You know what's wrong with that boy, Maude?
He got no jazz!

Sure he does, Harry.
I seen the records in boxes in his room.

Them boxes got dust ,
and they ain't no jazz anyhow ...

no Charlie Mingus, his fists
keeping time on other people's faces

no Charlie Parker, his horn
traded for smack before a gig in New York.

Only pale-faced intellectuals haunting the hallways
of creativity - imposing reason
upon the primal urge of spontaneous composition ;

He talked at length about seasons
but understod them not -

They gave him only impressions - like a swan
breaking the flat-calm of a lake beneath the moonlight
in a tepid winter

He felt moved by the cyclical death of both beauty and youth,
but remained unconvinced that it mattered much
in the seduction of whiskey-bitches: branded and blind-sided,
but left - not entirely - unloved.

how do we find
in the eyes of another
the validation sought
thru our own misgivings

what then when
what was given
takes more
than was allowed

do the weeping eyes
in the puddle before them
understand this poem

or are they writing
one of their own

such lines
with difficulty
are drawn
yet must be
nonetheless

howling vespers
of intuition
are not ironies
but truths
not entirely
indecipherable , only
riddled with paradox
in discord with reason

only the Mingus horns
illustrate these forlorn longings
in strokes of genius

a perfect poem
without the awkwardness
of words

the seventh lapse: context

eden doth without timber could
never bring paradise unto mine eyes.

eden does what the woods must
never do and who ever has time to test
the senses properly in this pretend?

so that branch- it bends- and whistles- in tight splinters
the end of the breeze and the salt of the earth made
the apostles sneeze and in the peanut gallery
the spirit jeers the very idea that any end did ethics ever portend.

to fall from time
to time
is proper so long
as the eyelids find the skies
in the light's absence;

so long
as one can nap in blue height
and perish in dark betweens
then the contrary accomplishes
the contrary and sleep comes
regardless of words, forms
or...