[Abject Threads] a poem

 

Look firmly, fair, thoroughly

upon this organic matter, animal

nihilist, all knowing, alien, neither yours,

even never myself self-possessed,

if only to know the tale of a world

a-twirl, all the same rotting-

-today I’ll contemplate if so

I shall cut the thread measured yesterday,

spun just before,

die with youth and the vigor of

truth, bright burning blights and

abject failure still a-fight with might-

-aging knows no sense of awaiting a

welcome, tends to ignore every courtesy

nor gives not another face as to make possible

the existence of idiom-


-from Collection of poetry [Just a Body]

[The Harness] a travel poem

 

            So field the fields of dreams,

which may or may not be,

where home homes constant constants

constantly care-filled;

I care not those cares,

care less to carry

any other harness other than

the one on my back-

 

If I’ve carried it but a step,

a million more may follow

following the comings and goings

coming wonderfully bittersweet;

like the dust would rise above

the horizon it knows its sky nearly

almost every moment preceding

momentary rises-

not a step forward I fear

to break, not a step backwards

again will I take,

nor should more weight with

detoured tack,

to never again fall, with

this harness on my back

So do truly the miles I’ve walked

bare memories more plenty than

the living and breathing, too, truly,

I pulsate vibrant with aliveness away

than I’ve ever face to face

            Not even partially can apologies

renders obsolete what those who know

of me reckon, how never dull my eyes seem

dreary dreams every second content

If John Henry was born knowing he’ll die a

steel-driving man, with that,

this man, so appaulingly far from a child,

can admit he’ll die,

with harness on his back

There was childhood in Texas,

then there was childhood in Louisiana,

a bustling teen in Illinois,

so speak next of the lifting teen

back on the Texas plains

            Sabine Pass will whimper,

what Chicago winds temper,

how birth brings hostages into this

life with trauma,

to those condemned bridges

tattering this expansive psychodrama;

if I am to participate

I do so without slightest wait,

if I am to wake and remain awake,

sacrificing for the sake of

sacrificing will never be

necessary to take

            Pity me not,

mind not my callous feet that rot,

cry less regarding my being

ignore any beliefs of my fleeing

and if so happens,

I may never double back,

question not, whether I died

with harness on my back-

[Almost Blue] Chet Baker's Opioid Sonata

 It’s the stroke of midnight, during a stroke of madness; I’m thinking of Chet Baker’s unashamed, unabashed, undeniable freefall into self-destruction, his very own, designed, composed, directed by the rise of his birth, fall of his physical ability, theatrics thoroughly thinned as so even the deniably flawed may come as they are, feel no intent at attrition, attribute meager prayer, leave as they came; if only to be reassured by a fanciful deity they’ve no belief in, that those very flaws they possess will ensure natural selection would defy its very own process of elimination principle, just to spare the fool.

            Take the lighter to the base of the spoon, wait for the sizzle of the tar, draw in the cc’s needed after the ever-rising tolerance, slip the tourniquet over the brachial, expose the bulging channels in the antecubital space, brace ready, hold fast for the pinch of the needle’s near microscopic puncture, wait for the flash of blood, the indication, now the thumb commences to press the contents, the centuries-old known to man, inside, seconds lapse, just but a few, until euphoria breaks the silence with its impish liege of serotonin and dopamine, the tip of the lagging unfiltered Lucky Strike, weakly held between the lips is lit, trumpet is clasped in clammy palm; Chet Baker is again born.

            An Opioid Sonata is the continuation by an alternative means made a way of life refusing to be lived by any other means. And if by some means, some miraculous occurrence, as the chance of genetics within the human species should arise, Baker’s Sonata rises to that very occasion. Nothing can be mistaken; sadness is no longer a near but distant cousin to melancholia; bliss is estranged, rather shunned, from blessedness. Then and only then, is the canvas for one to paint their own destiny a possibility because all that holds the individual hostage, are those self-impositions that render themselves uncompromising when they’ve overheard the pillow-talk in the late nights, when the orgasm has been weakened to be conquered by the timeless spasm where electrical currents can no longer detect the static of dwindling of neurons.

[Flamenco Sketches] 9 Minutes of Discourtesy from the late Miles Davis

 



       

            “So What!”

What is this life without worry, without any anxious moments to motivate? Take time to listen to what Miles Davis attempts to revert, not from his discourteous manner what made him so infamous as a man, but from this life, with a musical intelligence that made him so illustrious as an artist.

            The man who knows himself and knows nothing more of this world has too all and every right of claim to know just as much of the world outside of himself as a seasoned traveler who has trekked decades across the globe. And this man, this self-proclaimed aficionado of any and everything, carries not a single second of hesitation to join those ranks of the very few and as every educator who has the right to educate, he has earned such right by a consistency that gave no leniency, never a sabbatical, from learning. If a book is near, it is reared in days, consumed; if there so happen to be music, as Davis himself spills in a “kind of blue” fashion, rarely does he respond to this mood but creates, then shortly after, sets its pace, then, and only then, can he find the cadence in which his steps should follow.

            Call upon the bookkeeper, the one so entangled in the leather-bound covers shelved, adorned in their dark corner, let him then call the astronaut, become the origin of the rumor mill, so that man who has gone out of this atmosphere no longer has to despise his haunting incapability to have never step food upon another planet; surely, he’ll confide next to the woman who shares his bed, the one who has lost her identity when she gave birth to an offspring who has become all she attends, now, she can smile, not due to schadenfreude, but to the knowledge that now she’s alone.