"sextet" poems
Sounding like some wild soundtrack
to a Spaghetti Western starring
none other than The Clintster,
it were rolling in good vibes
with the peeps taking selfies
with the band for a backdrop.
Two horns poundin' out
a happening grove,
with a bass player all of
four foot nothin'.
with a cool round sound.
It was cookin' alright,
hours after midnight,
a Halifax sextet hinting
of Tom Waits and the The Bob man.
I yawned, I looked around,
all those sweet tarts in their skin tights.
I yawned again, shook my head
as the band was covering Ray Charles...
I yawned again and again
and realized I am too old to party hardy.
But still... 'I can hack it'.. the last thing I said
as I headed out the door, homeward bound
In a January breeze that had a hint of Spring.
end © 2014
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 1:53 AM UTC
A smooth jazz blast from the musical past:
The confused ethnomusicology,
The pleasantly discordant riffs and
Jingles of "Hiroshima"—
The band not the bomb site—
Whose fusion sound
Evokes an insane sextet
Granting membership, inexplicably to
Schroeder-- the Peanuts loony tune—
Hitting only the black keys of his piano,
His miniature keyboard
Sour, melodious & pure.
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 5:36 AM UTC
I’ll trace the lines of a love poem
With the tip of my generous tongue
I’ll bend you over a sonnet
pounding your heart with verse
Until you come
Closer to the slippery edge
Of the highest haiku peak
Pulsing cranes shoot from
Sky following deep swallows
Cascading heat wing
The beat of the sextet
Engorges the plump plum with tantalizing taste
As the surging wind tickles swirling grass meadows
A pirates plunder
unbridled womanly chaste
Riding my large prose with feminine pleasure
Until both writhing bodies are drenched in chicken broth rain
I will slather you in brilliant color
As you vacantly stare ecstatic
Groaning through the augustan age
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015 at 11:48 PM UTC
A smooth jazz blast from the musical past:
The confused ethnomusicology,
The pleasantly discordant riffs and
Jingles of "Hiroshima"—
The band not the bomb site—
Whose fusion sound
Evokes an insane sextet
Granting membership, inexplicably to
Schroeder-- the Peanuts loony tune—
Hitting only the black keys of his piano,
His miniature keyboard
Sour, melodious & pure.
I am reading Ayn Rand’s
"Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition"
Of The Fountainhead, 1993;
An important 20th Century novel, I am told,
A book first copyrighted—
That’s copyrighted spelled without a W—
First copyrighted in 1943,
A copyright renewed in 1971,
By Ayn herself;
An important book--
Whether you’ve bought into her
Man-worshiping atheism—
Or not.
I write these words on the back of a business envelope,
The only paper to be found in this house,
Not ironic, while pondering
A wireless laptop charging,
Plugged in far away on a kitchen countertop.
Lying on a couch in northern New Mexico,
It is an Ides of March 2014 mid-afternoon.
I am 64 years old.
Old enough to know better;
Growing more conservative each day,
With Ayn, I celebrate he who never gives up,
“By spitting in one’s own face,
And damning existence.”
The Fountainhead:
She called the book a “GUIDEPOST,”
A reminder of man’s noble vision,
Proclaiming man in noble glory.
A Sartre you were not, Ayn.
How interesting to think of
The two of you, co-temporaries,
Aspirating the same Earth atmosphere.
This fact itself, an astonishing example of
"Weltanschaung" polarity.
No wonder the world is so ****** up.
Oct 13, 2014
Oct 13, 2014 at 7:43 PM UTC
A mellifluous sextet
circled in awed child beauty,
reserved for post-modernists
in the dead mary-go-round
Inferno. Civil war is
on the tongues of roses. Trap-
door seats, enigmatic music,
control of arms gyrating
out of American dreams.
Boring clocks toll for the death
of painters holding depraved,
easy lives in service of
stripped one-hour masters,
but we all have hair and bills,
neglect and hours setting
up appointments to escape
what we owe to turpentine
obsessions for running off.
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 11:22 PM UTC
Beyond is a bleak, grey skyline
I barely recognize my vignette
Yet here I am, walking that thin white line
As if I had not met him yet
I barely recognize my vignette
Black swans move like serpentines
As if I had not met him yet
Slow, calculated, but ready to strike at cloud nine
Black swans move like serpentine
He still whispers in my ear, I just cannot forget
Slow, calculated, but ready to strike me at cloud nine
“Pulvis et umbra sumus,” was his epithet
He still whispers in my ear, I just cannot forget
Their banshee bugle wails overcome; I am confined
“Pulvis et umbra sumus,” was his epithet
Like smashed cherries, their eyes were as ****** as port wine
Their banshee bugle wails overcome; I am confined
He wanted to mold to be a useful asset
Like smashed cherries, their eyes were as ****** as port wine
I gladly follow those threats
He wanted to mold me to be a useful asset
What called them on was my mental upset
I gladly follow those threats
There is nothing to regret
What called them on was my mental upset
It is foolish to once think I could outshine
There is nothing to regret
All I have ahead is a relentless battle line
It is foolish to once think I could outshine
I am merely a pathetic statuette
All I have ahead is a relentless battle line
Soon they all will forget
I am merely a pathetic statuette
Onyx swans call me to the brackish streamline
Soon they all will forget
It is there I snipped that innocent white line
Onyx swans call me to the brackish streamline
He influences my mindset
It is there I snipped that innocent white line
Time becomes frigid as I sink into that brine outlet
He influences my mindset
My body is limp in the alkaline
Time becomes frigid as I sink into that brine outlet
It is there I found no lifeline
My body is limp in the alkaline
The onyx swans fly in a v-line sextet
It is there I found no lifeline
He brought me to the finish with no reset
Beyond was a bleak, grey skyline
Yet there I was, walking that thin white line.
Sep 10, 2020
Sep 10, 2020 at 11:06 PM UTC
very mysterious DP....
you look deep in thoughts,
dreams flowing like wind,
through your mind and hair.
pink, a reflection of the soft warmth
of your *****
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 5:22 AM UTC
i look at it this way, i said
we are sailors and our bodies are our ships
relationships are the riggings, the sails, the sextet
and love. love in particular is the anchor
it can keep us grounded in tumultuous times,
help us correct our paths more quickly,
stabilize our journeys, and allow us the choice of sea or port.
but when it's a bad match,
it holds us back, limits our freedom,
damages our vessel, and drowns us.
indeed, part of determining that is learning and experimental.
learning how to use the anchor,
when it is appropriate to drop
and when it must be raised.
but the anchor itself is not inherently good or bad.
either fit or experience makes it useful or useless
that's beautiful, she said
where have you been all my life?
i paused.
i have been lost at sea
what seemed like eons
learning to sail
and where to anchor.
Jun 18, 2017
Jun 18, 2017 at 2:54 AM UTC
Six of us here
in the bland and zinc-white
waiting room, small
machine on the floor
burning the air
with brown noise.
We're nominally here
for group therapy,
but in truth we prefer
to ritually founder
in great excesses of civility.
The therapists all but plead
for us to say right upfront
exactly what we don't like
about each other.
That's uncomfortable,
and each of us toys with the idea
before securing the old masks.
My own mask isn't the Venetian
kind, or the grotesque
Twilight Zone voodoo variety,
but the clear hospital type,
used to inhale great lungs of ether.
Sometimes sincerity creeps
from the gaps,
sometimes I do my best
to collapse into this checkered chair,
close my eyes and hide
in the sound of my blood.
It sounds surprisingly like
the brown noise machine.
I'm up against it.
I'm not getting younger,
and these feel like last chances
to learn to be, in a way
where I don't end up
shut away, eating myself alive,
riddled with depression
and loneliness and long black
strings of guilt that resonate
like a tritoning cello.
The thought carries:
The six of us
are an atonal sextet
of numbness and refusal,
dread, attraction, the works.
Around us, the whole room
is phthalocyanine green,
blue shade.
Therapist's preference,
probably calming,
soft music in the eye,
and it almost works.
But instead I am lost
in new haircuts,
in leggings ripped
behind the knee,
in the way a lamp
hunches over like an ibis.
Anything to avoid it,
anything not to admit it,
admit that despite years of this,
years of looking out
the high window into
the red riot of Farragut Square,
years of forcing myself
to say terrible
and incriminating things
while rain and snow
attacked the window,
I am still sick with feelings
where I must belong to someone,
must be deeply known,
or else I've never been
anything at all.
Dec 19, 2017
Dec 19, 2017 at 7:48 PM UTC