A few friends say that this may be my best poem to date…so…if you like my stuff, lemme know what you think.

Blues Bars

John Coltrane’s five-cent-filthy
love-makin’ machinery
isn’t playin to salty tears

Just words like “thanks” cut smoke
like skin with thick ticks
between the rumbles
of optimistic hand gestures like
the finger
&
the fist

I cry
I slampap
I hum the blues
but, I don’t stroke my black cat
while I sit beside the open window
as saccharin summer night-rain
drips off the roofing outside
into sacrilegious puddles of beer
and pot residue.

no no

I listen.

I hear.

I COMMIT TO MEMORY
the rumbles of the skin-skin relation
to to to to
the beat
of some kinda blue
to to to to
the beat
of banana pancakes
and locomotion

to to to to
the beat of our gratitude for the capricious censors
of love
of a love supreme
of a love supreme

See, since you spoke
to me
I’ve lived.
Grinned.
Given.
Taken
to the theory that it’s been moonstruck
this time
and I gotta play it all
with two God-given bullets
and
two aces in pocket
with eights and tens on the flop

And now
it's time
time
time
to throw it, hope.
to throw it, hope.
to throw it, hope
to shoot it.
Gin.
And then
hope for her to come to her senses
about
love
about
lovvvvveeeeee
about
a love supreme

And hope for her to make her way to me
through the steam of a fogless soup
of television-channel-during-
commercial-break
uncertainty
through light-it-on-the-stove-
or-go-cigaretteless
un certain ty
through take-its-antidote or
die-by-its-poison
un certain ty
uncertainty?
It’s the luxury
of the brass trumpet.

But then, I…
I guess that makes me…

I guess that
imma btnck
I guess imma bastard
but still
the feelin's fine-fun
and fine-fun says
Come!

Come!

Come!

CHARLIE PARKER, come, and thump those
empty-ass blues on mahogany barcountertops
and push out your cigarette-ash blues on pictures of important politicians
and powerful lawyers
and ungrateful women

Come and push your blues
and shake my brainstem to say
“Those ambulance-chasin squares
still gettin paid those mag-ni-fa-cent pennies
like we’re throwin copper into
the fuckin wells-of-justice

We clones,
We clones
of queen bee businesslady's bitchin at their impotent boyfriends
who can’t satisfy their natural needs
their starving, dirty coots
their unshaved groundbeef monuments
to the greenback
to the five-spot
to the g-spot
to the sweet-spot
of the drum pulse
the tip tap tip
drum pulse
the last call
drum pulse.”

And for some reason
I feel like starting a fire.

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