some poetry

after all that prose, it's time to slow the breath a little with some poetry, what Pound calls "language charged with meaning" and I'll add "& with music." The next few blogs will be some older poems, some published/some not. Enjoy.

                                                in the tradition

                                                                for Arthur Blythe

there's always been a place

in my house for holy

books as a child my missal

black leather gold

print thin red ribbon bound

into the spine to mark

the day's liturgy & my Lives

of the Saints at night i'd read 

martyrs suffering the rack

the wheel the up-

side down crucifixion St.Sebastian

chin against naked 

chest arrows

piercing his pure

heart

later  Camus & Sartre 

floating among empty

beer cans & overflowed ash-

trays    clear signs

of tomorrow's nausea

then the Black writers & the Beats

Baraka Ginsberg Ellison Kerouac Wright Bird-

like phrases chopped

the page into field

calls rent parties cool concrete breezes off city rivers a woman

crying like a saxophone beneath her lover's weight

or absence

                                                                                    each book a long

                                                                                              solo in an Ellingtonian suite

then Li Bai Tu Fu Basho each

word a tear exploding

from the sunflower's eye

& Ortiz Silko Neruda Paz cries 

& visions of People bound

to Earth

& each time i move

they move

& as Coltrane sings his love

supreme & sage blesses

my rooms with smoky sweetness

i shelve the last book & call

this place 

home

                                                      may peace prevail