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.