Improvises poems on Hello Poetry

Donall Dempsey Jul 2018

I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW

I lived my life as if
I had been written
into a Barbara Pym novel

so prim and proper lady I
my soul smoother'd in camphor
yet my life...wot the mot hath got

and here I be
curled upon the Persian rug
in the foetal position

being born
into my dying
as it were

me an elaborate motif
beside an exquisite phoenix
oh the warp and woof of me

so this is death
rather nice
as these things go

not too much( ouch )pain
more easeful and slow and
when ya gotta go...ya...gotta go

rather like that Manx man
was it Brown...or...something
"...if thou couldst empty..." oh what is it?

"...all thy self of self
to be a shell dishabited..."
bit like ha ha that...innit( agghh )

wonder what an anthropologist
from...say...Borneo
would make of me

I'd guess I'd be
so quaintly ever so English
so cue-cumber sandwich

settling down with a Pimms and a Pym
being one of those Excellent Women
**** this dying....haven't even read the book

only got as far as
p.15...how mean
the great unread

the words sticking in my brain
something being "...a welcoming
sort of place...

with a bright entrance..."
as if Mr. Death were saying
"Why...that's what I am!"

"Yeah, yeah...sure sure'"
I answer all Film Noir
another of life's little pleasures

the stuffed bird
stares at me sternly
deigns to speak

"Now that you are going to be
as dead as me...may I
have a word?"

it coughs unaccustomed
as it is
to public speech

"It's not so bad
being dead
it's being stuffed that hurts!"

the cat joins in
with its customary "I'm starving...
ya couldn't open this tin?"

now the cat howls
oh to have opposable thumbs
or a can opener at least

the stuffed bird and the cat and I
singing along to Beverly Kenny
smiling from the record sleeve

"Oh this used to be
my favourite as a girl
'I Never Has Seen Snow."

"Oh the girl I used to be
she ain't me no more!"
I could always carry a tune

the stuffed bird can't
sing for nuts but
the cat's got a good tenor voice

me...I'm letting go
the world is walking out on me
the world don't want to know me no more

I've even forget
can you Adam and Eve it
how to spell... fo'c's'le

my garden looks in
the window at me
well here's a howdy do

I never was '...a lovesome thing..."
even when young
"God wot!"

hee hee hee T.E. Brown
appears to invade the mind
when one is dying

and what would that Borneo
anthropologist make of that
or my love of Jazz

grabbing the music
by the tail as it shape-shifts
improvises world upon world and beyond

oh to be dying
in a smokey jazz club
thoughts climbing a spiral staircase of smoke

"All that is...is not!"
now I wonder where
I got ha ha that

would the man from Borneo know
that is Phil Woods on
the Quincey Jones arrangement

"Oh I love sax me!
never could say the same
for ***

well - enough of that
better get on with
my death

and what better way to go
than with Beverly singing low
always thought I looked a bit like her

she smiles that record sleeve smile
the one I tried to sculpt
upon my own features

"I saw a new horizon
and a road to take me
where I wanted to be...needed to be.... took"

"God! I'm only starving!" yowls the cat
"Ya couldn't feed me before ya go...no
**** those...**** those cans!"

"Oh ****...oh ****!" she purrs
the record's...the record's...the record's
stuck

INDWELLING

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say — "This is not dead," —
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says — "This is enow
Unto itself — 'Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."

T.E. BROWN

I Never Has Seen Snow Lyrics
I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW

done lost my ugly spell
I am cheerful now
Got the warm all overs a-smoothin' my worried brow
Oh, the girl I used to be
She ain't me no more
I closed the door on the girl I was before
Feeling fine and full of bliss
What I really wants to say is this

I never has seen snow
All the same I know
Snow ain't so beautiful
Cain't be so beautiful
Like my love is
Like my love is

Nothing do compare
Nothing anywhere with my love
A hundred things I see
A twilight sky that's free
But none so beautiful
Not one so beautiful
Like my love is
Like my love is
Once you see his face
None can take the place of my love

A stone rolled off my heart
When I laid my eyes on
That near to me boy with that far away look
And right from the start
I saw a new horizon
And a road to take me where I wanted to be took
Needed to be took
And though
I never has seen snow
All the same I know
Nothing will ever be
Nothing can ever be
Beautiful as my love is
Like my love is to me

Harold Arlen/Truman Capote

from THE HOUSE OF FLOWERS musical

MY GARDEN

A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot—
The veriest school
Of peace ; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God ! in gardens ! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
‘Tis very sure God walks in mine.

T. E. BROWN

She used to sing along to the Quincey Jones arrangement with Phil Wood featuring....yea he of that famous alto sax solo on Billy Joel's JUST THE WAY YOU ARE.

Beverly Kenny is now more remembered for her I Hate Rock 'n' Roll but was a young up and coming singer who died too early by her own hand.

My lady in the poem did indeed look very much like her and one was often disconcerted by a record sleeve looking back at one with my lady's young face. I never cared for her much except for her version of I Never Has Seen Snow. Curiously the Japanese to this day adore her. I was more of a Julie London man don't ya know.

The rather excellent Barbara Pym was another stand by or go to...EXCELLENT WOMEN was her second book and on p.15 there indeed occurs the line...

"A vicarage ought to be a welcoming sort of place with a bright entrance."

She was Philip Larkin's favourite novelist.

My lady was the very model of a modern curmudgeon and not everyone could stand her but I got on well with her seeing as I knew both Brown and Pym and could sing along to I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW.

fo'c's'le was necessary to complete a crossword and she was getting very cross at not being able all of a sudden to spell it.

The forecastle (abbreviated fo'c'sle or fo'c's'le)is the upper deck of a sailing ship forward of the foremast, or the forward part of a ship with the sailors' living quarters. Related to the latter meaning is the phrase "before the mast" which denotes anything related to ordinary sailors, as opposed to a ship's officers

irinia Apr 2014

there is love inside the clock

look into the future
with a sharp blaze in your eyes
to cut clean the mourn of morning
trees are greying steadily
and our mothers have turned into fossils
but the hours still surrender
to enchantments of our heart
-quite an anesthesia-
the dying light improvises
time is the soundtrack of us
hand in hand
moulding in oblivion
some je ne sais quoi
unforgettable
an excuse of eternity

(yes, blind colts are born and love is a collocation)

Angela Mar 2013

Light Roast

The gentle ins and outs of sleeping breath
Spin off course, out of reach of embracing sheets
As morning breaks open on tangled limbs,
A twisted un-choreographed mess.

Weaving a crooked trail down the too-straight hall,
Ten toes take a tripping routine,
Attached to unmetered beats
Soft padding drum hits
Feebly tumbling across the shined wood.

The still sleeping glow of light
Pressing through the window glass
A spotlight for the kitchen’s stage,
A lone performer improvises unsteady forms.

But the subtle crunch of scooping grounds,
Like the shivered shake of the tambourine,
Catches the wavering rhythm up
To the steady plopping drip,
To the upward bending tone of the cascading pour
Drum-rolling up and up and up to
The ecstatically sighing high note of that first sip.

And the scent, like deep purple, wafts
Filling the room with thick unseen swirls
All at once heavy and weightless, landing on skin
Like a light breeze without force and only depth.
Pressing against the lungs from within them,
Persistently full, yet buoyant.

And as the warmth spreads behind the lungs
A small twitch of the hip courses to the flick of a toe
And from every fingertip pumps into ignition
Fluid joyful movements.
Hot energy flows through veins,
Fearlessly leading through tough turns and twists.
And morning has only just begun.

Donall Dempsey Dec 2023

". . .CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO. . ." ( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

". . .CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO. . ."
( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

breath & sax
unite to form
a creature made of flesh & horn

his sax calls forth
his own ghost
it dances before him like smoke

he closes his eyes
loses sight of everything
but the song

he plays
not knowing what he plays
until he plays it

the song seems to know
where it's going
it's the man he improvises

"...where the world has not
been broken up
into fragments..."

he longs to be taken
out of himself
so he can become himself

the last note
he comes back from the nowhere
that he's found

stuck now in this
somewhere he is
made ordinary again

now he's just
a man with a limp
just another drunk

his sax
the genie of sound
sound asleep in its case

he hums inside his head
the music heard
he the instrument now

tapping on the table
his cigarette dancing
to the invisible music

the notes
half man half ghost
tapped inside his skull

even the silence
now
full of sound

"...sometimes I wish
the music would leave
me alone..."

"...the music is like
a very very big dog
taking its owner for a walk.."

"...note by note I am
transformed
until I am the music..."

"...caught in a riptide
what can I
do. . ?"

I always think a sax can take you the beyond the beyond when words fail. Riptide was his pièce de résistance. And he would always quote the Tagore poem before playing it and so that became this poem's title. He used to call it his "habbijabbi" or "thingamjig" in Bengali.

The orginal Bengali script...

চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য, উচ্চ যেথা শির
জ্ঞান যেথা মুক্ত, যেথা গৃহের প্রাচীর,
আপন প্রাঙ্গণতলে দিবসশর্বরী
বসুধারে রাখে নাই খণ্ড ক্ষুদ্র করি,
যেথা বাক্য হৃদয়ের উৎসমুখ হতে
উচ্ছ্বসিয়া উঠে, যেথা নির্বারিত স্রোতে
দেশে দেশে দিশে দিশে কর্মধারা ধায়
অজস্র সহস্রবিধ চরিতার্থতায়,
যেথা তুচ্ছ আচারের মরুবালুরাশি
বিচারের স্রোতঃপথ ফেলে নাই গ্রাসি,
পৌরুষেরে করে নি শতধা, নিত্য যেথা
তুমি সর্ব কর্ম চিন্তা আনন্দের নেতা,
নিজ হস্তে নির্দয় আঘাত করি, পিতঃ;
ভারতেরে সেই স্বর্গে করো জাগরিত৷

And in Tagore's own translation, from the 1912 English edition of Gitanjali.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father let my country awake.

Melinda Barrett Jan 2015

Facades

My face is a mask it only disguises the soul inside me that never provided
enough interest to provoke your eyes, your void & hollow compromises
you pretended to be all my desires choking on smoke to extinguish the fire u ignited, u decided, to let that transpire with no remorse, you took your course, left the door open wide
I hope you keep ur improvises on a shorter leash next time or you won't make it out alive

Donall Dempsey Jul 2019

I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW

I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW

I lived my life as if
I had been written
into a Barbara Pym novel

so prim and proper lady I
my soul smoother'd in camphor
yet my life...wot the mot hath got

and here I be
curled upon the Persian rug
in the foetal position

being born
into my dying
as it were

me an elaborate motif
beside an exquisite phoenix
oh the warp and woof of me

so this is death
rather nice
as these things go

not too much( ouch )pain
more easeful and slow and
when ya gotta go...ya...gotta go

rather like that Manx man
was it Brown...or...something
"...if thou couldst empty..." oh what is it?

"...all thy self of self
to be a shell dishabited..."
bit like ha ha that...innit( agghh )

wonder what an anthropologist
from...say...Borneo
would make of me

I'd guess I'd be
so quaintly ever so English
so cue-cumber sandwich

settling down with a Pimms and a Pym
being one of those Excellent Women
**** this dying....haven't even read the book

only got as far as
p.15...how mean
the great unread

the words sticking in my brain
something being "...a welcoming
sort of place...

with a bright entrance..."
as if Mr. Death were saying
"Why...that's what I am!"

"Yeah, yeah...sure sure'"
I answer all Film Noir
another of life's little pleasures

the stuffed bird
stares at me sternly
deigns to speak

"Now that you are going to be
as dead as me...may I
have a word?"

it coughs unaccustomed
as it is
to public speech

"It's not so bad
being dead
it's being stuffed that hurts!"

the cat joins in
with its customary "I'm starving...
ya couldn't open this tin?"

now the cat howls
oh to have opposable thumbs
or a can opener at least

the stuffed bird and the cat and I
singing along to Beverly Kenny
smiling from the record sleeve

"Oh this used to be
my favourite as a girl
'I Never Has Seen Snow."

"Oh the girl I used to be
she ain't me no more!"
I could always carry a tune

the stuffed bird can't
sing for nuts but
the cat's got a good tenor voice

me...I'm letting go
the world is walking out on me
the world don't want to know me no more

I've even forget
can you Adam and Eve it
how to spell... fo'c's'le

my garden looks in
the window at me
well here's a howdy do

I never was '...a lovesome thing..."
even when young
"God wot!"

hee hee hee T.E. Brown
appears to invade the mind
when one is dying

and what would that Borneo
anthropologist make of that
or my love of Jazz

grabbing the music
by the tail as it shape-shifts
improvises world upon world and beyond

oh to be dying
in a smokey jazz club
thoughts climbing a spiral staircase of smoke

"All that is...is not!"
now I wonder where
I got ha ha that

would the man from Borneo know
that is Phil Woods on
the Quincey Jones arrangement

"Oh I love sax me!
never could say the same
for ***

well - enough of that
better get on with
my death

and what better way to go
than with Beverly singing low
always thought I looked a bit like her

she smiles that record sleeve smile
the one I tried to sculpt
upon my own features

"I saw a new horizon
and a road to take me
where I wanted to be...needed to be.... took"

"God! I'm only starving!" yowls the cat
"Ya couldn't feed me before ya go...no
**** those...**** those cans!"

"Oh ****...oh ****!" she purrs
the record's...the record's...the record's
stuck

S A Marshal Aug 2020

AT THE BRINK OF SURVIVAL

In life's war of shoot to ****;
Winner has all, that's the deal.
Mercy not for all hard work;
They just rob in day and dark.
Luck with me as always thought;
End of day there's nothing bought.
Wise are evil, not to say;
Mystery's life but what the hey?!
Found myself in melancholy,
Why should I die so harshfully?

I've lost all and can't expect;
My big ship is in a great wreak!
Is war over, I'm so weak?
At life's brink, I gave a shriek!
Always lived in dignity,
Was to reach my sovereignty.
Man within says NO! NO! NO!
I too am man to play my show.
Got to collect whatever in me.
Got to show, I'm meant to be.

Pulling slowly, gripping rope,
Dreaming again from broken hope.
Blur is destined and vague vision,
Mind, still with power to move on.
For the new day sun high rises,
Wiped all past, and improvises.
So must rise from torment of fire,
Must win to great from a mere.
Come what may, mazes or viles,
I shall walk through all these miles.

I moved on to for I have to,
Went afar to brighter new.
Saw a golden gate ajar,
Few more steps in pain and scar.
No one seen yet seemed crowded,
In new realm I seemed beaded.
Could this be? Mind in frenzy.
Hope not so it's, it's too early.
Fragrances rejuvinates,
My whole self regenerates.

Then came a breeze to soothe me up
Nothing is to matter in this new lap
All seemed nice and all seemed glee
Alpha is mine and omega is me
No time here is seen to move
Days and nights all removed
Nothing in memory, no one to know
People all around in their own flow
My last breath, heard sounds of cry
Heavens sung as I'm raised high.

A brief description of this writing:
Struggling for survival and planning to endeavour the approaching new war, unknowingly you transit into a unknown dimension.
In your first feeling, not at all realising where you are you proceed on to accomplish your planned tasks.
Then at a certain instant a chill begins to put you in a dilemma of thoughts.
How do you get to accept the new life, leaving behind all the plannings and day night handwork for a cause?

S. A. Marshal
12. 03. 2007

Maria Mitea Nov 2021

At the call of the stars

The master of the dawn said: - It's strange to be here
on the black lips of the fields, and the evening caught up in between drops,
black trees making me shiver, - Kalos Gheron all dressed up in wet clothes,
blowing hair in the sky and a long beard rooting in the ground,
without cravings and sandals, penetrated by rain, crushed by worries
at the farm, takes the cows to pasture, - the mystery has not left them,
in peace, they ruminate wisely,
the master of the dawn said: - it, also, will snow tomorrow at the fair.

It's morning in the broken smile by tender snow,
heroic, simple, altruistic,
doubtless is sleeping on the branches with the hearing and sight of a partridge,
under the selfish blue sky, a trumpeter improvises,
- the aristocratic fields parade their white robes,
and the deer you saw last night is lying naked on the blind grass,
waiting for the groom in feather flakes to come,
two stars slip in her eyelashes gently whispering:
- down at the spring the lord of heaven cries out to us,
the time to receive the prayer (until dawn) arrives.

The master of the dawn said:- with him, I kindly realize how fear drifts far
and how his fantasy rotates, thaws the mist into white locks, (like a trumpeter playing
outside the scene with extinguished effect) at the call of the stars
the lord of heaven calls us.

#kalos #gheron #faith

Donall Dempsey Dec 2021

CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO ( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

". . .CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO. . ."
( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

breath & sax
unite to form
a creature made of flesh & horn

his sax calls forth
his own ghost
it dances before him like smoke

he closes his eyes
loses sight of everything
but the song

he plays
not knowing what he plays
until he plays it

the song seems to know
where it's going
it's the man he improvises

"...where the world has not
been broken up
into fragments..."

he longs to be taken
out of himself
so he can become himself

the last note
he comes back from the nowhere
that he's found

stuck now in this
somewhere he is
made ordinary again

now he's just
a man with a limp
just another drunk

his sax
the genie of sound
sound asleep in its case

he hums inside his head
the music heard
he the instrument now

tapping on the table
his cigarette dancing
to the invisible music

the notes
half man half ghost
tapped inside his skull

even the silence
now
full of sound

"...sometimes I wish
the music would leave
me alone..."

"...the music is like
a very very big dog
taking its owner for a walk.."

"...note by note I am
transformed
until I am the music..."

"...caught in a riptide
what can I
do. . ?"

And in Tagore's own translation, from the 1912 English edition of Gitanjali.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father let my country awake

KV Srikanth Oct 2022

UNCORPSE

There is no next
Right after death
Head to head
Between life and death
Most one sided score
That we can get
The the world's
Oldest known enemies
Cannot be called
A rivalry at all
Life has to win one
To call it a contest
Life after death
Spiritual and occult matters
Death after life
Cemeteries and graveyards
Ready to receive
Results known beforehand
Man improvises with time
Has the intelligence to know
But none yet to solve
No coach yet
To coach life
In the match
To beat death
Undeath the death
Neutralize its power
Illusion to make
It look like a tough fight
Life is an illusion
Taught to us
A consolation prize
Lest we give up the fight

Donall Dempsey Jul 2022

". . .CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO. . ." ( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

". . .CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO. . ."
( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

breath & sax
unite to form
a creature made of flesh & horn

his sax calls forth
his own ghost
it dances before him like smoke

he closes his eyes
loses sight of everything
but the song

he plays
not knowing what he plays
until he plays it

the song seems to know
where it's going
it's the man it improvises

"...where the world has not
been broken up
into fragments..."

he longs to be taken
out of himself
so he can become himself

the last note
he comes back from the nowhere
that he's found

stuck now in this
somewhere he is
made ordinary again

now he's just
a man with a limp
just another drunk

his sax
the genie of sound
sound asleep in its case

he hums inside his head
the music heard
he the instrument now

tapping on the table
his cigarette dancing
to the invisible music

the notes
half man half ghost
tapped inside his skull

even the silence
now
full of sound

"...sometimes I wish
the music would leave
me alone..."

"...the music is like
a very very big dog
taking its owner for a walk.."

"...note by note I am
transformed
until I am the music..."

"...caught in a riptide
what can I
do. . ?"

*

And in Tagore's own translation, from the 1912 English edition of Gitanjali.

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father let my country awake"

Donall Dempsey Dec 2020

CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO ( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

CHITTO JETHA BHAYASHUNYO
( WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR )

breath & sax
unite to form
a creature made of flesh & horn

his sax calls forth
his own ghost
it dances before him like smoke

he closes his eyes
loses sight of everything
but the song

he plays
not knowing what he plays
until he plays it

the song seems to know
where it's going
it's the man he improvises

"...where the world has not
been broken up
into fragments..."

he longs to be taken
out of himself
so he can become himself

the last note
he comes back from the nowhere
that he's found

stuck now in this
somewhere he is
made ordinary again

now he's just
a man with a limp
just another drunk

his sax
the genie of sound
sound asleep in its case

he hums inside his head
the music heard
he the instrument now

tapping on the table
his cigarette dancing
to the invisible music

the notes
half man half ghost
tapped inside his skull

even the silence
now
full of sound

"...sometimes I wish
the music would leave
me alone..."

"...the music is like
a very very big dog
taking its owner for a walk.."

"...note by note I am
transformed
until I am the music..."

"...caught in a riptide
what can I
do. . ?"

Arlene Corwin Nov 2019

Mysteries That Never Cease

Mysteries That Never Cease

There are mysteries that never cease,
Will always be:
Because of, not in spite of.
Look at progress:
Despite progress, we are more at risk than ever.
I fear, not ‘in spite of’, but ‘because of’, progress never
What it seems,
All the reams of information,
New advances, dancing in our eyes and ears
Dependant on who sees or hears,
Every positive a dormant negativeDependent on whose hands it’s in.

Then the secrets of infinity:
What, where, how, why and when;
A mystery most definitely.
And music, art
The part that improvises and creates
Out of a place inscrutable,
Wondrous, wonderful.

To never understand?
Dependant on whose hand it’s in,
Whose talent, aptitude, inborn mind
Is interested at all to find
The answers.

Mysteries That Never Cease 11.21.2019
Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Donall Dempsey Jul 2020

I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW

I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW

I lived my life as if
I had been written
into a Barbara Pym novel

so prim and proper lady I
my soul smoother'd in camphor
yet my life...wot the mot hath got

and here I be
curled upon the Persian rug
in the foetal position

being born
into my dying
as it were

me an elaborate motif
beside an exquisite phoenix
oh the warp and woof of me

so this is death
rather nice
as these things go

not too much( ouch )pain
more easeful and slow and
when ya gotta go...ya...gotta go

rather like that Manx man
was it Brown...or...something
"...if thou couldst empty..." oh what is it?

"...all thy self of self
to be a shell dishabited..."
bit like ha ha that...innit( agghh )

wonder what an anthropologist
from...say...Borneo
would make of me

I'd guess I'd be
so quaintly ever so English
so cue-cumber sandwich

settling down with a Pimms and a Pym
being one of those Excellent Women
**** this dying....haven't even read the book

only got as far as
p.15...how mean
the great unread

the words sticking in my brain
something being "...a welcoming
sort of place...

with a bright entrance..."
as if Mr. Death were saying
"Why...that's what I am!"

"Yeah, yeah...sure sure'"
I answer all Film Noir
another of life's little pleasures

the stuffed bird
stares at me sternly
deigns to speak

"Now that you are going to be
as dead as me...may I
have a word?"

it coughs unaccustomed
as it is
to public speech

"It's not so bad
being dead
it's being stuffed that hurts!"

the cat joins in
with its customary "I'm starving...
ya couldn't open this tin?"

now the cat howls
oh to have opposable thumbs
or a can opener at least

the stuffed bird and the cat and I
singing along to Beverly Kenny
smiling from the record sleeve

"Oh this used to be
my favourite as a girl
'I Never Has Seen Snow."

"Oh the girl I used to be
she ain't me no more!"
I could always carry a tune

the stuffed bird can't
sing for nuts but
the cat's got a good tenor voice

me...I'm letting go
the world is walking out on me
the world don't want to know me no more

I've even forget
can you Adam and Eve it
how to spell... fo'c's'le

my garden looks in
the window at me
well here's a howdy do

I never was '...a lovesome thing..."
even when young
"God wot!"

hee hee hee T.E. Brown
appears to invade the mind
when one is dying

and what would that Borneo
anthropologist make of that
or my love of Jazz

grabbing the music
by the tail as it shape-shifts
improvises world upon world and beyond

oh to be dying
in a smokey jazz club
thoughts climbing a spiral staircase of smoke

"All that is...is not!"
now I wonder where
I got ha ha that

would the man from Borneo know
that is Phil Woods on
the Quincey Jones arrangement

"Oh I love sax me!
never could say the same
for ***

well - enough of that
better get on with
my death

and what better way to go
than with Beverly singing low
always thought I looked a bit like her

she smiles that record sleeve smile
the one I tried to sculpt
upon my own features

"I saw a new horizon
and a road to take me
where I wanted to be...needed to be.... took"

"God! I'm only starving!" yowls the cat
"Ya couldn't feed me before ya go...no
**** those...**** those cans!"

"Oh ****...oh ****!" she purrs
the record's...the record's...the record's
stuck

— The End —