Where We Got Our Cool: Poems

WHERE WE GOT OUR COOL

Jazz within the sky
…gold upon this purple swamp
…this bebop swank
of lullaby
where angels sell their poetry
for that treasure of a girl’s sweet thigh
thrust upward
on the dew and damp
where river bank
meets lullaby.

Oh God!…hot days have left us here
to broil until the seasons cool
that measure, with an Autumn tear
on the face of every fool
who syncopates his joy with grief

and air conditioned Winter bears
its icicles
upon a frozen leaf!

MEMORIES OF A SPRING EUTHANASIA

The jazz from horn and piano
flows and trembles
in those greedy notes of this ensemble
of wind and percussive
cussed chords in the grief of summer
glowing hot in late July

…a tear forms in my eye!
In my eye, this afternoon
bleeding art beyond a June
and whispered with a storm that day
when the dog of our dreams had gone away…

DOROTHY’S OTHER STORY

Among the highborn women of Oz
…frosty knickers
in November’s early Winter
on such a golden highway
marking frozen dreams
and frigid sex
in that fire breathing dragon’s ancient
stately cause
handed down
from Tyrannosaurus Rex

…and given to a clown
for making all of the ancient lizards laugh
…a strange low burning thing!,
this cool fire
barely touched by warm desire!
this icy wine carafe
held within the fire circle’s ring!

IN A BRIEF TIME MUCH LIKE INNOCENCE

Jazz of the hot sweet lullaby nectar
of summer and its wild flowers
bloomed in tumult
of yellow and red
upon the fields of the living.

A few August storms will shed rain
in the future weeks
…roll on into September
and then cool.

Puff and wind of dandelion brain
when the dry of Autumn arrives
to scatter scarecrow seed…oh senseless fool!