katherine Dunn...
jazz is the only genre of music
that comes close to prog. rock,
    id est, no song: an album...
      even though I admit
king crimson's in the court...
     with children of men
      as a backdrop...
once upon a time the iron curtain
and the jazz window...
    rap, shmap, shpindle me dingo...
and the old man still lectures me
on work, born in 1939,
who still remembrance the Soviet army
of boy-soldiers and black-clad SS-men...
oh there was work just after the war,
given what Aries took with
the harvest just years prior...
                       woe to the aspiring poets
born in a cocoon of a father
who laboured by perfecting a trade
that, apparently,  no future Englishman
would take up! or if they did...
only via the trickling down
of the plutocratic, extended family...
and a ****** job they did too...
         well... if everyone is willing
to be and only be, a pop star entertainer...
I'd hate to imagine this piece
to be an instruction manual,
   a cohrent: whip and stirrup
demanding a gallop...
                       perhaps less cabaret voltaire,
and more jackson *******,
because why should painters be
allowed all the excuses under the sun?
and when will I see a poetry anthology
written solely by critics?
          oddly enough:
or rather, the pitfall...
     reading a poem never manifests
itself in a drive to write one myself...
an enzyme of a blank,
      a substrate of a butcher's novel...
or rather... a meaty novel, preferably
historical, notably one
that serves as an answer to Muslims
with regards to:
   remembering the Crusades,
forgotten the Golden Horde...
           and never really bothering
to look into the other crusades
against the Prussians, Lithuanians,
Kashubians et al.
                   such feral lands...
perhaps if you speak the language
as well as Norman Davies...
  you might, just might, not stand out
like a sore thumb in these parts.

Nima looked bored
as we walked
the art gallery
she was only allowed out

of the hospital
for a few hours
promising no drug fixes
or *****

can't we go elsewhere?
she asked
bored here
I felt her boredom

it seeped into my bones
let's go for a coffee
I said
so we went for a coffee

in a coffee bar
across the road
and had a smoke
you were late

she said
I only have a few hours
out of that mad house
sorry I popped

into the jazz record shop
and left me waiting
in Trafalgar Square
she said

what did you buy?
nothing yet
I said
I'll go back later

saw a Coltrane LP I liked
I said
***** that jazz stuff
she said

we drained our coffees
and walked back
to the train station
and I saw her

on her train
and kissed her
at the window
and the train went off

and I watched
until she was out of sight
then back tracked
to the jazz record shop

to buy the Coltrane LP
thinking of Nima
and the time
we had a ***

in that cheap hotel
by Charing Cross
and the bed creaking
and the odd

hot and cold water taps
and she and I
laying there
I walked back

to the gallery
for a last look around
thinking of the Coltrane
and the Coltrane sound.

Rain soaks through my shoulders
And trickles down my spine
Like fingers over cracked and fractured stone.

Your breaths come like zephyrs
Your limbs tangle up with mine
Your voice, the only one I've ever known.

   And Coltrane blows a story tall
   To a bass line like a siren call
   Building tapestries of Cashmere
   For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.

   You'll always be the bright full moon
   That filled my chest and filled the room
   While Rome is burned to embers
   The drums of war rose carrying the tune.


Footsteps on city walls
Hands upon splintered wood.
The battles lead to losses for all sides.

Honey comes from stinging bees
I'd get some for you if I could
But winter left us lost on drifting tides.

   Still Coltrane blows a story tall
   To a bass line like a siren call
   Building tapestries of Cashmere
   For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.

   I'll offer you a silk cocoon
   A watercoloured afternoon
   While Rome is burned to embers
   The drums of war rose carrying the tune.


Morning sun brings the day
The smell of candles still
Clothes hang to dry from chairs along the walls.

Take our time to wake up
Arms protect you from the chill
"Yesterday," the radio news recalls.

   Then Coltrane blows a story tall
   To a bass line like a siren call
   Building tapestries of Cashmere
   For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.

   The sunrise like the silver moon
   Paints us in gold and fills the room
   While Rome is burned to embers
   The drums of war rose carrying the tune.

Having met Julie
at Victoria railway station
and travelled by tube
to Charing Cross Road

you sneaked
into Dobell's
jazz record shop
and listened

to some Coltrane
in the small record booth
up close
she having got out

of the hospital
for the day
although
the drug withdrawal

was getting her tight
her short skirt
was riding high
as she sat there

squashed up
near to you
her eyes closing
and opening

her hands
in prayer mode
in her lap
can we go now?

she said
I need a drink
and smoke
so you left the booth

giving the guy
back the Coltrane
record sleeve
and left the shop

taking it on foot
to the café
and ordering
two coffees

and she took out
her smokes and lit up
and she gave
you one too

and she talked
of how her parents
hadn't visited
and how

the whole show
at the hospital
was getting her
on the edge

and you sat
watching her
the dark hair
drawn back

with a black ribbon
the red
high necked jumper
the short black skirt

her eyes bright
as stars
her lips making
a large O

then closing up
and going
like a narrow slit
you remember

that quickie
we had
in that small cupboard?
she said

those brooms
and boxes
and then she smiled
and you smiled too

that was my last time
she said
last time I had it
she said louder

she took a drag
of her smoke
and sat silent
watching the smoke

rise before her eyes
Warwick’s worried
about you
you said

is he now
she said sarcastically
well he can go pray
to his God

for me then
she said
sitting back
in the seat

yes you thought
the ***
had been good
but quick

unexpected
out of the blue
she in her night gown
(and little else)

and in the background
the music playing
from the radio
some Beatles' song

along the hospital ward
what did you think
of the Coltrane album?
you said

breaking the silence
in the café
bored my **** off
she said

I’ll get it anyway
you replied
and she looked out
the window darkly

as if someone
had fingered her
slowly
then died.

Each finds
their own salvation
or not,
Nima said.

Birds fed
in her hair.

Her eyes ******
in black holes,
gave birth to dreams.

I sat beside her,
drank black coffee,
smoked menthol cigarettes,
heard Coltrane
on the HiFi.

How deep
does my soul go?
She asked,
what is *** after all?

I inhaled and looked
at the cavern
of her small
firm *******.

Cold turkey,
she said,
rather have
a cool fix.

I sat exhaling
menthol smoke;
the Coltrane runs
on saxophone
caught in my ears.

I think I’ve spiders
in my ******,
she said;
******* ones
with hairy legs.

I closed my eyes
supping on
the menthol smoke,
sensing Coltrane's sound
invade my soul.

Nima lay back down,
legs spread,
black beetles
and insects
inside
her drained out
head.

I’ve always been the quiet type, never one to do the speaking, just listening and observing the lives of those around me.
If I can remember correctly, I began as a light blue, sheltering a newborn baby, Conner, I was covered in wallpaper lined by teddy bears with white silk bow ties like pin stripe pants.
Those few days before his birth in ’62 were filled with anxiety and anticipation, with his parents sneaking in to gaze upon my blue coat, tears in their eyes for the gift that they were days away from receiving. However, they would soon find that the young baby spent little time in my embrace other than evening naps, otherwise his cries became loud with the longing for his mum.

Six years later the teddy bears came down from the walls along with the crib, to be replaced by a bed, the baby blue coat replaced by a loud red.
Watching him grow, I saw his good days and his bad, he was built for math, fast cars, and jubilant laughter.
He had come to me in the midst of April when the flowers outside the windows bloomed, and left for a university after they flowered a mere twelve times.
Once again, his parents visited me, with tears in their eyes as if by being with me his presence would be restored.

His father had talked of a promotion he’d dreamed of, so with more money they were off to a more luxurious home, I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy.

I was alone for a while, while the wallpaper had been striped from me and I lay bear and exposed for quite some time, only briefly being introduced to new families by a smiling woman with high heels and big hair.
A group of four moved in, Tom, Adam, Lana, and Louisa. They painted my walls a bright yellow and carpeted my wooden floors, they added filing cabinets, desks, a white board, a telephone, and a book shelf that decorated my left side.
The boys were mechanics, around thirty years at the time, and worked strenuous hours. They bent over their desks re-drawing, re-scaling, and re-shaping until perfection.
Blue prints poured from their cabinets. The two girls owned a boutique down by the grocery store, I saw them less often, but they didn’t bring home their work, only their stories and their stress. It was a short acquaintance with the group, as their hearts were set on the big city and soon their paychecks were capable of supporting that lifestyle.

I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy for them.

The following year in ’88 a family of four moved in.
John, Ali and their twin girls converted me to a gym with barbells and some odd-looking mechanism called a “Bo Flex” used for hanging up dry cleaning and attracting the dust.
By then my vibrant yellow walls had faded to beige and my beige carpet had faded to yellow.

I don’t know much about those folks, as in-home gyms are more for decoration than utilization, I guess. The girls visited on days when the heat was unbearable in the Texas sun, running in with loud laughter as they let their weight thud into the ground. They sprawled themselves out on my floors making snow angels, in my warm, worn carpet. Oh, how I loved their attention!

They also left the windows open unlike Adam and Tom, so even when they weren’t around the sunshine kept me company. After fourteen years Bailey left shortly after Annie. I rarely saw anyone for a year or so after that.
The house became too big for John and Ali, and they decided to make the move to Florida that they’d always dreamed of.

The movers came and lifted the heavy weights from my creaking floors, but I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy.

The last person that came to live among my embrace was the eldest daughter of three girls. She and I became the closest of all prior inhabitants. Perhaps it was because of the frequent lack of happiness in her eyes, it was the only time I’d had an issue with my inability to intervene in a situation and speak as opposed to listening.
She left my walls there bare color, but adorned me with newspaper clippings and photographs. I was never lonely because her sisters looked up to her, never wanting to leave me, because they never wanted to leave her.
She was more imaginative than the young boy, and more precise than the mechanics.
The music she played was constant and expansive, from Sinatra and Coltrane to A Tribe Called Quest and the Rolling stones. It all correlated with her mood, causing me great joy when the tempo was fast, and depression in times when the dark music fell upon the room.
Her life appeared to be a struggle, as she often threw herself upon the carpet crying until late hours in the night. Only to wake up before the sun rose to write lengthy accounts of the inexplicable sadness she frequently experienced.

Soon she found the help that I was unable to provide with a therapist who visited her in the privacy of her own bedroom. The kind woman encouraged her to participate in activities beyond the confines of my four walls.
She had dreamed to be a psychologist, she wanted to help people, because she knew first hand how much some really needed it. And at age eighteen, that’s exactly what she set off to become.

She moved to Boulder the university she had written about and had wanted to attend for years past.
So I was not sad, I was not lonely, I was happy for her.

She doesn’t rest within my walls and doesn’t watch my flowers bloom, but the sisters, they often come back to visit and roll up the blinds to let the sun shine in, practice their own talents, and fall in love with their own dreams, I am not lonely, they don’t leave me. In fact, one of them is sprawled out upon my floor now, taking over her sister’s absence with a pen and paper of her own.

There's a passion that burns
within me that's never
more alive, than when I'm
In the garden.
And in the garden of
love, my favorite
flowers are the tulips.

They're especially inviting
after a bottle of Chianti
on a hot July night, with
John Coltrane seductively
blowing from the CD player.

Equally captivating, is the little
bud that lies North of the
tulips.  And with the right
amount of attention, the little
bud, the pea in the pod, creates
a nectar of the gods that tastes
sweet, like honey to my soul,
like maple syrup to my spirit,
a heavenly sap that flows like
the beer on tap at an
all you can drink club.
Like Dylan Thomas at a
pub in Wales, my heart sails drunk on the tulip's fine wine.
And then like magic it occurs,
when ovulation yearns for
procreation, and on those nights,
On those nights...
I could spend forever in
the tulips.

.if, and however many mistakes i made in typo... attempting to compete with Spawn, using the black panther... ******, please... it's like that "healthy" competition of butter, using margarine... Black Panther isn't Spawn... Spawn is... Spawn... yeah... thanks for ruining my 12" wish fetish... i was so dying... to... i was never going to **** an English girl to begin with... thank god.

you're seriously going
to "correct" me
using black panther....
seriously?
spawn was the *******
to what....
to whatever you're
doing these days....
i don't want to be
the blank panther...
**** being black panther...
*******...
i want to be spawn"..
******* quasi-******...
john coltrane...
you a *mariah carey
back-up singer or some
otherwise alien whacky
alien-backlog?
compared to spawn...
the black panther
looks like a ******* ******....
wing guy...
for what's deemed
12"...
             black...
mire like bleak Parthenon...
some columns,
no spirals...
  waste of time...
      black Panther, what?
so Spawn...
           was just a waste of time?
Spawn was the gran-daddy
where the Batman was the daddy
given the Joker
was the gran-gran-daddy...
you get me?
Miles Davis too much for you?
the blank panther is such
a ***** move...
it's like... come Kosovo...
when expecting Sarajevo...
******... this **** will not
stick...
high flying ****
if you think this will become
a ******* pancake...
   no, ******...
take your blank panther back
to Yakanda, or whatever...
your Spawn was cooler than
Lego Batman...
              **** your white *****...
and leave me to my existentialism
of... making a "heroic" exit..
akin to Elvis...
but more or less minding
Roy Orbison in a sing along.

p.s.
lego batman movie quote:
black panther *****!
spawn go go go! spammy!

Have ever you noticed that liars
Cross their fingers when they lie?
They seem to think it absolves them from
A judgement, up on high,
For fingers crossed means they didn’t mean
The thing they’re telling you,
But if you’re silly, and fall for it
They make you think it’s true.

I knew a terrible liar once
His name was John Coltrane,
He always cried on my shoulder then
As if he was in pain,
He said that life was short-changing him,
That there was nothing fair,
It only took just a minor thing
To drive him to despair.

We both worked then at an auto plant
And used a giant press,
Knocking out doors and bonnets there,
And working under stress,
For time and motion had set a rate
That we could not fulfil,
And truth to tell it had seemed like hell
And was making Coltrane ill.

No matter how fast we put them through
The steel kept banking up,
Thanks to the other press’s crew
Who’d stop, and have a cup,
While we were struggling then to clear
The backlog, piled up high,
And John was constantly in my ear,
‘I think I want to die.’

I said that he didn’t mean it,
It was just a lousy job,
But he just kept on repeating it
And even began to sob,
To tell the truth, it got on my nerves,
It really began to grate,
I lost my cool, and I said the fool
Was really tempting fate.

He seemed to go a bit crazy then,
Lay backwards on the dye,
I tried to pull him away, but he
Lay staring at the sky,
The press came down with a mighty thump
And it flattened out his head,
Two hundred and fifty tons per inch
Said John Coltrane was dead.

We all of us stood around in shock
When the press released him there,
All that was left was a headless corpse
With blood and brains to spare,
His corpse let out a terrible sigh
At the judgement he had lost,
For though he said he would want to die,
He lay with his fingers crossed.

David Lewis Paget

Alice Coltrane, your music brings something out of me,
Something nameless
something I keep buried.
As I lay on this bare mattress, humming along to “Turiya And Ramakrishna”
I ponder if you knew your legacy.
If during those last days in 2007, you ever thought your work could inspire poets of the next generation
or was that even a question lingering between your tempels?
Perhaps not.

Well as this pen dances to the melodies you wrote,
I think, and think
and blink
and sink
I wonder if my last hours will happen a year from now or a decade
or a month
or a week
And what will remain of my creations
Have I touched enough lives
Have I loved enough souls
Have I danced enough
Gave enough
Laughed enough?

I envy the sand devoured by oceans
because it’s simply moving on to its next life
I envy photographs because their moments last forever
I envy the tortoise’s shell
I envy the hourglass because its fate is no mystery
I envy those who do not envy
I envy the days before sundials
when days simply couldn’t fit onto paper squares

I...don’t want you to worry.
I am a spark
Finite but furious
bright, unstable, contagious
and capable of lighting your way before I fade

At least I hope.

Disregard
the notes;
enter into
the silences.
  - mce

Monk tinks tonight
fine glasses clink
convivial banter
bubble pop blink

in breathing rooms
bit woofed and stirred
the smoke mint sound
we dare exhale

Monk swings about
a bell do ding
the huey blues
bird bops on wings

hips juicy moves
rubby mounds wet ****
slow drum rolls blow
dance steady bump

Monk rocks the house
the clock do tick
me feets be tappin
gonna busta trick

key ******* bounce
mouths all agape
we gettin down
like crazy apes

Monk’s muzik rides
a sonorous beam
levitatin hipsters
to places unseen

gosh groovy tunes
a **** good gig
we all stoked up
Monk we do dig  

Monk played alright
some swingin tunes
Happy B Day Monk
you over the moon

Thelonious Monk
(October 10, 1917 - February 17, 1982)

Thelonious Monk
with John Coltrane
Trinkle ******


10/9/13
Suffern
jbm

I would have loved
to have had ***
with Kafka
Nima said
something about him
the photo of him

I sat opposite her
in the café
in Charing Cross Road
she had a coke
I sipped coffee

I feel the same
about Marilyn Monroe
I said
love to have got
her in bed

Nima looked at me
disdainfully
you would
she said

not necessarily
for ***
I said
just to listen
to her voice
sense her being there
the scent of her

Nima shook her head
ok I’d listen to Kafka
and sense
his being there
but *******
his **** off
at the same time
she said

an old guy
on the other side
of the café
gave her a look

have you read
any of his books?
I asked

some
she said
the one where he turns
into a big beetle

actually it doesn't say beetle
in the book
it says gigantic vermin
which people has interpreted
as a beetle or bug
I said

she sipped her coke
it's his body
I want to go to bed
with not his book
she said

he's dead
I said
died in 1924

shame
she said
he doesn’t know
what he's
missed out on

I guess he did
I said

she smiled
have to be satisfied
with his books then
won't I

we drained our drinks
and went on our way
I went to Dobell's
Jazz Record shop
and bought
a Coltrane LP

then we walked
to the train station
where she got a train
to the hospital
where she was being treated
for her drug addiction

I went home to play
my Coltrane
on my record player
via another train
thinking of her
and Kafka
and me and Monroe
having ***
in that cheap hotel
off Trafalgar Square
where Nima and I
once had *** there.

.on a lighter note, from what you'll find included below... the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? well... as well when asking the question John Coltrane or Miles Davies, or, or... Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven... in the last case? the latter. **** me... he loved music so much that he became deaf... just like Homer became blind; god, i love these famous instances of benevolent reasoning; with its cruel culminating outcome / closure... fate, it would seem... but then the sly nudge by something akin to... well i'm unsure which i prefer: Michelangelo's creation of Adam... or Rembrandt's Belshazzar's Feast... i think (but not doubt) that i'm more fond of the latter depiction.

i seriously only have a couple
of words to make a counter-argument...
this won't take long,
this is not going to become
one of those video tirades
  (Beethoven's ode to joy
is still playing in the background,
and yes, i am moderately sober,
i had to cook up a butter chicken
curry with a coriander
    and mind chutney for the chapaties...
chap chap... bud bud...
you want a stereotypical
Apu from the Simpsons?
just watch Australia's master-chef
from this year,
and look up a guy called
Sashi Cheliah...
    buddy bud bud... you get
the picture; it's his recipe...
   curry all day, curry in the morning,
curry in the afternoon,
curry in the evening,
dreaming of curry)...
internet de-platforming...
isn't it... technically illegal?
       just curious...
because...
             my internet provider cannot
exactly switch off my access
to the internet...
like a bailiff...
   i'm not paying the electricity bills,
so they come, and switch off
my electricity supply...
   what "we're" talking about is
a case of illegality...
   to de-platform you'd require
a service provider to implement sound
justifications...
but then...
   paradox avenue:
    they're not getting the money
needed to be a service provider...
so... i'm only supposed to have
the infrastructure of buying ****
online, and banking online...
   STOP ******* UP WITH THE *******
PLAYGROUND! PUT THE SAND
BACK INTO THE SANDBOX...
PUT THE WATER BACK INTO
THE TRAFALGAR SQ. FOUNTAIN!
it's illegal...
              why aren't the hardware
companies, beating the living **** out
of these software providers?
websites are software,
they're not the computers,
the cables, the workload of Atlases...
****... this is becoming a tirade
worthy of a video...
but Beethoven's ode to joy is playing
in the background,
and i never feel like talking...
itchy fingers you see...
the devil has work for idle hands...
it's illegal...
   because it bypasses the terms
of agreement you already made with
the internet providers...
so what... you can only do so much
on the internet?
these people have paid
for their internet connection!
                 what, a, load, of, *******;
so? ensure they pay less
for their internet access...
  given that a limited internet access
is being implemented...
i'm already past being ******
off at the jukebox...
       now i'm fuming... kettle mad
just around the time when
the water starts to boil.

is just another word for control freak.
But let me back up.

Who decided that things are FTW?
**** competition.
I apologize for line 4, but I wanted to make sure you know
I’m being serious.

Winning is meaningless.
The one thing the Arts had going for them
is gone.
It’s all about being the best
and it’s devastating G-d.

When I play my saxophone
at the right time with right mind
I swear John Coltrane
couldn’t recreate that.

When I write a poem
about truth or of it
I swear ee cummings couldn’t
have written it.

Expression is all that really matters,
but only to me.
The world doesn’t accept it, so
it doesn’t accept me.

That’s just the way it is.
I’m not concerned with success.
I’m not like all the rest.
I am happy and blessed.

Does my mind deceit me?
We’ll see
When I face Judge

The coffee cups are *****
But it’s the cleanest way
To drink whiskey here.

The barman lost half his right fingers
To a wood chipper in his early 20’s
And spent the rest of his adult life
Flipping the world off.

He got it down to a fine art
By the time I showed up.
He didn’t smile when I ordered my drink.
He didn’t smile at all.

The jukebox hasn’t changed
For two stagnant decades
And most everyone but the regulars
Are too scared to use it.

It’s the same rotation
Of Elvis,
Muddy Waters,
BB King,
John Coltrane,
And early Bruce Springsteen.

Not a woman in sight
But every song is about them
And we are all here
Because of them.

Certain patches of carpet
Have not seen a crack of light
Since the Berlin Wall fell.

Nothing changes here but the customers-
And that change is incremental at best.
The same filthy etchings over
The same filthy cubicle doors.

The same Cherokee Indian
Smoking a Cuban Cigar
In the heartland of America.

I can’t find myself here
But there is no feeling of loss.
There is no profundity in anything here.
Just squalor

And enjoying one’s squalor.
I think that is what it means
To be truly happy.

Delia
once seduced

the house maid
in half term

home from school
some posh place

where she had
with success

oft bedded
the new young

maths teacher
whose glasses

thin wired
she took off

before ***
in her room

for extra
tuition

(her father
from his fat

wallet paid
for extra

maths not ***)
then after

leaving school
and the young

maths teacher
(sad female)

and having
bedded her

young cousin's
French nanny

she went to
some college

to study
the cello

and music
she had ***

the first day
with the thin

trumpeter
on the floor

above her
a girl with

luscious lips
and dark eyes

who after
a good ****

could play like
Miles Davis  

so cool that
Delia

would play her
cello ****

like lovers
embracing

she and her
instrument

then have ***
to the sound

of Coltrane's
saxophone

and the girls'
******

wanting more
sighs and moans.

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Walt Whitman
walks by me
somewhere in 1891

I nod to him...he nods to me
lost in himself
Clinton is being inaugurated

Brooklyn Bridge
saunters by
dressed in the summer of '67

the subway
wears its best graffiti
the music of trains and Coltrane

the Flatiron Building is jaywalking
the Empire State
chats him up

a child's hopscotch
almost washed away
a moment's masterpiece

Robert Moses
looks across Long Island
longs to build the city only he sees

he gazes into my future
I look into his past
I pass Robert Mapplethorpe

a man in a white suit
nailed to the darkness
by so many stars

an old saxophone player
busks Rogers and Hart in Central Park
"...I didn't know what time it was..."

two obese Chinese
take up most of the sidewalk
both speaking fluent - Irish

Leaves of Grass
lies scattered across the road
read now by the wind

a car caught in traffic
blares out Joel's
"New York State of Mind"

I laugh at such
a happenstance
a walk-on-part in my own movie

escaping the borders
of the body
I walk through times

I am all the times
of the world
they intersect in self

Walt and I
sitting on a park bench
waiting to go somewhere else

an 1990's rain
falls on an 1870's NY
they are beginning Brooklyn Bridge

I meet my self
coming and going
an older and a younger me

time held prisoner on the wrist
I turn and walk away
into this the newest of centuries

It's spandex
It's flannel
It's all the same
Grunge took over metal
Get back to jazz
Viper baby
Not on display
Not a novelty
No sneaking
Sneak out...
Louis Jordan
Cab Calloway
Robert Johnson
Howlin’ Wolf
30’s speak nasty
Melody Room
Parker
Coltrane
History
Dolls and The Doors
Intimacy
Feel it
Underground
Cabaret
Something wild
Mystery
Evil
Johnny Cash
Whiskey Sam
Drive on
Rainbow baby
Sunset
Snap

Amerikeisha tapping out the drumbeat with her see through plastic mechanical pencil  
Me sidewinding my way through highschool
Dizzy Gillespie's  trumpet waking the souls that are buried in the lockers,
Chick Corea and I are returning to forever
The land where summer is the only season
And daisy dukes are greatly appreciated,
John Coltrane is helping me realize
How beautiful girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes are,
I've been dancing to Dave Brubeck since this morning
And I can't get Maria out of my head
I just picture Maria
As this girl
Feeling Pretty
Oh so pretty
I imagine if I saw her in the street
I wouldn't double take
But Take Five    
Charlie Parker playing saxophone like
It's as easy as brushing his teeth,
Nat King Cole
Serenading Hispanic women with his soothing tone
Robert Glasper experimenting with his music
Burning you brain like mentholated cough drops

Sometimes we are made aware of beacons in the rest of the dark.
Like stars littered across the attics we trap ourselves in.
Sometimes we chase rainbows with beggars eyes and wishes like children.

Some people are like soup soaked bread crumbs and wool mittens with the fingers cut out.
The rest of us are chimney soot.
And they are ‘chim chim cheree‘.

They are song filling every corner of the antique shop.
Silver under tarnish and weights and measures
balancing on the hands of the scale
suspended from the spear of a woman in white robes
with blue eyes that match the sky when we stare at it
and it usurps the corners of our eyes
and we are made aware of how small we are
as we get lost in how complete it is when it is with out clouds
with silver linings that never seem to follow through to rain.

And some of us?

Some of us are rain.

And thunder that shakes your soul.
And images of gods in black and white that burn themselves onto our minds
for us to study with our eyes closed.
And some of us are doing the best we can.
And some of us are not us.
But are the others.
And we would be lost without them
to point beyond red sails on sundown ocean horizons,
just before the world turns blue.
And some are the pops and cracks between the notes of Coltrane on Vinyl.

And you.
You smell of confessional walls and a nursery.
You smell of camp fire blankets and bruised roses.
You move like corner of the eye shadows
and windshield wipers with no chance of beating the rain.

You write like stone tablets and feathers.
Blown bubbles and spun webs.
And you feel like chance.
And love.
And strength.

You change like ropes on ship decks and tarot meanings from gypsy to gypsy.

And you are beautiful.
And beautiful.
And beautiful.

And everything.
And everything.
And everything.

Strong like ropes on yard arms of old ships in ancient seas.
And you go and you take us there.
And we go, because we want to see too.
And we want to be full on wild flowers and raspberries.

And we want you to show us the line on our palm
that separates the dark from the light.
And we want bed time stories and lullabies.
And with my eyes.
And with your own too.
And more importantly.

You.

You are the place where there is hardly no day time and hardly night. Things half in shadow and things half in light. On the roof tops of forever. Coo. What a sight…

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 7, 2015)

Limits a person to using an object only in a way it is traditionally used.

In one hotel, two kids climb over a triangle
of lobby couches. Their father grips a shoulder
in an argument of parenting and says,
“Use things for their intended purpose!”
A reasonable idea but in retrospect
it depends on how you look at the thing,
directly on or akimbo.  

The father scowls at me as if to say
Don’t be that guy, the one who sees
a rowboat, a vertical slice of bus,
the basket for an air balloon,
a trampoline when the cushions are off,
mountain range for little figurines lost in the snow,
an architectural element of a tent city,
multi-purpose home base,
a landing pad for the dizzy spinners,  
a secretarial desk, a dog bed,
a nap bed, a make-out bed, a death bed,
a kiosk to display collections of items,
a staging area, a folding spot,
the place where one sits difficult relatives,
the dais where Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane makes a stand
in Dukes of Hazzard reenactments,
a pew, a sanctuary, a habit, a place of soliloquy,
a place of meditation, a place of revelation,
yard sale seating, lawn trash down by the road,
a bird’s nest, a rain gauge,
a place to sit.

When the sunrise kisses the sky and meets the the vast canvas with fluorescent splashes of love I know it's you. When I watch the violets violently push their way through the soil searching for your light I feel as if I'm looking into a mirror. Every so often I arise from my midnight slumber and gaze upon the lifeless world and wait for the morning dew to dance against the leaves I, quietly ponder your journey, Jesus, The heart & tenderness of life who pours love over this sorrowful sphere of souls. I missed the days of your prestigious youth as you "born by a river in a lil' tent"- and we should have known then that "A change was gonna come". Before long you were walking the roads of jerusalem healing the sick, rasing the dead as beams of his fathers light fell upon his head. I missed the day John dipped his gracious head and his spirit fled into the immense depths cascading along towards the pure stream of inifinite life.  Far below your rightful place you performed the great hymm of love, blowing peaceful choruses to your orchestra of twelve, with a simple stroke of the bow. Here, There & Everywhere people of all walks of life heard about this man spreading love and bliss but I guess it just wasn't enough, as he was betrayed by a kiss. And in the night this man was moaning, in the night the ground was groaning, in the night the price was paid, yet after the night the world would be saved. So the next morning he had awoken aware of what the judge had spoken, beaten with massive blood loss, his fate to die on the cross!... So he had to die for our sins as he dangled on the cross like hair does a bobby pin. And I can Imagine upon his last breath we were given our first, an eternal quench  of our thirst. And so he had to renounce his earthly home as his spirit fled to his heavenly throne. His death was for us, for our cycle of life to continue.Even nature is englufed into his plan, just like the silent trees cradle the songbird God cradles man. Jack Kerouac spoke to me one night;glowing, illuminated prose set from the tip of his ink glaring off of the ruffled, dusty beat book and he said Ryan... "Man loves in lilly's and lives in milk and in his milk he lives in creamy emptiness"- (yeah, I hear you jack)- So I ask when will man, like a young calf feeding from his mother, draw from your word which is filled with immense light and creamy fullfilment. And this word was put here to illuminate our souls so we can rise in boundless love from the prison of doubt to the freedom of love.. Is it too late... and when the Storms sing, and floods us all will we stand there and moan, frozen in spirit?...when we see him sounding the horizon with flames in his eyes will we give him holy redemtion?.. . When the sky cracks against the dismal night, and his hand  stretched out, like it always was from the beginning, will your heart finally become welcoming?... When the world begins to tremble will we do the same and make the mistake and feel we are dismissed from the betrayal of our own kiss. I feel like we are weighed down under a tomb of ignorance and have fallen from our mothers womb, punished by doubt, that gloomy bird that strikes us with his wings and pushes us further into dark sands of eternity. Now, I am not saying that I am completely free from the ignorance...for at times I've turned the blinds on his light, in fright that I was in the wrong place  as darkness shadowed my weary face. I felt like the vulture standing over a dead carcas, thinking, maybe this doesn't belong to me, maybe I shouldn't sink my teeth into his flesh. My life was vaguely lit like the winter moon, as fear traced my every move.  I let his love be ignored, At times I would throw him a kiss into a pale ray just to say this is me, I wonder if you hear me, do you see?, your child so caught up in a crippling fear of expression, sitting here listening to the tick and the tock two sounds so prevalent to a sheep out of flock, yet all the while waiting patiently like a boat at the dock sitting here waiting for you to realease my anchor and allow this ramblin' mind to tred along the rippling waters of your spirit. Bob Dylan -  prophet of captivating thought once said: "He not busy being born is busy dying"- oh yes, I hear you Dylan and that the conductor of our life drives a slow train and he's waiting for you to drop your luggage and only then can you hear his train-a -comin'. And since that morning after listening to the rain and melancholoy sounds of John Coltrane I realized that I must acknowledge him, pursue him, and come to a resolution that he truly is a perfect being our one and only love supreme. So, I lastly say to you, beautiful lost souls of undeveloped spirit- Love is the source of your being, so unlock the chains to your sunflower- gypsy - butterfly soul and spread your wings and fly. Set yourself free from the decaying flesh of man and woman who suffer your radiant thoughts, thoughts so deeply seeped into the lamb, yet ,slaughtered like the pig in the farm-green, cool, spring wind. Never mind the words of man rather the words of the lamb.

Explosion in funky beats
Dreams in the key of acid
The Ascension of Coltrane himself
Nothing more Nothing less
Bliss in raging fevers
The exact color of exquisite
Heartbeats in lime and bubbles
with a dash of salt
Help you remember how it feels
to feel

Below Orion’s belt
He will fly.

Sailing in on the evening breeze,
Through a clustered cloud of E’s.
To the timbre of a stammer,
Above the cedar trees.

A wish for lips to seize the soul is filled,
Without tongue, or a love-****** kiss.
No, this moonlight drifter need not sneak
To steal your attentiveness.

Raspy cool, birthed on a cool train, a Coltrane,
Flickering inside a steel blue horizon.
A stray bolt of lightning
in a darkening jar.
Did you see it?

Condensed droplets of jive crystallize
As sight spreads with a ****-crow sunrise.
Shadows yield to spots of sunshine, and
The hum knifes through atoms of air,
Awakening the Early Ears.

A fulfillment, furnished.
A drip, a drop,
A drip and a drop,

Arranged in pairs of sinking threes -
The details of an ensemble’s dream
Infuse the day’s reality.

And with one last vertical dance,
Time slips back to a simpered trance,
As basso continuo leads you home,
Through a lonely mountain pass.

A zephyr is crowned,
Sitting atop a morning cloud,
To culminate, an unfettered kite,
A lazy bird in flight.

It was a woodcut in our high school history text, Unit 4
      Beginnings of the Modern World, that so disturbed,
from the Nuremburg Chronicles depicting the burning of the
      Jews, flat perspective,
faces of the victims among flames, in no particular agony, not
      especially Jewish,
during the Black Death 1/3 of Europe died 1347-1351 alone.
      Although
you die together you die alone.
Earlier that week, I had attended our 6th grade's performance of Fiddler       on the Roof, thinking
Coltrane should have recorded Matchmaker as a bookend to
      My Favorite Things
but as the play darkened
with the town's absorption into the diaspora, democracy
yet unthought of and rule of law a fig leaf for authority
Jasper, who played Zero Mostel, delivered his line well to
      the effect
you're just doing your jobs while wrecking our lives.

Anyway, nothing like that is happening here, is it?
The gardener planting tomatoes, the gravedigger finding skulls,
there is so much life a little death won't matter.
Jasper
was a beautiful ham,
big as Zero.
A friend posed
this question: must all states be melting pots like the United States?
I said yes
not because they should but since
it's inevitable. Let labor flow like capital!
America was the last word of the play and brought a tear of pride
      to my eye.

Immigration, exasperating argument re the Other.
How many's more than enough? 9 billion, a rational,
real number that exceeds or we're convinced
is within the carrying capacity of the planet.
Climate change is the new Black Death.
I like the Amerindian body type and face mixed in with the
      European, African.
The irrepressible economy rolls out reams of logs, ores of
      elements, bags of ice, fields of rice.
Embargo. The moon stares, bare, full of interstellar space.
Better a cold shoulder than a visit from our military.
The crazy Nazis must have felt themselves extraordinarily
      compassionate toward the mother, earth, the goddess,
      history, or some such abstraction and, thus, acted on a
      fraction of all they did not know.
Selfless soldiers just doing their jobs guarding the border or,
on the other hand, collecting ****** for the burning of the Jews.

It's not a debate to negate;
It's not one or the other.

Fallacy of false dichotomy—
Makes you think less of me?

He's dead.

How do we do this?
Thread the racism needle?

Carefully. Humanely. Sincerely.
Coltrane said "Supremely."

A love supreme.
A love supreme.