fictive beat

W/O/M/A/N
gone into abstraction
gitane smoke before the rain,
cello case velvet interior
soft and firm

W/O/M/A/N
breasts and silk once seen on canvas
could not concede to his kisses
or arch of bow
he had to wander

W/O/M/A/N
no more companion
than those strings he manipulated
with fingers callused,
she will not tremor

W/O/M/A/N
as absent as the background
waiting for a taxi,
rain effective conduit
to her misery,
he sheltered the cello
with umbrella
heading to a jazz club

W/O/M/A/N
is the beat
is the tender thrum,
a cello’s true heart
and poets calling,
absinthe and kisses
parted stocking thighs
he had found another
W/O/M/A/N

Musician in the Rain by Robert Doisneau

 

 

Joseph Ceravolo – Street Wise Romantic

The streets are empty and still,
between the red time,
then start again.
Trucks bouncing by,
cars to work, work.
The farms are disappearing as I noticed
years ago along this old route.
Now the farms lie beneath
hotels, office complexes whose beauty
is beyond the senses
in some economic realm fortified
by the delusions of power and inequity.
But the farms are lying beneath
and large poisonous plants
fusing the electrical circuits beneath.
No there’s no death to evil,
it rises again, now in war, now in bucks
now in land, now in power,
it rises up forever until the end,
when the light may intercede and remain.
Seek refuge from the fantasy
into one other fantasy.
We see violence done on subways on streets
but we don’t see violence done
in a new class system or economic twist.
Does it murder just as well?
Nothing can be done.
It will go on and on
until the intercessions of the sun.
Everything else has failed, and will,
but the innocence of youth
and the momentum of dawn.

 

 

guitar ambulance

up in the air

heart blighted by wings,

each note picked

sends shudders,

listening absorbing

finding notes,

while putting pen to paper,

lyrics at once

strange formed on white,

in his mind a pattern

of mismatch shapes

clumped together

ill fitting,

the sound became jagged,

heart swooped and dived

plunging to icy ocean,

she had not been at

the forefront of his mind,

hidden at the back

yet now needed to write

about her,

wrap her in lyrics

tatooing her flesh in words

that had meaning,

thumb and fingers

move over strings,

a  stranger pain appeared

no respite

allegro

breath quotations

tear at corner of eye

string snapped

lurched into a silence

that now could not be filled