Ahh, listen
to his gentle jazz,
this quiet bit 
of razzmatazz,
a classic string 
of notes in time, 
yet timeless, 
interspersed with rhyme,
like Coltrane
calling on the ‘phone
to tell you of 
his favorite things, 
or Bird’s bent bebop
when you’re all alone,
it echoes 52nd Street.

But it isn’t bebop.
It’s not the cool.
It’s not even 
the birth of
electric cool.
It’s a brand-new jesus
come to jazz,
with classic bits 
of razzmatazz,
and quiet strings
of notes in time,
interspersed with
timeless rhyme, 
like Coltrane
calling on the ‘phone,
or Bird’s bent bebop
when you’re all alone,
it echoes . . . 

52nd Street.
                        

There’s a cry where the window of sunrise
Meets the têar in the sky’s tissue seam
A faint echo of still-born laughter
Eloped from some delicate dream

The pigeon soot hands of my evening
The yolkless white flesh of your eyes
A stone lizard which stood in the garden
And now gasps in the sweat of our thighs

The blue flute I kept buried in the closet
Of your fear of its forbidden tune
Your lost paintings of unfabled fountains
All swim in a heavy perfume

Distilled from the musk of some meeting
Of these sheets upon which we are bled
No sweet scent of a meadow’s encounter
Masks this odor which hangs from our bed

As I grasp the high waist of your pitiless vase
We have filled with a cognac of flowerless stems
And we drink the moon’s glance of its bittersweet dance
Beneath cobblestone shadows of rags dressed as men

And swallow the tongues of our fathers
With their cries of cathedralless love
Tasting each tēar of our firefly years
We weave of them glistening gloves

And glide across marble floor memories
Before coming to rest hand in hand
There’s a face I will fasten for the lamplight
To your voice full of sadness and sand