I was banging out some music
When from the dark I heard a voice
Son, if you want to make a living
Then you gotta make a choice
I heard what you was playing
That was music, not just noise
Son, you wanna make a living
You gotta make your choice

Son, pass me that there  growler
Over in the corner
Don't drop it, you'll be sorry if you do
It'll burn on through the florboards
It'll burn right on through to China
It's a wicked drink, A nasty witches brew

He said, I know you is the cleaner
You clean up when night is done
But, I've heard you from the alley
You're a bullet, shy one gun

Kid, you play piano like it ain't been played before
You're wasting your **** time in here cleaning up the floor
There's a whole world out there waiting, just go on through the door
Oh...they call me The Bluesman....before I say much more

I played some boogie woogie
something light just to begin
He said, boy...get that growler
I need some med-i-sin
He pulled up close beside me
Rubbed his face and scratched his chin
Now, follow close young player
The lesson will begin

We played for near five hours
Didn't hear the storm outside
We played what struck his fancy
We told stories, we both lied
He played that guitar so  smoothly
With the strings so loosely tied
He brought things out from deep within me
Stripped bare, nowhere to hide

You got to feel the music
Not just play it to get paid
You got to let it lead you
You got to know why it was made
The folks who made this music
From the normal line had strayed
You got to feel the music
Play it right, you may get laid

He drank most of the growler
said, son, now I need to rest
I've heard bluesman all around here
And I'd say you're second best
There only is one bluesman
And then he puffed his chest
You met him, and he taught you
It's up to you to do the rest

I finished with my cleaning
Heard him leave and go out back
Then I heard the whistle
Of the train, pass on the track
I had to choose the music
Be a bluesman, not a hack
I learned that  in five hours
I'd learn more when he came back

The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan is a mica schist known as Manhattan schist.  Schist is foliated or layered in appearance. Quartz sparkles, micas, and amphiboles are primary minerals in schist. A melted rock, just like the city resting above, it too, a famous melting *** of humanity.

This one poem too, composed from pieces of other poems,
folded in layers of many others that melted together,
in harmonious discordancy

<~>

this glorious grime,
this delicious dirt,
stuff of my blood,
genes of my children's children inheritance,
of thee I sing,
in thee I revel,
of thee, I am composed

the city I love,
where I was born,
schooled and fooled in,
by many a woman

the city where I named
and raised my children

will probably die in
this city, and when
I am long forgot,
my name never uttered,
    who, will think of me?
Perhaps,
whenever someone says,
"he was such a rascal"

these tales I took,
some or all,
from beneath my skin,
where city streets grit,
was injected beneath my skin
and came with the title,
City Boy

so today, on a reborn street,
near tall towers no more,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn,  
but nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the typical NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
unsilently weeping, thinking that:

We lose or throw away so much we should have kept,
We keep so much we should have thrown away

street prowler, heart growler,
Art Deco lampposts,
the mountain range of east seventy second street,
begs the bagger's question,
each post
begging each other,
"from whence will come my inspiration?"

licked the stubbled sidewalks,
fell down into their living caverned cracks,
light needed, needy softly heated,
orange and green pizza neon signs,
saying here,
if you see upon what be,
these are your city's homeland colors of veracity

perhaps
NYC was model precursor
for our internet presumed-to-be-alive-but-who-can-say-for-sure
model for the world today,
where I know not my apartment's neighbors name,
yet carry his second child
in my arms,
when the fire alarm
summons us all to flee
to street safety...
and still only
"know" his child's first name,
and his father,
as Apt. #16D

all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing,
are his defrocked muses him annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
their coronets trumpeting his unmasking,
*making this essay, his revelations,
a product of their harmonious discordancy

Who would have thought the storm would come
So soon, from a pale blue sky,
When the weather man said, ‘Fine til noon,
And the afternoon, quite dry.’
But moisture fell in a feathery squall
On the morning of that day,
Blown from the top of an anvil cloud
Some twenty miles away.

By two o’clock, the cumulonimbus
Cloud had drifted in,
Its anvil top like a dreadful shroud
As black as the darkest sin,
And lightning crackled within that cloud
Before it was given birth,
And loosed in chains with the driving rains
As it found its way to earth.

We pulled the blanket off the beach
And we closed the hamper top,
As the wind picked the umbrella up
And bowled it, til it dropped,
While Helen stood with her hands on hips,
Stared balefully at the sky,
‘Thanks, you ruined our picnic,
With never a warning, why?’

As if in answer to Helen’s taunt
The lightning struck her tongue,
Her face lit up in a brilliant glow
As bright as the morning sun,
She stood for a moment, paralysed
Then she toppled onto her face,
I’d never seen anyone crash to earth
Face down, with such little grace.

I rolled her over the sand, face up
And I gave her mouth to mouth,
Her head was facing magnetic north
And her feet were pointing south,
Her lips were black as the weirdest Goth
And her cheeks were pale and white,
I managed to get her breathing then
But something wasn’t right.

She stared at me with her purple eyes
That before, I’m sure were blue,
And lightning sparked in her retina
As she said, ‘Thank God for you!’
She wouldn’t go to the hospital,
She staggered back to the car,
And said, ‘I’m needing a drink, for sure,
Let’s find the nearest bar.’

I took her home in an hour or two
And I put her straight to bed,
She said her stomach was rumbling,
There was lightning in her head,
She slept right though to the early hours
And got up before the dawn,
She stood and stared out the window, then,
‘I think I’ve just been born!’

I heard her go to the kitchen then,
Where she said that coffee called,
Then heard the clatter of cutlery
Went down, and was appalled,
For spoons were sliding along the bench
Each time that she waved her hand,
When the coffee *** spun off its top
She said, ‘Now ain’t this grand!’

‘That lightning’s made you magnetic,
I don’t know what we’re going to do,
For all things loose and metallic now
Are turning to follow you.’
I called a friend who was trained in this,
I thought he was more than wise,
‘We’ll have to construct a Growler, but
It has to be oversize.’

A Growler’s simply an A/C coil
That you drop the magnet in,
It only takes a moment or so
To reverse that power within,
It took him over a day to make,
We stood her inside the coil,
I turned my back when he switched it on
And listened to Midnight Oil.

She blew every circuit in that thing
The coil was glowing red,
And lightning was flashing in her eyes
While thunder burst from her head,
She was twice as strong as she’d been before
And everything metal stuck,
We peeled the spanners off at the door
While Helen just ran amuck.

She went to live on a mountain top
Away from the bustle and pace
She said she couldn’t come back to me,
Nor even the human race,
There’s nothing metallic up there, she says
So lives up close to the sky,
And hopes to be struck by lightning, once,
She says that it’s worth a try!

David Lewis Paget

my little cousin is almost 3
and she is just like me
- or just like I was
when I was 3.
she’s stubborn
and she growls.
I used to growl,
apparently.
she’s a climber, a growler
and an observer
with messy messy curly hair;
it is such a nest, I recalled
the years my mother would
yank
a brush through my ringlets
and I would cry.
my little cousin
knows what she wants,
obviously,
she’s 3.
I was sitting on a bench, listening to
my family
talk about old stories
with my aunt that is now
dying.
she stood in front of me, my little cousin,
staring
quite blankly, like she didn’t need anything.
I looked in her eyes, she looked
in mine.
"you got a ouchie"
she told me.
"yeah? where?" I asked her.
"there," she touched just below
my knee
with her index finger.
indeed, there was a fresh
scar.
and immediately I was buried
in a memory
of how I got that scar.
it was just over two weeks ago,
actually;
and I hadn’t felt the skin rip
until the accident was over.
or I could call it an affair,
or a pit of passion, or I could even
call it a mistake.
"how did you get an ouchie?"
my other cousin asked me;
she’s almost 7.
I was devastated.
I wanted to be upright,
be honest, in a
calm kind of way;
but you can’t do that with children
like this.
I wanted to say,
"a boy gave this to me."
but instead I said,
"oh, I fell a couple weeks ago."
"on the sidewalk?" asked the almost 7 year old.
"something like that," I told her.
"you fall hard and got ouchie!" squealed the almost 3 year old.
she’s too smart, for her age
how did she know
that’s exactly
what happened

Delicately, I drop onto the canvas
With the grip of a barbed cactus
The sand shifts amidst my toes
And the sweet quiver as the air arose
As the night fades into pitch black
I feel a sensation to unpack
The time has arrived to release
All that has come without great peace
Taking my first step
I enter full dept
Breathing in the warm breeze
Just for the taste of bittersweet ease.
"Open your eyes,
And look at the skies,
For the past makes you willingly wise.
There is no time to run around,
You have done enough,
It's time to be crowned.
Take this hour,
You have earned great power,
To overcome the one last growler."
This is what I have to say,
To make my world no longer gray.
I hope you too, will take the time
For their will be so much to climb.

"I wish I was happier," she
confessed, to me, in-between
puffs and awkward silent
pauses.

"I'm not disappointed," was
all I could say, forcing
back down my throat, the "me too."

We stood there, in quiet,
surrounded by loudness. The other
few, ate, and drinking inside.

Goes back in, she kisses him.
What does he know?
Answer?
More than he's liable to make known.

I can't look at her. If I do,
I'm caught-in-love, and
stuck on the possibilities.
If my eyes can avoid you, my
dreams can stay fantasy,
not just unfulfilled.

She's tired of hearing she's perfect.
She'd rather be told the truth.
but no one that loves her lets honesty in earshot.
And I'm sick of love, lying, and
truth-telling, too.

I wish you were happier.
I wish the path of least resistance laid itself out,
before you.
I wish you'd hold my hand while we walk it, together.

I wish I could make happy,
like some folks brew beer.
I'd pour you a growler,
(On the house, of course)
and laugh at everyone else, while you drink it.

This poem is the list of
things I never thought could
make a difference.
This poem is the litany of reasons why
I think I deserve one
last chance.
This poem is the one I'd
read to you every night, if
it would change your
mind.
It wouldn't. It won't.
This poem bites, the last dying
hope of a beached shark, spying
the wave that could save it.
This poem is the black pods
we once foolishly believed were
shark eggs.
This poem knows I hate the beach,
and brought me along,
anyway.
I started this poem months ago.
It'll never really be finished.

there are nights where your absence chokes out my breath
and the only way i can finally rest
     is to heavy-handedly pull at the tides of my brew
          the way you'd paw at the hips of my skirt
          silently signaling you'd finally had too much to drink

your lack of grace illuminated
in whiskey-breath
and neon jukebox glow

so off we'd go
     leading the liqour-lust parade
     trailing downpours of drink chips in our wake
and you'd take up my hand
in your forklift phalanges

such a prideful little man-cub
with a puffed out chest and a leather vest
     only softening your edges in the sanctity of my lumpy bed
     when you've got the chance to rest your noisy head atop my naked breast

oh you rusted demi-god
though i do miss the struggle
and the snuggles
and the ***
          i'll be just fine with my growler of stout
          and your leftover whiskey in the freezer
forgetting what i'd learn
during our staggered steps home

“poet, it’s your day,” she says.

groggily growls the growler,
“what’d ya mean?”

“the sun came up today early,
but partly cloudy interrupt-us has arrived subsequently,
worse, the Great Swami Interpet predicts rain comes
heavy this afternoon on our journey home.”

he reflects upon his craggy, scraggly image that is
reflected upon the cold brewed black coffee.

replies carefully without thinking,
“today I will commence writing under
a new guise, a new name, a different persona!”

“whom shall we be today then?”

“come back to bed revelation poet”


sunrain

The Sundance
Romance

Daisies flowing
She sprawls

Dad growler
He drools
The Moth_
Mothered
flies gathered
Missing some
wings ((ER))
Whoa!! Emergency
Room_
Being
dismissed
He misinterprets
Moth-loving both
Her and me
***** of fire
Babe Ruth
Tolerate
In-laws
 You're hired
Mothers
Amazing
graceful

Being prominent
Words are
Imp-or-t-ant
His glass
half full 1/2

Her beauty whole
Of all ((Mothers))
*Providence*
The E-R emergency
The 99 bottles of beer
on the wall
Someone must
Save the date
Please call?
Singing
mouth he drills
That sunshine
Sunpower *pill

Tony Tiger
Bengal his gals
Rejuvenating
Dad loves the
mating
Alice in Motherland
((For Tea)) lips
of hearts

Beside me
Remembering
B.L.T...
Kevin-Bee- Bacon
Best greens lettuce
Lips Palace
Kissed her face
Linked to her
Charm bracelet
3 words magnet
I- love- her
Motherlove**
The triple-decker
sandwich
((Upper-Dove))

His temperature
Mothers day
Spring fever
Smiles worthwhile
Waiting
My Mom
E Everlasting R-
Nature name
Robin
Blessed by Mother,
Book could read
A+ home
Entertainer
My emergency
Show
some
heart
Be heart
T tremendous
We learn so
much from

To outlive
this world
Because
we are
way
Over
with flowers
Like Motherlove
The earth loves her
The emergence
of birth
Emergency
she saves
Heart so smart__