WHY YOU NEVER ORDER A HURRICANE FROM A WAITRESS IN THE POKER ROOM

What stings the most about
the rain that falls tonight
isn't the angle it strikes
the eye
or how bitterly it burns,
but how it
soaks a sodden reality
down the back
and through the clothes,
how it washes the dust
off the shoes to reveal
the hard truth shining beneath.

You know how to be dogged
as well as you know
how to shadow your eyes,
know how to be cheated on
as well as you know how to serve
a cold Corona or hot coffee,
you know how to be stood up
as well as you know how to coordinate
a stunning outfit,
you know how to be lied to
as well as you know how to
angle a bun atop your head.
But just as you don't know how
to walk out onto Arctic Ave. and
determine which lane
points to Miami
and which to New York City,
you haven't learned
so simple a thing
as how to be loved by a man.

Perhaps that class was never scheduled
in Atlantic City elementary schools.
And who knows how many battles
a heart must bear before
it clenches into a fist
and begins to respect
only bare knuckles.
I cannot claim to know,
and so I wear no black robe,
carry no gavel,
call no courtroom to order.

This however,
makes the rain
no less raw.
I understand how some come
to take the tenderness of a man's hands
the same way they interpret a tear
in the bottom of a paper bag,
to hear the softness of his hello
the same as a leak in the roof,
see any sensitivity as a sign
he can't be dominant.
But I had almost convinced myself
that you were too wise to be
numbered among them.

Any fool knows that Yen
don't spend in Paraguay,
that Yuan are worthless
in Wichita,
and thus I accept
that whatever currency
of kindness I wave
might be counterfeit
in the hardware store
of your heart.
But it's no less devastating
a downpour that streaks the cheeks
of the streets tonight.
I had hoped to purchase
some hurricane matches,
to kindle a small flame
in a fireplace,
but this storm has dampened
all the cordwood.

The question is if
you wish
to learn to unstack it,
to set it out in tomorrow's sun,
to rotate it until all sides
are dry as an eye
which has never learned
to cry.

THE COLTRANE IN YOU

Knows the notes
you know to play
and the notes
you need to play
shimmer to shape
what you cannot say,
even if every note
could be explored.
Fears even if
every note is known,
meaning might
remain unreachable.
Knows what
you could’ve meant
is a melody
forever moistening
your mouthpiece,
filling the fifths
in the next bar.
What you could’ve played
and couldn’t play
rooted in the same chord,
which is always extending.
That Desire stretches
across a bed
in a suite
you seem to enter
next to a rope
of incense smoke
you remember,
in a hotel
you may not
check out of.
Every tongue
wants to probe
the mouth
of Imagination.
But what notes
the cursive smoke
is writing
blue the I.
A naked triad
tempts the rhythm.
Are you pure?
The key motif is modulation,
says the piano,
mercy, mercy.
In the acknowledgement,
during the opening riff,
there are
the mysteries of
the quarter moon.
It’s the first set.
The audience rocks forward,
well dressed, observant,
bopping with resolution
above their half-full glasses.
Like an august thunderstorm,
your sax threatens
to sanctify
the fingered strings
of the bass
as the unholy sticks cross,
but the cymbals
have the sound of cymbals
that are unheard.
So the audience,
witnesses and testifies.
You seek,
and they follow,
in a chorus-like fashion,
along the back wall,
and by the bar,
grooving in unison.
Filling the four chambers,
exposed brick walls,
color of brittle earth,
a room hurting
with dissonant exaltation.
And the smoke rises,
pursuance, pursuance,
The melody in the spirit
of shadows
flashes in the mirrors.
Then a door opens,
and the crowd's eyes widen.
Psalm, says the sax,
because the chairs
are full of ears,
opened religiously,
craving serenity.
Nimbus, nimbus
says the sax:
but your fingers
can’t find
a complex enough chord.
Notes played and
notes to be played,
what was almost whispered
and what couldn't be said:
no redemption,
but these digressions
on the downbeat
raining, raining . . .

NIGHT TRAIN

for Phyllis Hyman

What distant cry is this,
what drifting moan,
whose tasseled scarf
of turquoise colored notes
caresses the dark arms
of dusk?
Then floats and trails,
rippling silver as scales
or stones awash and
polished in a sonic stream
that bobs the head
and taps a tempted toe.
Wends sibilant seduction
in its flow,
vanishing
towards the morning
like a dream.
Phyllis,
your whistling lips
pouted with flair,
and slowly brushed
the naked neck
of night
with a sound,
hi-hatted in harmony,
that soared.
Your short solo
of hard earned air
dipped and bewitched
as it fluttered;
a kite
tugging on its cord
that too soon,
broke free.

PSALMS 98.5 FM

5 Send shoutouts to the DJ upon the mic
upon the mic and in the voice of an Emcee.
6 With turntables and the sounds of scratching
give mad props to the DJ, the GrandMaster.
7 Let the crowd roar, and the fulness thereof;
the club, and they that dance therein.
8 Let the dancers clap their hands:
let the strobe lights flash together
9 before the Almighty DJ;
for surely he cometh
to rock the house:
with a righteous rhythm
shall he rock the house,
and boost the bass with EQ.

THE BOOK OF RHYMES

From Jump street was the Rhyme,
and the Rhyme was with the Creator,
and the Rhyme was the Creator.
It was with the Creator off the break.
Through it all lines were spit;
without it nothing was spit that has been spit.
In it was Flow,
and that Flow was the rhythm of all peoples.
The rhythm echoed in the silence,
and the silence could not subdue it.
There was an MC sent from the Creator
whose name was Rakim Allah.
He became an Emcee to manifest that Flow,
so that through him all might hear.
He himself was not the Flow;
he came only to manifest the Flow.
The illest Flow that gives pulse to all parties,
that rocks the place to be.
He blessed the mic, and though the mic was blessed by him,
the mic did not recognize him.
He came to those who were his peoples,
but all his people didn't feel him.
Yet to all who did feel him,
to those who recognized the Flow,
he gave the ability to bob to the beat—
beats born not of a live instrument,
nor of a wax record or a crossfader,
but born of the Creator.
The Rhyme became flesh and kicked it among us.
We therefore check the technique,
the technique of the one and only Emcee,
who came from the Father,
no joke, to make the mic smoke.

THE AUDUBON IN YOU

Your egrets land after the sun goes down,
whirling on the evening wind
wide as the smile of a winking woman,
whose lipstick is a deadly sin,
yet shines like an Archangel's conscience.
Your egrets are long-beaked,
fish the cloudy marsh of your conscience,
they do not eat like Herons,
their hunger will not be sated
by any multicaloric act of contrition.
Your egrets are sacred, but will not sit
pretty on the head like
your grandmother's Sunday hats.
Your egrets caw as they claw the water's skin,
caws sharp as the teeth of a tiger shark.
Your egrets are not an endangered species,
they rise plumed like geysers in moonlight
and multiply like mathematicians from MIT.
You recall the words that hatched
many of your smaller egrets
as they surround your squeaky bed at night
with their rapid knee-high cries
Your biggest egret tosses its head
like a woman you never asked to marry you.
You sometimes wonder as they
strut about in their long-legged gait;
how they fly so far on those thin white wings,
how they maintain such perfect memories,
why you feed them so religiously every night?

THE DANTE IN YOU

A rose
blooms from
open throats,
moves through tongues
pink and purple,
meaning
rising in yourself,
but beyond you:
shrouded forms
spiritual as mist
floating across a river,
variables in
an equation of flame.
A psalm
swirling sideways,
notes taken or not,
silence taken
advantage of.
Because prayer is
a tongue trying
to trust lips and teeth,
cowed,
yet called
by rising or open vowels
to Amen,
you hear the hymn
of her tattooed ankle,
arched eyebrow
and scarred lip.
You believe
exquisitely as a long kiss
in all the ways
Tongues can twist
and wonder if
the molten music
of your mouths
can be held
as Communion.

THE O’HARA IN YOU

You want No Limit,

which of course means
you are standing in front

of the Borgata’s poker room
waiting for an open seat,
as G.S. passes by;
and it’s a Thursday
(which is her Monday),
and she is walking as though
carrying something heavy
(albeit not in her hands),
and you think you hear her sigh,
and recall Lonnie
(whom she might not know)
not Lonnie who was always
pawning his wedding band
so he could feed the penny slots
or Lonnie from The Hill
who always seemed to be
half a slice short
of a sandwich,
but Lonnie from
'Lonnie's Lament'
(and here she
cocks her head and
wrinkles her nose
saying "Who?")
mostly because whatever blew
his rain so sideways
inspired John William to put
a saxophone between his lips
and blaze a lamentation
which matches
her Monday motion,
a wistful grace
with piano lines almost
lengthy as her legs
and a bassline that
plunges like her hair
when she combs it
into a black Niagra,
which she can't know
makes you wish
you could spend
the rest of your days
naked and trembling
in a wooden barrel,
falling forever through
its obsidian mist.

THE BASHō IN YOU

light drizzle
On the Boxwood leaves-
her lips

Hair flying
as she swirls away-
April breeze

Iron span
across the river-
her bare spine

Waitresses' smile-
splash of blackberry brandy
in evening tea

April night
this meteor shower-
her laughter

rainy darkness-
lingering on her tongue
Licorice

Cowrie shell
shining in her dreadlocks-
The North Star

THE BUKOWSKI IN YOU

When the last pile of chips
gets shipped the other way,
when your wallet gapes
like the mouth of

a two-coated man prone
on a park bench;
what else is there to do
but stagger out of

the Taj Mahal's poker room

and return to the shadows
of an empty womb,
then curl up like
the last macaroni
stuck to a paper plate?
You sense even the women
cleaning under the tables
and dumping the trash's last odors
wouldn't sweep you
into their dusty pans.
The red deck, the blue deck,
the shuffle machine,
have conspired to
make you feel like
the darkness under
the dealer's manicured nails,
his Rolex stopped to watch.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Everything you touch stutters.
You can't remember
what singing sounded like
before the Ace of Hearts
punctured your last lung,
can't feel your buddy
tapping your shoulder
asking "How much you down"?
You remember the elevator
ride to your room,
39 floors of sunk stomach
before the white scowl
of a towel spread across
the bathroom floor.
Suppose you were nothing
but a hand towel
in a $49 motel?
Suppose you lived
to lick beads of brightness
from a working girl's back,
but all you had
was parched lips
and a swollen tongue?
That's why whiskey
clings to the bottle,
slight burn in the beginning,
then oak smooth and
polished as an expensive casket,
that's why when
the last card turns,
whatever you hear
sounds like a bullet.
More so if you dig
digging in moist earth.
Even more so, if
you're a not a gardener
or a man in a straw hat
wanding the beach for beeps.
You're addicted to
the dance of the Blue deck,
but also to the way
the Red deck parts like
a pair of painted lips.
You're addicted to
to knowing that even
a gypsy psychic
can't find your card first,
no matter how far she
follows a palm's
rugged grooves
like wood grain.
You're addicted to
knowing the cards love
no one
but the next hands
to hold them.
Is there anything
sexier than
putting it all-in and
having the moment
Morse code thru your veins?
Anything sexier
than the way
desperation's dress
hugs her hips ?
That's why you return,
why you tease your chair
to the table's edge
and post a blind bet,
why you peel the corner
of your hole cards
like they're prosperity's
last pair
of good panties.

May Haiku/Senryu and 7 Word Poems.

Gonna try to keep the momentum I started in April by writing at least 15 haiku or Senryu during May. 30 is too much pressure, but 15 is doable without me having to churn out crap just to meet a quota.

Midnight
meteor shower-
her laughter

New moon-
the unturned

calendar

crow

powerline

Nikes

Fresh snow-

"Taeshaun" dripping down 

a brick wall

Two planes  Two Towers  Fire raining

pinging
in the Beggar's cup-
April rain

Blue buoy
Bobbing in the surf-
my son's smile

SEVEN WORD POEMS

Time to
learn a language.
Her tongue.

Just above
the overturned chair.
Inmate's feet.

Under her
nails. Enough skin
to hex.

Trembling urge 
of this needle-
spill ink

THE AL-KHWARIZMI IN YOU

There's an algebra
for all of it:
the windmills

behind the casino

turning their giant Xs
into late night whys,
the moon's curvature

like a midnight calculus,

the tide rising

into the asymptotic

longing of a line.
Even for the arc

of a brand new

table tennis paddle
that your sweaty hand
now grips
or the velocity of the balls

(larger than they've

ever been)
spinning across the net
between your namesake
and your imagination.
Where he,

still a baby

burps and sighs
asleep in a crib.
The trajectory
seeming derivative,
almost always
of the desire.
Two Greek letters

on different sides
of an equation,

each ciphering
the other,

each signifying

an absence

by their italicised presence.
Daddy, Daddy,
don't you know
I miss you,

his sigh says.
He rests his head

on the hollow

of your chest.
Asks when

are you coming back?
There's an algebra
for all of it.
What you've
done with the days
since you left,
what you tried to do,
or might have tried,
had you correctly
solved for all the variables,
though you had
no slope to graph,

no slide to rule them.

A gulf

with no echoes

for answers.

As he whispered

to you once,

his lips are

an empty set now.

Two brackets
attempting an embrace
because kisses,

however long ago,

count and multiply

in the abacus of memory.
Moments that

can only approximate

an algorithm.
There's an algebra
for all of it,

the floating

function of the seagulls,

the breaking

but unbroken waves,

the ghostly geometry

of the foam.

Perhaps even

for how two pairs

of footprints,

non-linear as any equation

whose notation

haunts the horizon,

might solve

all this sand

between them.

THE MOST POETIC MAN IN THE WORLD

I love the Dos Equis commercials and was messing around with some of my own lines and this came out of it:

THE MOST POETIC MAN IN THE WORLD
(for Jeffrey McDaniel)

Before he was even born, Shakespeare plagiarized him,
He was conceived in a French villanelle
and born with a silver spondee in his mouth.
The only prescription he's ever filled was written by Dr. Seuss.
Entire orchestras of conductors weep when he plays his Sestina.
He once thought an E wasn't short enough, it's been silent ever since.
His haiku are so concise, they need only 1.7 syllables,
On his reading tours, Closed Interpretations open for him,
He struts the streets of New York clad only in a purple Pantoum.
His mother wears his Easter sonnet- every Sunday.
His feet are so exquisitely iambic, his pedicurist pays him.
He once rocked a party by beatboxing the Song of Solomon.
He doesn’t always recite his work, but when he does;
he prefers to replace the vowels with Xs. “Stay quirky, my friend.”

National Poetry Month 30/30- A Haiku/Senryu a Day

April mist-
on the leaves
on her lips

dawn sky
among brown branches
only cherry blossoms

This waitress' smile-
splash of Blackberry brandy
in evening tea

Trying to ignore
the waitress ignoring me-
Dealer splits the pot.

Her sidelong glance-
white foam roiling
a wave

Smiling
back from Break-
with Sambuca breath.

Fresh Pizza-
seagull takes a sideways
glance.

summer darkness-
Licorice lingering
on her tongue

April drizzle-
Pit Bull soaking the side of
a Porta-John.

ordering
water from the waitress-
voice cracking

tall grass
Tiger crouches, staring-
the ball?

April afternoon-
deer nibbling the
Driving Range

at the lip
of the cup-
Sunset

April dusk-
this flag loudly snapping
my back tightens

Ghost
whose shadow is memory-
river turning

April 15th-
counting what is left of
my fingernails

Jazz and cocktails
your siren song to tempt me-
Again wrong

Essay on Etheridge-
Gang Starr from a speaker
Guru rest in peace.

Rain beads on glass-
An armful of white blossoms
on black branches.

Starry night-
Beside this ATM
bank of Lilies.

Swirling
as she turns away-
April breeze.

Sunset, a song
falls across her shoulders-
"Love is Found"

steady rain-
a goose broken in the road
its mate honking

low fog-
high coo of a mourning
dove

Milky fog  starless
ocean stretches to pour-
waiting

the rain
slashing through-
leaves

after gunshots-
the front steps splashed in red
lights

Easter morning-
biscuits in the oven
rising

In this soldier's scope
the wide eye of a Nikon-
unblinking

Falling softly-
fingers on guitar strings
Phoebe Snow

crossing the bridge
steel riveted truss-
holding hands

iron span
arching the river-
her bare back

What may be

On Poker and Peppers

. . . things that grew loud when the street grew empty,
and breaths that let themselves be breathed
to freight a human argument,
and sidelong glances in the midst of things . . .
Jorie Graham

Never had much interest
in being smooth
like the skin of a pepper
or slick as the seeds inside,
(not because I didn't want to be hot)
but because like
a cayenne red lipstick,
slick wears off too quick.
Never minded looking naive,
it causes the slicksters
to show their hands.
We all make different choices,
but my friends are the ones
who tell me the truth
about the strength of my hand.

Perhaps there was a naive boy
with a dream.
And when I ask you
on the phone
if we will ever pick
cayenne peppers together,
you say "Maybe."
All gardeners know that maybes
can be like cayennes on the vine,
this one green as a Yes,
that one yellow as Perhaps,
the other bright red as No.

Gardeners choose
which peppers get picked

and by whom.

You could have said
that you don't pick peppers
with poker players,
but you said "Maybe."
And maybe I'm just a boy
with a naive dream,
maybe only slicksters get
to pick those peppers,
maybe somebody bluffed
(which is part of the game),
maybe they forgot
they would have to
turn over their hand,
maybe one day they'll realize
how much it costs

to get called . . .

Old poem, New Version.

I'm pretty sure that this is the final version. Took me forever to find the right ending.


THE MAN WITH THE BLUES GUITAR
(For Robert Johnson, after Wallace Stevens)

Three

The man [hat cocked] picked at his guitar,
A traveling-man of sorts. The day was yellow.

They said, "You got a [beat up] blues guitar,
Can you play things colored as they are?"

The man replied [cigarette dangling], "Thangs
as they are, Is colored different on a blues guitar."

And they said to him [Bible-eyed], "But play, you must,
A tune outside of you, but of yourself,

The [Gospel] truth on your blues guitar,
Of things colored as they are."

Six

I can’t paint a picture quite square,
Although I stroke it with much care.

I don’t sing a man's shined shoes, gold tooth
or new suit, but his eternal soul,

I eye him as well I can and conjure
Him up with my mojo hand.

When I pluck him up, moody as the moon
Not sunlit like things as some say they are,

It’s a serrated howl traveling through
these fingers what pick a blues guitar.

Nine

A tune colored (as we are),
Yet somehow blued by the [moaning] guitar;

Ourselves [softly] humming as if in tune,
Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and the notes
As he bent them on the blues guitar,

Played just so, the chords of change,
Heard in a damned juke-joint;

For an eternity damned, the way
The howl of hellhounds sound where

Even the hand of god is haze.
The tune stops time. The blues [thusly plucked]

Become the crux of things as they are,
The crossroads at midnight on a guitar.

Twelve

Are the [Hellhound] blues his?
His devil of a delta guitar

Fills the [smoky] juke-joint with dancing women
In thrall with the moon. The yellow-eyed men

Of the women are now [dark] blue, and coming
For his [middle-parted] head that never lies

Alone at night. He picks a string of dilemmas.
Can he change the tune as it is? And how,

As he fingers his frets, can he
Escape that note which echoes

unlike an [eternal] resolution and yet,
Must be. Could the Blues be anything else?

It's her hands
(of all things)
that I twitch for most,
because on each
of her fingertips
a maze whorls
with pleasure.  
What I may miss
in tracing a line
on her palm
I might divine
in the next.  
Even her pinky can probe
like a searchlight,
find what
I fear revealed.
Her slender thumbs
can oppose with grace
(Will they oppose me?)
Her index rises,
a tender wand,
a tenth of what
nightly troubles my blood:
a touch more subtle
than can be surmised.
All night,
each nail
a pale croissant
to be craved. 

THE VAN GOGH IN YOU

The VAN GOGH IN YOU

It steeps in starlight.
You feel it fall like freed water.
It bathes you in dopamine before dawn.
You take your breath from its whispers,
sitting like a sunflower in the corner.
Invisible by day and radiant by night,
it has a flame
that dances in all seasons.
It scurries from the rough
of young men's hands,   
from the smoke of opinion,
a cloud of ash floating
from a jagged cone.
When you press your ear to its heart,   
there is no note of any night.
And yet you call it nightly,
the possible oracle of an impossible song. 
But song is not the limit of its genius.   
The ear gorges itself on many frequencies.   
The fingers may caress
whatever key depresses.   
The lungs fill themselves
with various verses.   
The brain debates with no Coda.
It ripples the sea
like a new breeze,   
curls and peaks to many points.
You wait, unbated
to tangle in its tangents,
to scale the sails of silence
and read the ripples,
not as number,
but as Sine.

DUET

Under a duvet of darkness,
ears softening
in the silence,
you peek over.
Who could predict this?
An unfurling,
each touch
with the power
to part lips.
Making of their shading
and highlighting
a school of tactile undertow
that can pull or draw by
softest sixteenths
arterial eddies and ripples,
candlelit flickers
glancing the outer cheek,
shimmerings that shape
the banks of a river.
This isn't parenthesis.
This is the trouble clef.
Everybody hears
what they desire.
Always it is the same.
The purity
in the longing.
What we hear
is almost a tonic,
yes and yes with
each shivering breath,
climbing the scales
of the dark.
You are free to sigh.
I cannot of course read music.
Only these scars
curled like lashes
around your eyes.
Listen.
A whisper’s siblings
vibrate into
quick muscled twitches
and tightenings,
condensing
in saline beads,
swirling sibilance
of an unbounded bed,
The stream
spills its banks,
pooling itself,
pulling gleaming abdomens
and tangled legs
beneath disbelief's blanket,
where a tender tremoring
involuntary dances.

Invisible by day and silent by night,
her wisdom curls like a cloud of ash
from a jagged cone.