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