kagablog

It took me a decade
After his death
Before I could write
A poem about him
It was as if a small part
Of him had entered my heart
And remained behind the
Barbed wire fence
He had constructed over the
Long years
Stayed there all this time
Building an invisible umbilical cord
Reaching out for an unseen
Love connection
Sending signals carried on the
Sealed lips of blackbirds circling
An invisible graveyard
Finding in death
What we had never known in life
Those ghostly white hands
Scratching upward from the grave
Desperately trying to cup the
Tiny flame flickering inside the
Valve of my heart

by Jannie M. Dresser

Ordering information: Http://www.ebracce-press.com

A D Winans moves swiftly between sardonic and droll, the beat and the impassioned voices. He is a master of the clean one-liner, not needing punctuation to interfere with statements that shock by their candor and grace. Few writers can excuse themselves from respecting the rules of English writing, needing those little glyphs of punctuation and capitalization to guide us, but Winans wins his right to be a more stripped-down, somewhat prosaic poetry because of the clarity he creates in his choice of words. Here’s “Letting Go”, short but emotionally punchy and imagistically complex:

LETTING GO

The last desperate thread of love
A shoe print in the mud
Next to the public phone booth
Her talking to her new beau
Not noticing the love beads
I bought her in Mendocino
Left behind in the circle
Of my footprint
Like a tribal elder offering
A small piece of his heart

Love and lost opportunities for love, sex and missed chances are frequently themes in this book, along with the foibles of others who grab for attention such as poseur poets, music and musicians who give more than they take, friendship, aging and the vagaries of American culture are recurrent subjects in possession of Winans’ imagination. “Poems for Allen Ginsberg” updates ‘”Howl” with idiosyncratic parallelisms:

POEM FOR ALLEN GINSBERG

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by greed
Naked under their fashion designer clothes
Driving themselves through congested city streets
Looking for non-existent parking spaces
Aging hormone driven biological clock mothers offering
In public their purple veined near perfect breasts
To baby sucking zombies
Who stock market driven sipped Starbuck’s coffee
While chatting aimlessly on their cell phones…

Yes, but tell me how you really feel? Winans’ grasps the contradictions in our compulsive do-it-till-you-drop and never-reflect-or-apologize dominant culture. But just when you start feeling a bit overwhelmed by negativity, he turns to humour:

Holy is the sock
Holy is Swiss cheese
Holy is the ATM machine
Holy is Cable Television
Holy is the condom
Holy is the U.N.
Holy is pop culture
Holy is Bank of America
Ka-ching
Ka-ching
Ka-ching

As with Zawinski, Winans also describes a poetry reading, but focuses on the performing poet’s perspective rather than the response of the audience, as his narrator/poet/self requires a mother’s-little-helper to venture to the podium, then takes full command:

For thirty minutes
They sit quietly
Like birds in a nest
Their eyes devouring the silence
Before the poem

The first poem cuts into them
Like a machete

Winans is a poet tackling the aging process head on, and he doesn’t find much about it that is pretty (aging’s not for sissies). Yet, his characters are more than the sum of their parts, as in “The Old Italians of Aquatic Park”:

Have the smell of garlic and pasta imbedded
in their skin, Italy beating in their heart

The old men of Aquatic Park are dying off
With grace and dignity and a love for the old ways

There is something sad about being Americanized
There is something sad about growing old

The bocce ball rolls slowly along the grass
Coming to rest like a hearse parked at an open grave

In fact, the young do not escape life any better in the view of Winans’ somewhat jaundiced eye, as in “Un Titled” where an old man/ young man point/ counterpoint structure elucidates:

Old man hobbling on cane
Young man feeling no pain
Old man singing the blues
Young man in spanking white shoes
Old man with no teeth
Young man balling under the sheets
Old man in Palm Beach
Young man out of reach
Old man with young dreams
Young man unraveling at the seams

Threaded in and around poems of upstart poets and aging Beats, are poems where life’s meaning is found in music, companionship, the richness of memory, and the anticipation of poems yet to be written. As Winans’ sums up in “Rainy Day Thoughts”:

Every cloud does not have a silver lining
A dead man casts no shadow
The man who has the last laugh
Is the first to be laughed at
Sticks and stones will break fragile bones
Names numb and kill the brain
Here today gone tomorrow
One part joy
One part sorrow

Holy men on every street corner
Selling fake myths
Nuns in white with virgin toes
And mushroom dreams inside
Their loins

I am being followed by
Dick Tracy look-a-likes
With flat feet and bug eyes
The wolf’s plaintiff howl
Haunts my dreams
Evangelist’s pickpocket
My empty wallet
My one good eye
Photographs the crime scene
The police lineup consists
Of six pygmies and a ham sandwich

Ladybugs ride on the
Wings of butterflies on
A one way trip
To Never Land

God wanders the universe
Carrying Jesus piggyback
On his way to a Michael Jackson concert

The Madonna confiscates my dreams
Holds me for a ransom
I can’t pay

The insatiable night eats my thoughts
I’ve become a one-legged tightrope walker
Without a safety net
My poems turn into pigeon feathers
Fly off with the wind

Neeli and I visit the ancient warrior
Praised by William Carlos Williams
And other literary giants
90 years old
Early stages of dementia setting in
Playing hide-and-seek inside
His solitary room
Now an old man trapped
In death’s shadow
He reads us a poem from
His collected works
His voice still loud and clear
Like Sunday church bells

He puts down the book becoming
Frail and vulnerable again
This rock of ages with peaked hat
Walking slowly with us to the
Cafe across the street
Complaining about the loud music
As Neeli orders him a cup of coffee

‘”Make mine black,” he says then
Wants to know why I didn’t”t put
Milk in it.
This forgotten warrior
Walking back to the care facility
Neeli shielding him with an umbrella
To ward off the cold rain
“That’s my hotel the
Beat Hotel”, he says
Hotel Nirvana racing inside
His blood

He stops says,
“I can’t go on.”
Out of breath
As if the next step
Might be his last

He is like a bird
His eyes nesting
In my soul
Feeding on poetry the
Sum total of his life

This is not a poem about

Ted Bundy

Well not exactly

Though history will record

That at precisely 7:16

In the morning on

January 15, 1988

Ted Bundy made

His final peace

If mass killers can ever

Be said to find peace

After a night of crying

And praying

Bundy was strapped into

The Death chamber

To be executed for his sins

One has to wonder what

Went on inside his head

As they strapped his chest

Arms and legs to the wooden chair

The Show Must Go On - 2

His eyes searching the window

For signs of a familiar face

While seeming to nod at those

He recognized

Including the man who had

Prosecuted him

As his lips moved in a faint smile

Making one wonder what

He was thinking those last moments

With his head bowed as if in meditation

His skull glistening where an ointment

Had been applied to enhance the

Work of the loving electrodes

When asked if he had any last words

Bundy hesitated and said

In a quivering voice:

“Give my love

To my family and friends.”

With these last words

The guards pulled a thick

Strap across his mouth and chin

Bolting the metal skullcap firmly
The Show Must Go On - 3

Into place

It’s heavy black veil falling over

His face

And with a prearranged signal

An anonymous State executioner

Pushed the button sending two-

Thousand volts of electricity

Surging through the wires causing

Bundy’s body to tense into a clench

As a tiny puff of smoke lifted

From one leg

A minute or so later which must

Have seemed like an eternity

A paramedic opened Bundy’s blue

Prison shirt and listened

For a heart beat while

A doctor aimed a small light

Into his still eyes

At 7:16 a.m.

Theodore Robert Bundy

Was officially pronounced

Dead.
The Show Must Go On - 4

But the real story lay across

The dewy grass of a cow pasture

Where five hundred people

Had gathered to cheer the execution

When word came that Ted Bundy

Was dead

The mass of humanity began chanting

BURN BUNDY, BURN

While others sang or hugged or banged

On frying pans they had brought

For the occasion

It was clear for the moment

That everyone was having a good time

And that society had extracted

Its just due

But then this isn’t a poem about

Ted Bundy

Well, not exactly

For history will record

That as a civilized nation

We have burned people

Chained them up to starve

The Show Must Go On -4

Or be eaten by vultures

Castrated them gutted them

Torn them into pieces and

Even crucified them

And history tells us that

One man in New Orleans was

Nailed into a wooden box and

Sawed in half

And hanging is still a favorite

Sport in many states

Perhaps a hold-over from the

Good old frontier days

And the state of Utah offers the

Option of a firing squad

So it seems only natural as time passed

That a man named Edison would come along

To invent the electric chair

Which was sold as a more kindly

State of death

Only Rubert Webber the first man

To be executed in it

Might have disagreed

The Show Must Go On -5

It being reported Rubert refused

To die quietly or quickly

The first 2000 volts of electricity

Merely singing his skin

Witnesses said the sight

Of his scorched body strapped

To that chair bleeding from the

Face and body and twitching and all

Made the sheriff sick causing him

To vomit on himself

So being inventive as Americans are

Along came Hap Travis from Eaton

Metal Works in Denver

To develop the patent

To the gas chamber

The warden perhaps remembering

Poor Rubert Weber and not the

Kind of man to vomit on himself

Decided the first creature to die

Would be a small reddish brown pig

Both nameless and terrified

The Show Must Go On - 6

The new $5,000 death machine

Arrived by rail and barge

And the pig just happened

To be in the wrong place

At the right time

The warden said to be

A hard old jailer could

Nevertheless not bring him self

To watch that day in 1938 when

Guards from the prison farmyard

Grabbed the elusive pig carrying

Him in their arms to the

Two-ton steel and glass monstrosity

Locking the victim into a cage

And strapping it to the execution chair

Sealing the chamber tight

As the cyanide tablets dropped

Into a vat of acid

It’s said that when the first fumes

Hit the pigs nostrils

The animal let out an unearthly squeal

Straining its snout between the bars

The Show Must Go On - 7

Of the cage as it gasped for air.

The pig died straining away

From the choking fumes

Dashing its head against the

Unbending will of steel

Fighting with all its strength

Those last few dreadful seconds

Witnesses watched in horror

At this new human method of execution

That Adolph Hitler would later use

With loving care on the Jews

And lets not forget Aaron Mitchell

A poor black man from Mississippi

Who was dragged screaming from his cell

One April morning in 1967

So mad with fear that he slashed

His arm with a razor blade

Spending his last 24 hours

Standing naked in a crucified position

Proclaiming himself to be the

Second Coming of Jesus

The Show Must Go On - 8

Now that’s what you call

Putting on a real show

And we’ll never know if

Lenderess Riley found it

Humane or not

What history does record is that

He too was dragged to the gas chamber

Screaming and filled with terror

Much like the reddish brown pig

Before him

And in the first recorded case

Of female equality

Barbara Graham became the first woman

Put to death by the state of California

Where it’s said a prison guard

Told her death would come easier

If she took a deep breath

And Slowly counted to ten

To which it is said she replied

“How in the hell would you know.”?

The Show Must Go On - 9

The fact that many people

Even today consider her innocent

Of the crime for which she was convicted

Did not keep the show from going on

But being the humane race we are

We keep improving on the methods until

Today lethal injection has become the

Popular means for legalized murder

Despite the fact that in Texas

It took a half-hour to find

The vein of a junkie who didn’t

Die quickly at all

And in another recorded case

Of a messy execution

It took more than an hour before

The victim died

So messy was the execution

The authorities had to pull the

Curtain of the viewing room

So as not to make the witnesses sick

And the state of Florida

The Show Must Go On – 10

Took great pride in “Old Smoky”
(A three-legged oaken seat)

Built by prisoners at Florida

State Prison in 1923)

To administer the tried and true

Two Thousand volt current lovingly applied

To 225 convicted criminals the

Most memorable taking place in March 1997

To dispatch Pedro Medina

A 39-year-old Cuban immigrant

To his maker

Pedro was strapped into the chair

At 7:10 a.m. and what happened

After this is public record

As something went wrong

With flames leaping from the

Masked head of the convicted murderer

So much smoke filling the

Death Chamber that an outside window

Had to be opened

Not that this was Florida’s

First botched execution

Old Smoky had to be unplugged

The Show Must Go On - 11

For several months earlier in 1990

After smoke and flames were seen

Near the head of another

Convicted murderer during

An excruciating electrocution

In which three jolts of current were

Administered over a four minute period

Florida officials said Mediana’death

Was quicker even if more spectacular

Which seems at odds with the

State attorney general

Who said shortly after the execution:

“People who commit murder

Had better not do it in Florida

Because we may have a problem

With our electric chair”

This from an elected official

Of a State who can’t even

Get its voting machine to work right

And an enlightened Florida lawmaker

24 hours later introduced legislation

Suggesting the guillotine
The Show Must Go On - 12

As a more humane method of execution.

And the state of Utah

Perhaps not wanting to be out done

Offers a wide variety of choices:

The electric chair the gas chamber

Lethal injection the firing squad

And yes the guillotine

The debate on whether Capital

Punishment is a determent

Has been going on for over a century

And the only thing we know for sure

Is what history tells us

That in the last century

There have been at least thirty

Californians convicted of murders

They didn’t commit

This according to a study conducted

By Tufts University

And this same study tells us that over

Three-hundred-and-fifty similar mistakes

Have been made nation-wide

The Show Must Go On - 13

Though we hear little If anything

About such things unless

The condemned men are men of the

Privileged class

Thirty California convicts

Lucky enough to have won

Their freedom

But it took anywhere from

One to twenty-five years

To do so

Lucky enough to be vindicated

Luckier still to have lived

Long enough to be vindicated

And the Governor of the

State of Illinois suspended

All executions after it was revealed

A number of condemned men had been

Wrongfully sentenced to die

And history tells us that in the

19th Century in England

They held public hangings

To discourage pick-pocketing

The Show Must Go On - 14

Only to find this crime

Increased during the hangings

Which would seem to lend credence

To those who claim Capital Punishment

Does not deter crime

But public executions have been

Public sport ever since the

Romans introduced the Christians

To the lions or Pontius Pilot

Gave in to the mob

So it’s no surprise that the

Government and the Courts invited the

Families of the victims of the

Oklahoma bombing to watch the execution

Of Timothy McVeigh on closed circuit TV

And though no tickets were sold to the event

You can be sure there was a good time had

For those who haven’t forgotten the

Ted Bundy Show

For like they say in Hollywood the

Show must go on

I recently purchased at author’s discount a number of my CD, The Reagan Psalms, published last year in a mastered edition. The CD is shrink wrapped, wih a photo of me on the front of the CD. I am able to offer anyone who wants a copy for just $10, which is a 50% discount off the retail price. The CD should become a collector’s item.

Foreign orders. Cash only. Send $15 U.S., carefully concealed. This covers the CD and foreign shipping rate. Will accept international money order, but prefer cash.

Mail to: POB 31249, San Francisco, Ca 94131.

Purchasers will also receive a free signed broadside (of my choice).

This is a small gesture for your past support.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Old guitar slung over his back

Pure country singing the blues

in all of us

with eyes that cry out to be heard

Leaving a message on

Annie’s answering machine

Reading a poem about a bird

that died in his hands

Remembering the scattering

of his daughter’s ashes

Caught in the pit of sorrow

This man of music

This one time old friend

who works the nerve ends

like a skilled surgeon

Still fighting still scraping along

like the rest of us

for whatever time

is left

there having a rumble

at Ellis and Eddy streets

and the police are slow

to respond

you can see the rage in the

Chicano’s eyes smell the

fear in Whitey the

Blacks are shucking

and jiving and rolling dice

while placing bets on winner

and losers alike the

street whores move down

a block or two

to ply their trade

one white, one Asian

one latina

the black and white arrives

at last dispensing the players

like bit actors auditioning

for a role in the big show

small town punks gather themselves

run for cover

don’t stop to look back

head for crack-house

biding their time

like a stoned Jesus

hung out to dry

on your mother’s clothesline

The preacher man

don’t believe in evolution

The con-man

don’t believe in revolution

The priest has run out

of absolution

No more autographs

No more forced laughs

No more hanging around the zoo

swapping stories with gurus

Going to smoke some dope

with my good friend the Pope

Going to make love nice and slow

Read me some Edgar Allen Poe

Lose myself in the late night show

Going to make a cameo appearance

on the 10 p.m. news

Play me some John Lee Hooker blues

Going to penetrate a prerogative

Bugger the cosmos

Evolve evolution into a revolution

Put anarchy on the stock market

Nuke technology, outlaw e-mail

Declare Da Da the official

English language

Going to hang religion from a tree

Make John Brown the new

National Anthem

Turn outlaws into in-laws

Land owners into donors

Put Bukowski’s face

on Mount Rushmore

Pay homage to a whore

Going to name a bus after

Rosa Park

Put a little nookie

in every fortune cookie

Expose Saint Nick as a chick

with a dick

Going to invite the First Lady

to ride through the streets of Chinatown

dressed in a see-through nightgown

Going to talk to the fly in the soup

alone or in a group

Going to sing a ballad with

Lorca and a band of gypsies

stop off at the manager

and have a talk with the Lone Ranger

Going to put an end to hemorrhoids

Outlaw humanoids

Going to offer a truce

Bring back Lenny Bruce

Make politicians ride the caboose

Going to go back to school

Erase the golden rule

Going to feed a vulture

Starve off mass culture

Going to turn evolution into

A revolution

Make poetry an institution

I stare into silence

Empty space has no vision

Restless ghosts eat

My words

Mc Donald’s wrappers

mating with coca cola cans

floating across the rivers of America

Walt Whitman’s children forced

to inhale exhaust fumes worse than

a coal miner’s lungs

Christ run out of town

for practicing his trade without

a union card

children weaned on Campbell’s

chicken noodle soup

not withstanding all those tiny

booger hearts floating in a sea of fat

Late at night I can hear the

cannon fodder of Union soldiers

the sound of Confederate rifle fire

deadening my dulled senses

knowing I can’t escape the

hangman’s noose stretched out

across the face of America

In the shadow of night

I hear the whimpering

of soft skinned women carrying

silkscreen fans in bone white hands

mothers of the children

I will never know

there is this kind of motionless motion

children crying themselves to sleep

the taste of sunsets for breakfast

and champagne for lunch

there is this kind of mellow music

hills made of wild strawberries

salt on hard boiled eggs

Peanuts in the comic strips

and radio DJ’s with god awful jokes

that see me through another morning

there is this kind of sadness

the feeling of dull razor blades

sliding across smooth skin

Marilyn Monroe suicides

and weekends

with nothing to do

heart attacks from love or lack of it

funerals with no mourners

poets with little future

and lovers with no one to love

they say he’s burned out

but no one has bothered

to tell him

his Sax igniting a spark

across the room

his lips working pure magic

each note attacking the

heart strings of the soul

and for one brief moment

he loses sight of the

bubbling spoon the

heated needle

each note a burst

of machine gun fire

just like he used too

before the angel of death

took him on a straight

line to hell

regular kagablog contributor A. D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet, writer, and photographer, whose work has appeared internationally, and has been translated into eight languages. He is the author of over 45 chapbooks and books of poetry and prose, including The Holy Grail: Charles Bukowski and the Second Coming Revolution (Dustbooks). A collection of Selected Poems was just published by Presa Press. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University and a member of PEN. He edited and published Second Coming for seventeen years, where he met and became close friends with the late Bob Kaufman, Jack Micheline, and Charles Bukowski. He can be contacted at: slowdancer2006@netzero.com.

check out the latest issue of strangeroad for a bumper harvest of a.d.’s poetry.

FOR KELL

Old guitar slung over his back
Pure country singing the blues
in all of us
with eyes that cry out to be heard
Leaving a message on
Annie’s answering machine
Reading a poem about a bird
that died in his hands
Remembering the scattering
of his daughter’s ashes
Caught in the pit of sorrow
This man of music
This one time old friend
who works the nerve ends
like a skilled surgeon
Still fighting still scraping along
like the rest of us
for whatever time
is left

What Readers Have Said About The Reagan Psalms

The Reagan Psalms audio CD is from Winan’s book, The Reagan Psalms (now out of print), which was published in 1984 by Integrity Times Press. The book was a scathing indictment against Reaganomics and the Ronald Reagan Administration. The book (A small piece of history) received considerable media attention, including comments from U.S. Senators, Journalists, and other well-known personalities. Below is a small sample of comments:

“Thank you so much for sending me The Reagan Psalms. I found it most interesting, not only because of the unique format, but because of your insights on President Reagan.”

—The late Arthur Hoppe, Pulitzer Prize winning syndicated columnist.

“I like your stuff (The Reagan Psalms)) very much. It’s a fine tribute to the pronunciations of the White House Toby.”
—Studs Terkel

“Thank you for sharing with me, The Reagan Psalms. I’m impressed with how thoroughly you’ve gone about indicting Reaganomics—and you have some wonderfully juxtaposed quotes.”
—The late U.S. Senator, Alan Cranston.

“I appreciate your bringing this valuable book to my attention.
—Edward M. Kennedy, U. S. Senator

“Thanks for sending me your book, The Reagan Psalms, and it’s all so true. We have a writer friend staying with us and I will show him your book. I know he will thoroughly agree with your philosophy and enjoy your poetic talent.”
—Joan Baez, Sr.

Gold Package:

This special collector edition is limited to a hundred numbered CD’s, which includes a handsome booklet with several poems by Mr. Winans and comes in a black Presentation Case. $29.90 It makes for a great gift too.

Silver Package:

CD’s available in shrink-wrapped jewel cases. No booklet. $19.99

Foreign orders payable by International Money Order, or by PayPal.

Sound Streettracks
2115 Granberry Rd.
DeRidder, La. 70634

Contact info:

Karina3884@aol.com

SoundSt_Tracks@poetrywriting.org

The old Black Hawk booked the
Best jazz musicians of its day
Getz, Mulligan, Diz
To name just a few

I went there but twice
Once with the poet
Jack Micheline
Once with a young
Latin girl
To see Miles Davis
Blow his magic
Forced to sit in the
Teenage section
Because she was only
17
Sipping on a coke
High on the high note
Smoke curling around the
Room in long lingering
Lazy circles
Sweet sax
Smooth slow gin tenor
My hand on warm thigh
Feeling high feeling cool
Be-bop rhythms
Dancing inside my soul

An old man stands in the doorway
Of an abandoned building
Shoulders stooped
Jesus beard
Ragged clothes
Hands outstretched
Begging for his supper
A tote of wine

His prayers unanswered
Spittle on his chin
Holes in his shoes
Walt Whitman’s forgotten
Child

She sits alone
In her small hotel room
Above the 222 Club
8 months pregnant
Forced to give head
For soup and bread
No heat
One washcloth
One yellow stained
Washbasin
Hope bled dry
Immigrant without visa
Or status
An illegal caught
In a legal trap
Feels the baby stir
Move inside her
Lead belly blues plays
In downstairs tavern

She heads for the door
Hears the night manager
Whisper, “Whore.”
Suspended in silence
And grief
Floating face down
In the bowels
Of the American

Dream.

Sax symphony
Deep down gut wrenching
Horn seduces the senses
Floats through the
Blue smoke room
Deep into sensory perception
Curls around the table
Into slow gin fizz
Jazz angels lifting their skirts
Riding one long note after another
In roller coaster freeze stop motion
Bass man sweating profusely
Eyes on lack princess
Making love to the microphone

Here at the Both
End Bar

Lost in a timeless haze

Bugs bunny flees Disneyland
To take up the sax
Blowing “C” notes
In the ears of deaf monks
Outside the stars commit cunnilingus
With the universe
A group of wise men back
From the manager
Sit cross-legged on the floor
Chanting Zen mantras
At a donkey doing the mamba
On the back of the bearded
Circus lady
A Voodoo priest reciting the
Lord’s prayer backwards
Turning a cup of liar’s dice
Into a bag of bones

The priest runs out of wine
The altar boy runs off
With the wafers
Falsetto notes turn sour
Perform fellatio
On the saxophone

Sitting alone at the
Lost and found bar
Here in the heart of North Beach
Dark skin removed from the present
Tapping your fingers to the
Late afternoon music
Coming from the corner jukebox
No longer able to play your saxophone
Now sitting alone like you
In a forgotten downtown pawn shop
Tagged for a quick sale

Someone puts a dollar in the jukebox
And Billie Holiday sings softly
In your ear
Bringing an instant smile
To your face
A lighthouse beam dividing the
Thin line between sanity and madness

This is your turf
Your veins burning with the
Energy of life
Long lines of images haunting the
Late afternoon hours

Bronzed warrior of old
Sitting here at the
Lost and Found bar the
Beat forever going on

Black Hawk
1962
Long wailing notes that
Run up and won the spine
Makes you shudder
Like a woman coming down
From a climax
Heightens the senses
Sends shock waves through my body
God Jesus and the
Holy Ghost rolled into one

No more jazz at the
Black Hawk
No more jazz at the Cellar
No more jazz in the Fillmore
Just ghostly boarded-down doors
Gone the clinking of glasses
The waitress who always knew
When your glass was empty
Working her magic on
Your inflamed nerve ends

The black female crooner
Hitting the stillness of night
With a long wailing train whistle
Her sultry smile imbedded
In your skin
Long after the closing hour
Leaving you sweating
Limp like waking from
A wet dream

(For Bob Kaufman)

He carried Charlie Parker
In his heart
Miles Davis in his eyes
Each socket a hidden camera
Recording the images inside
His head

He walked the Fillmore
With Ella Fitzgerald
Wes Montgomery beating inside
His heart
His be-bop fingers snapping
At the music coming from
His soul

His eyes bore through you
Like a tiger stalking the zoo
His poems looking for an exit sign
His body a well- worn suitcase
Holding maps to exotic ports

No jazz poet before or after him

Has ever fully explored

Sitting here alone
Listening to Billie Holiday
Pounding the computer keyboard
Trying to make a little magic
Jack Daniels racing through my veins
Having just returned home from a book party
Celebrating the life of Bob Kaufman
Gone like so many others lined-up
Waiting to follow

Old jazz records strewn about the room
Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dave Brubeck,
Louis Armstrong, Sonny Rollins,
Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday
And Lester Young
An army of poets sitting alongside them
T.S. Eliot playing the banker
William Carlos Williams suturing wounds
Ferlinghetti in his sailor suit
Kaufman walking the streets of New York
Singing his magic with Charlie Parker
Blake playing cards with God
Lorca playing Russian roulette
Micheline dancing with Mingus
Gary Snyder building word bridges
And suddenly I’m not alone anymore

Words and jazz

Jazz and words falling like

Hard rain