Jazz Horn
Jazz Horn
Now put your left foot forward.
Next put your right foot ahead.
See how that works?
See how the workings of these two appendages
Facilitates the outcome
Of one continuous forward motion
To where you’re going … in this world?
Welcome, my friend,
To this deliciously dark dish of desperate cravings!
Look all around you as we walk this stalking street.
See all the dark places.
Where countless lost souls huddle in bare survival,
And share the hot knob over a weak fire.
I can hear a jazz horn, way off in the distance there.
It’s surely there, and it reassures me I’m still living, here.
Maybe some words by Langston Hughes might be nice right now.
Please, my friend, do me the honor.
Oh, I see. You don’t have your poetry anthology.
And it’s dark too.
Let us then visit the old pawnbroker
Mr. Tattoo Neck knows the price for our private fears.
Piss puddles and crushed beer cans.
And an old used tire hanging hopelessly
By the cracked front window.
I see the world is one inch closer to doom since last we talked.
May we rest in peace, my friend.
Any murders lately on the street?
I hear the blond dish in Shire Apartments has moved out.
Black sooty smashed gum and litter of coupons and girlie guides.
Only one killing this week, my friend.
The butcher from 27th street; the guy who never talked to anyone.
His bowling ball is in the window.
Life is hard. It knocks you on the head when you least expect it.
I hope I make it.
I don’t know if some ******* will come in here and shoot me in the face!
I live my whole freaking life scared!
It’s ridiculous that we all have to be hostages to these evil people.
The city grows darker at night.
I have noticed it because I live mostly with the night.
The night is my secret lover, and there is no other.
The city is as dark as nothing in the middle of nowhere.
Something bigger than a final sunset is needed.
You know what I mean, my friend?
Here, I will buy you that jazz horn there.
You can sweetly serenade me,
And lovely night naked,
As we make love here
In the calming mad darkness.
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