That Works

Wring the towels of truancy.
To the jazz joint, let us skip.
Graffiti red the blooming sunset.

Everybody do the solo.
The quartet parts, we'll keep.

Moan we players out of pain and pleasure.
Bring the towel, but heavens...
not to weep.

Wes

Put yourself in another man's keyboard
to sense what he may be thinking.
Because his swagger is his signature,
his signature is his authority.

His authority is that he's stepping.

Lay It On

This organ mocks my Negro voice
and I mock its.

My finger tips are ivory built,
don't wonder that my soul is black.

I have, you see ---
planetary eyes.

One Clear Day

At some point, breathing stops,
the pulse pauses, does not restart.
At some interval, the mind implodes,
space contracts. Infinity zeroes,
eternity blinks.

Life Itself is An Addiction

I pray God
forbid me sin again again,
I addicted to what kills.

Addictions are hard to break.
Unless on tortured wheels they be dismissed
life's addictions are to the end.

Forget them of hormones gushing sticky
who have no breath to do the rosary during Lent,
unless a rope be fixed to snap their neck.

Youth fancies speed, old age tends to shun it.
That death should bring relief - to them haunted,
makes no sense.

The Ancient Trees That My Oaths

I witness, yes, to this terrible flaw
I love trees more than I love people,
an ungodly sentiment, I admit
I am unspoiled America.

Alaska to Patagonia,
my woods the peoples wrecked,
my waters did they stink.

My air unpure
Haiti did I love,
deforested it slides
into yet another graveyard.

Dawn's Smudg Kiss

I am whelmed
I am joyed
I is sorrowed

which is to say

I'm on the verge of overwhelmed,
on these here cliffs of tugging joy
looking down at sorrow's canyons

which is to say

I greet the dawn in glorious silence
No tweet of bird, no stirring
My hearing aide needs a battery

Closer Than Supposed

The depth of our beings
in raindrops deflect
the sky at the height of our toes.

We inhale heaven's breath.

Labor Pool

Waiting to be chosen to clean a galley kitchen,
dozen day laborers also wait,
I do not know how I'll escape minimum wage work.

I will be liberated, I insist.
Nature hears me and enlists
I be persuaded more.

Years later, I do not run the kitchen.
From ice packer to mobster boss,
I am a mafia politician

Wagner

In opera, mythology is sung.
However, nationalism's most fervent expression
takes place in events unleashed in stadiums
as in international soccer matches,
or as with those audiences going bananas,
over a ranting man, whose eye balls periodically
roll back into his Aryan head.

Fatal Mettle

What attracts
maybe toxic

Behold the lovely necklace
the coiled coral snake

If you could kiss Nefertiti's nipple,
you might drown of ashes.

Work Ethic

The job accomplished is delicious
to bricklayer as to hit man

Bottoms

Your indwelling uneasiness
will not be put to rest
by any set of happenstance.

Question marks are hooks with balls,
guillotines which slice through intelligence.

Therefore, if space goes on and on (as is supposed)
as deeply as you might penetrate the atom,
think you'll ever reach its bottom?

Island

blue pond
desire holds
blue gap
in lovers' mouths
the nursery trout
Schubert ago


come if you can
in song return
i know you must
disappear

Market Day

Listen, look, think.
Chances of surviving
depend on capacity to think.

Huh?

Behind my eyes,
between my ears,
this here is my doll house.

Huh?

Don't mess with my doll house
and on't mess with me.
Beware before you reach.

Huh?

I have my property rights
of avenging woman.
Think twice before you speak.

No Action Required

We know it by what it isn't and fails to do.
It does not contend, it does not expropriate.
It does not engage in the exercise of ambition.
It does not interfere with the rights of others
Where no thing is, it is.

Brush Hairs

When Rubens is abstracted,
ugliness is Picasso.
When Picasso is abstracted...
that's another line of separation.

In Out

I had no intention of existing.
Now that I am, I think it cute
that some should profess I disavow it.

"Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way."
Open the flood gates, Lao.
Ready or not is always at hand.

The Past Passed

Fractions are true as fractions go,
only fragments, never the whole.

So too, experience segments solely.
The truth the total holds.

How Quiet The Morning

How quiet the morning
when the carpet is snow,
and in the trees above,
birds are nesting late.

First Day Forest,
a doe passes through the gate,
which is the mind of God,
into Man's domain.

Hurry, Sarah, get the gun!

Monkey Bars

I can assure you, Butch, my childhood does not exist
as it does for you in the fixation of painful memories.
The blows I took, few scars remain, none to cry about,
certainly none to brag about for the most part ironed flat.

The sepia photograph of Aunt Millie no longer trances me as it did,
though her gaze continues spooky, her smile an indelible question.
I wonder where in me she might hiding beyond her fading image.

I can assure you that if she and I were kids in the school yard
on a higher rung of the monkey bars, I would at this stage
of my latter day wisdom, restrain from looking up her bloomers.

This day I declare myself sovereign and independent.
Indeed, in word and for all perpetual purposes
I ordain myself my own ancestor. Don't say I shouldn't.
I already did it.

A Stroll Through The Park

Take a stroll through the park with a poet,
you're in for a treat. Everything is dreamy, creamy;
the cotton ball clouds, the leaning towers of Central Park.
To note; you had dropped acid just hours ago.

Take a stroll through the park with a Wall Street broker.
You'll probably with you didn't.
Take a stroll through the park with a mugger.
Forget the mugger, the country is violent enough.

I remember early one Christmas Eve, strolling pass Tiffany's.
I ran a high fever. The wind-whipped snow melted before
it doused my face. Had it not been for winter,
I might have died dehydrated.

I entered the park in Columbus Circle.
I wished for a mugger to try me.
I was in want of a reasonable excuse to kill.
I had unrequited love on my mind.

I was then as I am now
the center of the universe,
but am no longer
the owner of Central Park.

The Recent Blizzard

Fingers cold from morning to evening.
Ice glosses the recent snowfall
The white outside is appalling
"Cabin fever" is what I'm suffering.
I am a mausoleum prisoner.

Caroline Taylor Green

Insults have a way of killing,
but the pure of heart prevail,
the pure of heart endure.

Hither

Emptiness asks to be filled.
Fullness begs to be emptied.
The middle man wants for nothing.
He is hard pressed to be found.
He was gone before discovered.

In all the wrong places, we search for him.
He does not show while we are business.

Che Who?

The gainers are few
in lottery drawings.
Do most of us believe
we really can win?

What about J.C. ?
Wasn't he a loser
badged by the bigwigs,
booed by the crowd,

crucified naked,
crucified blood,
what about him,
Son of God?

Goes to show I think -
you surrender life,
you resurrect one sunny morning.
Some might hope,

the same holds true for Che Guevara.

The Kids from The Block

The Information Technology Beast,
more wondrous than magic carpet,
more toyful than winged mechanical horse
that can fly over Islam's minarets.

The caring monster of internet emotions
spirits me off to my old neighborhood,
shows me associations vaguely remembered,
faces none recognizable. Woe is them, grateful.

That is - we become our grandparents,
who we had not the privilege of knowing,
less so even crinkled,
we victims all of child abuse, for sure.

Structure

core, perimeter metrics
to infinite power extrapolations

attract repel
constitute binary particle motion

gravity and structure

Half Moon over Harlem

I'm a cat paw stepping man;
suede - fur - satin - back to bottom.
My lips wrap around the tenor sax
like moon-lit wraps a lamp post
for a birthday present.

I'm on my merry way.
Be forewarned, though, a set follows.
Xylophone, too, is about stepping.
We clang the percussion like steam pipes
when it's snowed on 40's Manhattan.

Am I kidding? Only partially.
It was raining when I started.
Saint Nicholas Avenue is wet and shiny.
I'll be jeppers.
There's a half moon over Harlem.

I hear a renegade organ playing,
"For All The Ladies." It's my turn,
band me the sax.
Dedicated to Yusef Latiff
and the oboe.

Inflatable You

Say you love me,
I'll ask no more.
Admit, I fill your void and I'll drain you,

and refill it.

Like the song, it's got to be me!
Why not me! Why not us?
Ain't us good enough where two agree.

Agree to what?

Agree to mutual adoration, dummy!
Love joins. Dis-love doesn't.
Me, I am your one and only "mulher."

(Portuguese for woman)