not sure how many words

Litany of Lines

It begins in lines
that wiggle roll
and wind up and down
from other lines that cross
or end in broken lines
flat out going nowhere
but back. Such a

dizzy welter of lines
all colors too, black
green and blue plenty
of blue but just
a hot mess a mass
like a child's scribble,
indefinable lines

unless you pull back
to a wider view
and see it's a map.

Isn't every map
a treasure map,
a book of roads
and rivers and tracks,
ultimately a story
of the people
who live on either side--
those who stay
and those who leave
insisting they'll
never come back?

Those lines have power
of so many kinds--
to bring someone home
or take them away.

Maybe it's you
who is leaving. Maybe not
today but eventually
everyone gets in the weeds
so believe me you're gonna
need that map.

*****
Night Train

A long night train goes
whooshing by with a long
long load and a throaty sigh--

full house, passengers
and freight, the silver
sleepers and diners,
the convivial club,
the swaying corridors
and hubs, public and private
cars roll on

humanity packed in boxes
hooked together at reckless
spaces in-between
where the night blows in.

Who sees when a train
passes deep in the map
and the night?

Maybe an owl,
a lone wolf by a crossroads,
a sideways moon,
smirking through the trees.

*****
Daybreak Express

Private rooms
for Duke and Lil Strays,
first-class air-conditioned
comfort for the band
is the instrument.

1936

and Duke has greatness
thrust upon him.
He meets it cool
with a graceful smile,
a debonair air,
throws back his sculpted head,
his perfect hair and laughs

because we are rolling baby--

money music men
are rolling south
where Jim Crow is
a murderous monster
waiting on bloods

but these are private
cars and Duke is known
to gents and wise guys
alike but mainly dollars
speak louder than hate.

And an't the porters
proud to care for these
crazy braves headed south
like magi bearing gifts
that tap and blare,
to strike at the heart
of ignorance

with pounce and stride
that make feet pat
heads nod and fingers
snap until every body
jumps like those 88s,

jumps to forget
the weary blues circa
1936, jumps

to a swing that sounds
like a train.

When lines have merged
and converged as tracks

and roads are mapped
and explored and tracks

and roads are traversed
by pioneers who putt putt

whoosh whistle wheeze
in that piston-driven churn

and clack across the Plains,
all that action passes thru

Kansas City St Joe Abilene
and Oklahoma City too,

until you got yourself
one fine American stew

cooked in cutting contests
served with jam at 5 a.m.

before it's time to move
again.

Seven months. I remember, sweetheart.

I remember

Klimt's Danae

Her heavy-lidded eyes and
gold leaf tears, her
roseate cheeks, her breasts

left bared. I would wonder
about focus, this woman
who seems as much dead as posed,

though beautifully so.
But jewelry has never attracted me,
and necrophilia less so.

New Professor on Writing Haibun

One wonders how theoretical
she will be. Will she be Bashō,

grasping his dead mother's hair
melting in his hands

like an failed Autumn frost?
Or will she be as regular

as a barcode, setting out hurdles
we all must leap

as we run around, around
this rutted track our lives still keep?

Come to me.
Let me call you
Spring and see in you
more green than pale
fading to gray like it has
been and been.
I keep asking when
does the tide
roll back in?

I've been so damn dry
in spite of tears,
the waves of forgetting
and then remembering
than roll on till I'd like
to die but no I keep on
waking up sure
to outlast the surcease
of minutes then
unraveling
by late afternoon.

How many times
can you whistle
a happy tune, look up
at the same moon
that was perfect when
you saw it together,
and make impossible
wishes alone?

Today is kicking my ass
I seem to overflow
the smiles of yesterday
and realize that tears
belong on my cheeks

sometimes and never
but why today
should be different
I can't say aloud though
I feel it where swallowed
sobs burn in acid
bubbles against my heart

like the way you seared
a memory into my bones
of my bones gone to ashes
to dust and blown away
to sky and elemental
fabrics we sew ourselves

shrouds to spend time
wrapped up in cocoons
our soul the chrysalis
waiting to burst free
right at the end of time.

Let me not be writerly;
a Yoda-speaking mystery is naught
to do with poetry although I tap
these words to you, to who might
choose to read and say she had
no theme and what a dream she used
to see and how the night was gentle
once, the breeze a quiet symphony
whispers just like lovers glow
and pulse in starfish symmetry.

Grains of sand can whisper, too,
and slide with tides back to the sea
and none of this is passively
assumed but passion happens
somewhere in a core that burns
before the words are born.

Grateful Ones

The girl in the mirror
said her face was turning
into a bird but she wasn't
me so I walked away mindful
of blue bolts tracking the
lines on brotherly Ben peace
out poster day-glo air
that traces sounds, bells
guitars ringing.

Darkness shrugs.
Sun escapes the room
but shimmer on Realistic
tapes winding as we spider
around the rug, a tapestry
of skeletons in a deep
distant groove. 1968--

St. Stephen gathering
the tribes.

Ben sounds low but more
in pace and breath let slow.
The blow is blue overall.

They call him Brute can you
see it black white his careless
smile in the shadow of a frame,

the doorway of a train bout
to leave this mess new day
next gig you think he'll drop

that bottle, get some rest
from his slumbers go deep
beneath the hurt a dream

that jumps in Kansas City no
holds barred sock stomp
bled into the breakfast hour.

When he was young
he was long, tall and careless
of the slouch that would become
a stoop. Years push him down
so his light shines more from within,
his mien less panther, more
teddy bear.

It's hard to say which is more
appealing but later his mind
is clear. He threw the horse
that rode him, so what if
he don't gallop so much now?

Freedom lives wide outside time,
behind it and in all the spaces

in between. Listen.

You can peel the palimpsest
layers like onion skin, shuffle
them like cards, hear this one
that one but it's Dexter calling--

big sky eyes, feet planted,
leaning into the wind.

Beautiful, Ange.

Tristesse2 said:

Beautiful, Ange.

Click to expand...

Thank you, PoeTess.

Angeline said:

When he was young
he was long, tall and careless
.
.
.
big sky eyes, feet planted,
leaning into the wind.

Click to expand...

a beautiful piece, indeed, missy - and the framing you create with these four lines is uplifting, heartwarming, and makes the sense of love a tangible thing. the end lines manage something else as well: they create a sense of future - all is not ended.

I absolutely love the image and concept of

He threw the horse that rode him!

Damn good stuff.

butters said:

a beautiful piece, indeed, missy - and the framing you create with these four lines is uplifting, heartwarming, and makes the sense of love a tangible thing. the end lines manage something else as well: they create a sense of future - all is not ended.

Click to expand...

todski28 said:

I absolutely love the image and concept of

He threw the horse that rode him!

Damn good stuff.

Click to expand...

Thank you both.

The poem is about Dexter Gordon in his last years. When he was young he was a heroin addict, but he was able to quit it: hence the idea of him throwing a horse that was riding him. At the time Dex was an addict, heroin was known as "horse."

I'm hoping that the last line communicates something about breath, too, because it's what a saxophone player uses--breath and a reed.

Angeline said:

Thank you both.

The poem is about Dexter Gordon in his last years. When he was young he was a heroin addict, but he was able to quit it: hence the idea of him throwing a horse that was riding him. At the time Dex was an addict, heroin was known as "horse."

I'm hoping that the last line communicates something about breath, too, because it's what a saxophone player uses--breath and a reed.

Click to expand...

rereads with new information... leans into the wind? he was a trumpet player?
nice

HarryHill said:

rereads with new information... leans into the wind? he was a trumpet player?
nice

Click to expand...

Thanks.

Saxophone player.

Angeline said:

Thank you both.

The poem is about Dexter Gordon in his last years. When he was young he was a heroin addict, but he was able to quit it: hence the idea of him throwing a horse that was riding him. At the time Dex was an addict, heroin was known as "horse."

I'm hoping that the last line communicates something about breath, too, because it's what a saxophone player uses--breath and a reed.

Click to expand...

I knew what you were alluding to not ever something I did but knew a few people that did it.

Jobs for Fantasy Characters

You could fly in
from another galaxy tunnel
a wormhole from another universe
and lie on the job app,
say you're really from Andromeda
and just stopped to see
your cousin in Peoria.

You could drive
a Vette, red with white
trim trailing a doo wop comet,
contrails of squealies and finger pops
teen angels side-riding shot gun
sloopy dawg and slop or smoke
that nags your eyes, dust devil
spumes from the Pony Express
to mess with you till you're mad
as Rumpelstiltskin,
foundering with rage.

Hell's bells
it's a fantasy.

Why hide that unworldly shine,
that full body hair spun gold?
Flee the castle, its sorcerers
and queen defiler of apples.
Go where you have never
boldly or otherwise gone.
Before. Take the robots with you.

You wanna be a waiter? An accountant?
Later for that baby, light years later.

todski28 said:

I knew what you were alluding to not ever something I did but knew a few people that did it.

Click to expand...

I hope that means my context worked even if you did not know horse=heroin.

Angeline said:

I hope that means my context worked even if you did not know horse=heroin.

Click to expand...

well it is a versatile phrase heightened by the inversion of a cliché, the added depth of horse
=heroin is multi-layering at its finest!

Angeline said:

I hope that means my context worked even if you did not know horse=heroin.

Click to expand...

The context works beautifully, I think, because the breed of horse doesn't matter. The message is clear. To me it's more evocative than the old phrase "monkey on his back". Anyone who's ever had or has been close to someone with addiction has seen the way it rides them. Honestly, I think that phrase is going to stick with me.

Lyric_Calli said:

The context works beautifully, I think, because the breed of horse doesn't matter. The message is clear. To me it's more evocative than the old phrase "monkey on his back". Anyone who's ever had or has been close to someone with addiction has seen the way it rides them. Honestly, I think that phrase is going to stick with me.

Click to expand...

Thank you.

Sunset Eyes
They grow dark flickering less as the lids drop until they see my dreams.