Learning to Speak (without a saxophone in my hand)

VOLUME 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LEARNING TO SPEAK

The Planets Are Within (Paracelsus)

There is a very thin line between lazy and useless.

Poets have been called both, but I resent lazy.

Like most, I'm busy, juggling aspirin, coffee, vitamins,

gotta have this, gotta have that, honey, I need a kiss.

My energies need an outlet, some Ω3 fish oil,

and a way to connect the known to the unknown.

I hold out an empty bowl, now, drink the moldy potion,

see Persephone lower her torch. I self transcend.

I'm a jazz musician learning to speak for the first time

without a saxophone in my hand, without rambling

thru the alphabet of notes and male aggression,

flying without a paper weight, fuzzy headed, out of breath.

A painter sometimes, I just erupt with images

of things that correspond to a universe of other things,

that melt away down a rainbow cave unidentified

an eternal alien, possessed, gratefully miserable.

My head feels like a bright corona, numinous and backlit,

I'm a walking folk song until the sky suddenly darkens,

and I draw the blank stare of a creature seized

by vague abstractions, overwhelmed by a new identity.

I come back weird, a sleeping sailor on an air mattress,

overdue, skirting the dream-fugue boundary of little things

that make up the spectrum of difference between ocean

and the cradle of water inside the infinite lotus bloom.

I'm a five organ transplant drowning in blue morphine,

tending a mindless contest in the breath of an afternoon

of drooling guitars and stale saxophone brass, where spring

is only a brief green passage between record winters.

Bless him whose spirit is about to die, who gathers wings

and enters the tunnel where Demeter raises her torch

and he does not hesitate to imitate his heroes, his gods,

willing to end without question, hypochondria, depression.

Pass the pine cones, wait in line to receive the mysteries.

Thirst for an awesome view of the world that created itself.