Revision of a really old piece.

DIMINUENDO AND CRESCENDO IN BLUE

Brothers and Sisters,

Today I want to share

something with you 

from the Book of Ellington

about a dilemma

old as blue-green algae.

About what brings me

nightly to these crossroads,

black as a blueberry under

the heel of a stiletto,

blue as a Jay with its 

feathered crown in disarray.

Brothers and Sisters

—why must I sleep alone

while Cupid tickles me

with a blade of bluegrass

to draw my lapis laughter

like bath water til I’m hot 

under the cobalt collar?

I know some of yall

know what I’m talking about tonight.

It’s a question as electric 

as the Devil in a new Givenchy dress,

a question that’s had me waking up 

in a doorway on the avenue,

blue as five frostbitten fingers

glued to a Thunderbird bottle.

If you understand

what I’m talking about tonight,

—Somebody say amen.

Brothers and Sisters,

It makes me a muted trumpet

against a cloudless sky,

the crushed cornflower 

in a Viking's eyes.

Brothers & Sisters

please don’t cry or laugh,

but it’s a blue ribbon

around the neck of the fatted calf.

Can't you see through 

these Woolworth shades of blue,

something's stuck to my shoe,

and it aint paper money.

Can I get a witness.

Why must the new moon rise

and leave me St. Louis Blue,

with a gangster lean in a leaky canoe?

Why would Yemaya leave me

with a Leadbelly,

blind as a Lemon,

Howling like a Wolf

with a thorn in its foot?

Brothers and Sisters,

please hear this whole note

and come in from the misty blue,

before you too crumble into 

a porcelain plate of funky cheese.

I’m not saying it’s a hand

in a thumbscrew,

will outlast your teenaged tattoos,

or lock you into a rubber room 

with no view.

But it may have you 

progressing through 12 bars

that all overcharge 

for their Mermaid Lemonade.

Raise a hand if you hear me tonight.

Brothers and Sisters,

Some might say it’s turned me 

into a bluebottle fly 

flitting between purple and green,

wings tattered as a pair of old jeans.

Merci beaucoup,

It’s even had Winnie the Pooh

doing Voodoo in corrective shoes,

I hear it tracked two muddy boots

through the front yard of his heart

and left blueprints to an asylum 

in the freshly snowed parts.

Oh Heavenly Father,

why can’t I cordon these blues

I know that the geometry

of poetry is hyperbolic,

but can you tell me

if this is just the illusion

of a soul in a tuna meat suit?

Because it’s universally known 

to be cranky as a blue crab,

itchy as a new scab,

and scientifically proven 

to lower your IQ.

Somebody say amen!

Brothers and Sisters, 

listen up carefully tonight because 

the Postman always rings twice

to deliver this news—

Love mails all of its letters 

with the postage due.

Now, can I get a witness?

Revision of a poem from “Ideas of Improvisation”

 A CRY OF IMPROVISATION WITH A POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS

In a bus station bathroom, scribbled

initials trigger—

Piano Trumpet Sax Drums

Peyote Trazadone Sinsemilla Demerol

—kisses on my nipple 

or a needle’s pulse through my arm—

but if—for religious reasons—I lick 

my fingers do I taste the assault or

the grain you pearl into a luminous shell?

What else deigns to color a domain

in the hippocampus or paper over

a toilet’s oval until I tongue a girl named

Apophenia like a Percocet and perhaps

my documentary is also soundtracked

by plunging syringes or trigger clicks

but right now the score reflexes startle

these terror tremors waiting on a bus. 

Even as sum of what’s been done to me

the unified self is a useful fiction.

Do you recall—

Piccolo Tambourine Synth Duduk

Pulse Tremor Seizure Dementia

—when busses just meant kisses

when fingers didn’t trigger unasked touch

or arrive as an evening express to shame

where the Speaker desires to disembark 

or blow smoke into a parallel reality

where our sages are more than mere apes

with a vocabulary & a rational capacity?

Why must the four cords of these memories 

extend or bend into an encore by

the band Cycling Back To The Seen,

who often have lyrics about night sweats

but never arrive before the bus hits us?

Newish Poem

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION IN TEN PARTS

How, each of her ten

moves their tips

to undo me,

capillaries driven

into rivers,

hair rising

to attention,

each touch

a crescent flake 

from a fresh croissant,

a decimal presence 

making me tense. 

How tenfold

her fingers print

and my tactile index 

seems to curl.

And what’s merely binary 

binds only

a tenth of what swirls 

in the bloodstream:

How whatever world 

I miss—

being numb or number—

still counts as being

under her thumb.

I don’t know where

her tracing a line 

on my palm

might divine it 

in the next.  

Or why her slender thumbs 

oppose with such grace

(Might they 

oppose me tonight?)

I don’t know where

she’s gone now,

but for so long

on each 

of her fingertips 

a maze meant 

uncertain directions

of certain hands—

a maze meant

a logarithm 

of her ways—

a maze meant

whorls . . .