*** inta a funky blues roll
swing silent low piano
trippin down tinky tink keys
stumble the mumbled muffled horns
wha wha the humble orchastra roars
it swings a choo choo
tracks changin
bass a bumpin
du du du du
walkin through the room
Spoon croons a bellowed ballad
an Ella cat do a hair raisin ****
tink tink
you don't have ta think
you know what you feel
dis blues is fo real

For Prez

jbm
10/12/86
NYC

Music Selection:
Count Basie Band with
Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge and Jimmy Rushing

I Left My Baby

.
The barrel hit the bottom
with a sound something like 'thwelp'.
The first was a 'thud' on mud,
the second definitely a 'Help!'.
Slim rolled from the wreckage
doing his best to look nonchalant,
and failing.
Its hard to look casual
sprawled face down in the dirt,
a help speech bubble floating overhead.
But he did his best
picking himself up slowly,
no-one else was going to do it.
Remarkably, or not, he was unhurt.

Kelm found a rib-cage,
the remains of a large fox,
and he was delighted.
Do barbarians dream of culture nights?
Kelm had, and he liked hitting things.
He had lost all interest in fishing,
in Bruce, in dolls, in girls,
even with the story he was in.
Because now he was, as stated, delighted.
He had his very own
Ex-why-low-fone.

She reached the bottom
blind panic in her open eyes.
She saw the figure of a man
picking himself up slowly.
“Poet!” she shouted at him.
“No” Slim said off-handedly
though he had a few select words.
“Then … I've killed him” she wailed
“Badly?” asked Slim
“No. Rather well actually. He's dead”.
Then she spied the sword
stuck fast in a rock, at a jaunty angle.
Aesthetically pleasing in fairy tales.
And a tiny figure grimly holding on,
reached up for a better grip,
touching the Green stone in the hilt.
Jerrica and Slim were blinded by a flash.

The tingling increased
and the sword felt power
surge through its length
and explode in a bright light.
The connection was complete.
The sword sneezed.
It knew him, he knew it.
Neither of them particularly liked it.

The moment he touched the stone
he felt the tingling feeling
and he felt the connection hit
like a brick wrapped in wool.
His head exploded in pure light,
the sword sneezed
and his future was sealed.
He felt so powerful and … elastic.

“What can you see?” shouted Slim.
“Nothing” Jerrica replied
“Which way is it going?” Slim asked.
They had sunspots, flash-spots,
dancing on, in and through their eyes.
They both needed a *** ***.
But as vision cleared
a shape, a shadow, a form, a man,
greeted their returning sight.

The poet stretched and kept on stretching.
He took stock, he looked great.
From 6 inches to 6 foot
in a matter of moments,
he had grown up.
He took a look around him.
Jerrica and Slim were gawping at him.
The sword felt warm in his hand.
And very smug.
He was a sword wielding poet,
he spoke.

“I do thank thee kindly Princess.
For being my friend and rescuer”.
She blinked quite a lot.

Her body was telling her what boys were for,
but her mind was really not quite sure,
and what if there was no known cure,
but he did make her think thoughts impure.

Seeing his effect upon Jerrica
he smiled in that Poet's flirtatious way.
She blushed even more.
“What is its name? Slim piped in.
“What?” the Poet asked.
“The sword, what's its name?
Fairy tale swords have to have a name”.

Tink, tinky, ******, tong, tung.
Kelm hit the bones with a stick.
Each cracked bone had its own tone
but lacked volume.
He used a bigger stick
and invented bone-shaker music.
He even became famous
with his own backing band
The Clandestine Trolls.

He held the sword
and asked it its name.
It maintained silence
in an embarrassed sulk.
“Aw c'mon” crooned the Poet.
Silence replied.
“Come to think of it” said Jerrica
“what's your name Poet?”.
That got him right in the logics.
He looked back in baleful silence.
The sword chuckled.

The singing bowl woke up,
aware of the presence of Magick,
it started to gently hum.
The sword started to hum.
With its own resonance
aware of the presence of Magick.

Startled Jerrica stumbled
falling through the waterfall
that had with immense interest
being watching proceedings.
Her arm flailed
and knocked the small plinth.
Jewel encrusted, humming, alive,
the bowl landed upside down
on her head.
And the connection was made.
Tingling Jerrica, tingling bowl.
The sword joined in
with a song of joyful union.
Quick as a flash
Jerrica was up on her feet
smoothing down her attire.
A princess neither flounders nor trips.

The Poet had had his hand extended
to help her to her feet.
She looked and smiled
'thanks but I'm ok' at him.
Their eyes locked,
their hearts threw away the key.

Slim got the familiar feeling of
I don't need to be here.
He looked at the smashed barrel
and thought philosophically
'something to tell the grand-kids!'
He headed for a tavern, any tavern, anywhere.

And our hero and heroine?
Well ..
they lived fairly contentedly ever after.

Except for the incident with
the anarchist fortune cookies …
but thats another story.


© Pagan Paul (June 2019)

Death, and the stench of decay


Kaiju, Lala,
Kaiju, Po,
Kaiju, Dipsy,
Kaiju, Tinky-Winky.

From the depths of the seas came roars and quakes unimaginable
And from the depths of childhood dreams, and twisted realities came something far worse than we had ever imagined

Tongue-firmly in cheek
I can manage no longer
For the sake of this story
I must be stronger

The mountains trembled at the feet of the behemoth
The mighty lizard-creature
Stamping across cities as if they were
school grounds
Smoke lit the path

Lord only knows how the childhood characters turned
Deathly aberrations,
but alas, one cannot die quickly enough
When faced with one of those
Seemingly fuzzy
Creatures
Ripping flesh
As you stare, losing life,
Staring at their tv-like chests

But the clash of the beasts was one for the books
Godzilla, the kaiju,
with a killer flame
And a terrible temper

And the zombified tv group: the telletubbies
With their great speed,
voracious hunger
And general thirst for flesh

For what purpose did these titans clash?
Solely so we'd speak of it for centuries;
of that I'm sure.

In the center of town
The center of town
The center
The town
The bleak sky
oppressing the citizens
not caught in the tidal waves of blood
left over in the streets
where the quad-group
had been

The buildings reduced to rubble
In the wake of the far-larger beast

Po had picked scent
Tinky had bled another dry
Lala was in full speed dash
And Dipsy was pouncing on another victim

Godzilla knew not of the approaching
group
Instead, otherwise focused on ships
hailing bullets
As he swatted yet another jet

He picked up scent

But by then
It was far too late
The group was upon him
And the desired what he held inside:
His... insides

I won't describe the battle.
We shall call it climactic.
I won't describe the ending
We'll call it dramatic
I won't describe this poem
We'll call it insipid

I hope you enjoyed this two-parter
Now to drown myself in alcoholic liquid.

how tempting and near irresistible
tuff hind me gaze drawn to the digital clock
chronograph constantly staring me back
from any electronic gizmo permanent at dock
side of the moon, where try as I might

to wrench letting thine myopic eyes alight and flock
affixed to time piece glaring at this mwm adamant
to become reminded of the passage ad hoc
of hours and minutes, essentially a contrived
modus operandi integrated forsaking those nada ****
within western civilization countless

hundreds years ago prescient insightful outliers, did lock
up present, whence practitioners of infant science,
handy dandy blues clues tinkerers ironed out nock
with an arrow poised to strike bullseye as precision
  
got perfected vis a vis dis cover for prefects pock
who devised a system to partition planetary revolution
of earth around the tilted axis; affected, devised, perfected
refined,contrivances to allocate equitable quotidian blocks
as dawn to dusk requisitioned some paradigm
to systematize how to know where to rendezvous

for risqué monkey business or maintain favorable rapport
with an employee/ though prior to the precision crafted timekeepers,
an innate sense inherent within the madding crowds
whose knead to acquire the basic commodities
slowly manifested into a more definitive precision
crafted gizmos as the natural circadian
sleep and wake cycles rhythm co opted

into forced system necessitating imposition on body electric
when advent of industrialization mandated
a work force to be jostled awake by town hall clangorous chimes
revving generic speedy Gonzalez to high tail their derriere
at manufacturer lest bread winner replaced by another eager desperado
to escape becoming DIRT POOR,

but pocket just enough legal tender to survive
a hardscrabble existence incessant inquiry
per the most asked question (*** hide from how big iz your ****)
turns upon the matter where space/time continuum
hums along with a silent tick tock
as if stone deaf, yet impossible to avoid the imprimatur
where air tight schedules disallow any wiggle room

inducing this *** spire ring Telly Tubby – Tinky-Winky wannabe)
accidentally bumping into Boobas, and while at a standstill
drops the urgent question "What time is it?",
without pausing to reflect what thee is and/or it iz comprende?