poems
"goin back to brooklyn
or maybe someplace just alittle bit farther"
before it happens
the light is released slowly,
an orchestra in the air.
the wind wears her nakedness
and you,
stranded in your meat,
you wish you were a tree,
last words falling from you like leaves.
birds & memories
hopping about and flapping away
in the firmament of your brain.
somehow
you manage to build the blue night
into a river
one last time.
but as always
you can never quite tell
if it runs through you
or you run through it.
what appears before you,
also hides within you.
what the hell,
sometimes imagination is better than an explanation anyway.
your crowded heart,
a strange ark of many creatures,
bears its witness.
thumped past reason,
at long last it marries the ghost
who dressed in your birthday.
and the feud of soul and flesh ends,
as it always ends,
unavenged.
of course.
silence tightens around everything.
your shaggy shape,
bulky,notorious,
noisy,
so long cooped up in bones,
is released
to the traffic of the stars
and the strange touch of morning.
meanwhile
the clock,
who knows nothing but time,
spills moments this way & that.
the air is smashed by rain
but the engine of everything endures.
forget the mistakes.
forget this useless business of conclusions.
from eternity's spittle
and doodling blue print
you were born unquietly,
drunk with the wages of song.
i wish i could invent the xylophone
or some musical nervous disorder in your honor.
assemble a cloud in the shape of a moose,
paint it the colour of bourbon
and stampede it across the graveyard sky.
if only i could bargain with the wolf or the moon
for something more noble & excessive
than just these weepy tears.
life is crowded & untidy
with theories & disagreements.
but now
far from the snobbish industry of art
and the polite after dinner conversation
of all the belching cannibals;
disappeared
and emptied into the night,
you turn up in my dreams.
huge as usual,
wearing a greek fisherman 's hat,
asking me questions
i still dont know the answers to.
i say,
"man oh man. the farther i go,
the less i seem to know anymore..."
you put your arm around me, smile & say,
"honest stupidity counts for something..."
and then hiss out your bluesman laughter.
the scattered stars
are strung out across the sky,
God's guitar.
and you,
croaking old fashioned crooner,
uncommon citizen of any age,
you are still urging songs on us,
mysterious, laughing
and complaining with life.
you are Death's thief now
stealing off with all our love.
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