words

~

Where have all your words gone,
Charles?
I used to
     Lie
     Awake,
     Keeping your light
     Shining
     Bright,
By the bedside, sitting here
But being there
With you
All at once:
     At the track
     Or the typer,
     With the bottle
     And the women,
          Drilling in,
          Dripping on
          Drinking up
     The essence
     Of whispers and whiskers
     Brushing against
     Their
     Fragile
     Skin…
I was there too,
Watching,
Waiting for you to say something rude like
     Shit or
     Piss or
     Fuck.
Spent,
The boy would re-surface,
One hand on the red,
Then onto the machine
Taking in the longwaves:
     Classical, yes;
     Jazz, maybe;
     But what about the blues, Buk?
Then it came, didn’t it?
The words would flow and rush and topple and twist to flow and spill the black onto white,
     First of Mother,
     But blame Father.
     Then onto childhood:
          Reading,
          Learning,
          Yearning to
          Borrow from others what was not given to you.
          Fighting
               Feelings
          Suffering.
And you spent your life doing the same,
Betting on the Muse.
          She would almost always be
          A different one,
          But one to pull you through
          Nevertheless.
You were a strong man,
And I loved
     Your beautiful times.
I only wish you could still be
     Here
To take me
     With you,
Through your mundane days
Which were like spectacular eternities
And music for the rest of us.

S*
2001.11.19

~

I wonder what is between us
That keeps us
Apart?
This thing,
The spin,
The scratch,
That time where it all goes
“Pop”:
Like a Kerouacian fairytale.

Driving down a corduroy road,
Weeds standing shoulder-high:
Machu Picchu,
Here we come.

The time,
The space,
The stars
   --Nothing but meteorites
     In a similar sky
     Between
     Spaces and
     Measures and
     Fields and
     Rocks
     Between
     The two;
But what of it,
And
What to do now?
One wonders about
The closed-eyed thoughts….
Indeed.

The rockets that fly
Between thoughts
And the images
Of
The
Mind,
Blasting away into infinity,
From the pavement
To the crystal
Ethereal
Truth.

What a life
I live.

S*
2001.11.18, 3 a.m.

~

no
they
are
not
that
clever
really

S*
20011112

~

I remember your breeze
It was the sound of your voice
     There it is again
Tickling the tips of my toes
Like an open window
In fall, behind closed blinds
Making them dance and duck
     And dash so delightfully so,
As the sun peeks in and out
Saying “I am here,”
“Come to me.”

S*
2001.11.08