Lumbar ladies stroll by as the night sedans plunder the ho-dad hostels.
Looking to find nothing except another dozing cigarette beyond the cadenzas.
Another hot afternoon in suburbia with the repeated barkings of a distant dog.
Billy boy in his red asphalt-eating machine turns the dial to San Bernardino.
There is cool music bobbing in the hot accepting winds, south of Dragons Head.
In smoggy Corona, the dizzy Volkswagens travel in circles like demented dogs.
Billy boy guns the engine as he and the Mexican chick cruise in a ’67 beetle.
They pass the Chuck Wagon, as Slim Harpo melts the sun with Little Liza Jane.
Traffic signals, and the elderberry trees, pretend to dance to the muted cadences.
The hot afternoon winds play their own love-games as Billy boy comes to a stop.
Brown-eyed señorita with long hair flowing tells Billy boy to turn up the sound.
‘Music is life,’ she says, as the red asphalt-eating machine turns left at 6th Street.
Lumbar ladies stroll by now as the night sedans receive the night’s embrace.
At City Park, Billy and his latin lady sleep soundly in the cottonwood darkness.
Categories:
cadenzas, car, memory,
Form: Free verse
Blue Stone
Sagittarius piano fingers waltzing splendidly upon my laptop.
I can hear your nervous ticking heart clapping and tapping—
Collapsing there— as the meat philosophers send their brocades—
You never told me your name— whether real or frequently imagined—
As you came through my back door with nyloned legs shaking,
Your virgin-scented pearls shining inside my blue-eyed machinations,
Your curious feeders seeking certain electric favors with lip gloves.
Now you give your blue stone to me as one would gift a rich beggar,
To regale the climes with thousand island cadenzas and madrigals.
Sagittarius piano fingers dancing like salad fire upon my laptop.
Categories:
cadenzas, lost love,
Form: Free verse
The cellar is his bleak repose,
in concert with the cockroaches and flies;
there he wipes his runny nose,
toils the day long, sunshine tries,
insinuates through rough and crumbled boards.
Lessons can't assuage his conflicts,
the bottom of the pile, his heritage affords
no more, the atmosphere restricts
his breath. It leans against the wall,
a tarnished, dusty saxophone,
a measure of the time when he stood tall,
cadenzas blown with free and strident tone.
Author Notes
...inspired by 'Black Tambourine' by Hart Crane.
*********
Black Tambourine
The interest of a black man in a cellar
mark tardy judgment on the world's closed door.
Gnats toss in the shadow of a bottle,
and a roach spans a crevice in the floor.
Aesop, driven to pondering, found
heaven with the tortoise and the hare;
fox brush and sow ear top his grave
and mingling incantations on the air.
The black man, forlorn in the cellar,
wanders in some mid-kingdom, dark, that lies,
between his tambourine, stuck on the wall,
and, in Africa, a carcass quick with flies.
Categories:
cadenzas, music,
Form: Quatrain
The cellar is his bleak repose,
in concert with the cockroaches and flies,
it's here he wipes his runny nose,
toils the day long, sunshine tries,
insinuates through rough and crumbled boards.
The colour of his skin constricts,
the bottom of the pile, his heritage affords
no more, the atmosphere restricts
his breath. It leans against the wall,
his tarnished, dusty saxophone,
a measure of the time when he stood tall,
cadenzas, and his free and strident tone.
Categories:
cadenzas, dedication, writing,
Form: Quatrain
The cellar is his bleak repose,
in concert with the cockroaches and flies,
it's here he wipes his runny nose,
toils the day long, sunshine tries,
insinuates through rough and crumbled boards.
The colour of his skin constricts,
the bottom of the pile, his heritage affords
no more, the atmosphere restricts
his breath. It leans against the wall,
his tarnished, dusty saxophone,
a measure of the time when he stood tall,
cadenzas, and his free and strident tone.
(Note: written as if in the 1940's)
Categories:
cadenzas, tribute,
Form: Quatrain
...inspired by 'Black Tambourine' by Hart Crane
**********
The cellar is his bleak repose,
in concert with the cockroaches and flies;
there he wipes his runny nose,
toils the day long, sunshine tries,
insinuates through rough and crumbled boards.
Lessons can't assuage his conflicts,
the bottom of the pile, his heritage affords
no more, the atmosphere restricts
his breath. It leans against the wall,
his tarnished, dusty saxophone,
a measure of the time when he stood tall,
cadenzas blown with free and strident tone.
Categories:
cadenzas, tribute, writing,
Form: Quatrain
...inspired by 'Black Tambourine' by Hart Crane
The cellar is his bleak repose,
in concert with the cockroaches and flies;
there he wipes his runny nose,
toils the day long, sunshine tries,
insinuates through rough and crumbled boards.
Lessons can't assuage his conflicts,
the bottom of the pile, his heritage affords
no more, the atmosphere restricts
his breath. It leans against the wall,
his tarnished, dusty saxophone,
a measure of the time when he stood tall,
cadenzas blown with free and strident tone.
Categories:
cadenzas, on writing and words,
Form: Quatrain
The cellar is his bleak repose,
in concert with the cockroaches and flies,
it's here he wipes his runny nose,
toils the day long, sunshine tries,
insinuates through rough and crumbled boards.
The colour of his skin constricts,
the bottom of the pile, his heritage affords
no more, the atmosphere restricts
his breath. It leans against the wall,
his tarnished, dusty saxophone,
a measure of the time when he stood tall,
cadenzas, and his free and strident tone.
(Note: written as if in the 1940's)
Categories:
cadenzas, black-african amer
Form: Verse