BayKitty

Even before I walked or talked,
my mother and I went dancing.
We took the bus, we braved the walk-
mama needed to go prancing.

Then up the metal fire case stair,
banging, toning like empty tanks,
to fall into the kitchen chair
near the hamburger patty steaks.

O these girls were really cookin’,
the walls were bumpin’, jumpin’ jive.
Believe it, that place was sumpin’
makin’ bubblin’ brown chow with chives.

Lipstick, ribbons, and bobby socks,
peddle pushers, shorts, plaid and blue,
all the music that really rocked,
perm pressed hair and saddle shoes too.

The girls would jump and fan their hands,
swing their butts, spin and shout out loud.
The sound pour’d out to all the lands
and drew an even bigger crowd.

My mom was first among them all,
wearing a grin, big as a sign.
She was swinging, she was singing
or wriggling on the floor supine.

Mama was a’pran, pran, prancing
she was the top, she was first class.
Mama was a’dan, dan, dancing,
without a doubt, having a blast.

Water, agile as water, bright and fair,
Weightless as sunlight but vital as Thor
O, I so want to be lighter than air

Or maybe silence, hiding who knows where,
Known only in absence and not before,
Water, agile as water, bright and fair

The world is nothing but facade and glare,
I choose the heavens, for I want to soar,
O, I so want to be lighter than air

To be like mist and pass without affair,
To choose for myself, when to man the oar,
Water, agile as water, bright and fair

I want to be a spirit free from care,
To fly without limit both yon and yore,
O, I so want to be lighter than air

I want to flow and dance with sprite-like flair,
To live my life free with time to adore
Water, agile as water, bright and fair,
O, I so want to be lighter than air

Kids with match heads, rubber bands, bubble gum and sling shots bring down a jet liner
We play together, drink together, make love to one another

And we remain innocent in spite of our killing,
How can we keep killing each other?
Why do innocents have to die?

Faith, religion, belief still and numb our minds
Forestall thought, and the killing goes on.

A moth
beating the glass,
sad but constant poet,
starv’d for light, longing for freedom,
can’t stop.

The day is a pantomime, a puppet show,
posturing, false smiles and words with no meaning.
Please, let us crawl beneath the covers of the night
where we can love, hate, hurt and sing.

We do not live here in perfection,
our circles are square not round,
these sins are our lives, our loves, our futures,
our sweethearts, our parents and children.

The Princess Hotel

The Princess Hotel, the biggest hotel around.
I looked up at the grand sign high over the parking lot,
admiring her, expecting to smile and to think, as I always did,
“it is as it always was.”

But it was not as it always was, it seemed smaller, sadder and
I realized it had probably never been as it always was.
Each day passed with change, the birds’ nests abandoned and dried in the trees,
the squirrel and that cat, the weather, the sun that baked,
The rain that soaked and eroded and would eventually take the building,
and in this life of coming and going, the people that came and went.

How long did I have to live at The Princess Hotel before I would realize
how long I had lived at The Princess Hotel?

In my early days, the Princess Hotel meant high rise success with spas and salons,
my middle days, it was merely an occasional stop in a busy life that would never quit,
and my later days, it meant refuge and a life by myself.
But until today, I had not noticed this coming and going of change.

My life was a book of poems, each word.
Days, people, loved ones arrayed like pages I was given to read
but in my coming and going, I only skimmed
the words shielded by half closed eyes anxious to know the end
before I had even begun.

Now, I try to recall these things, the words, the days, the people that
my eyes touched so briefly, but they are all gone.
How was it I expected them all to live on,
grow and color and blossom,
spread around me and warm me?

In my coming and going, they have all disappeared.

I wake with your eyes, your voice, your scent deep in my lungs;
the pleasure, pain and warmth of our union still whole…
the exquisite memory of your surrender.

Then, In the corner, corner of my eye I see
you blink flash of light and
a memory of something that occurred in another universe
slideshow machine cog clean detent

picture remains, you do not.
And once again, I am longing
for your, for your scent.

The calendar and my life,
one set, one spinning.

The rain comes late in the day,
Kissing the sidewalk and combing the lawns,
Pattering at my windows and doors.
In my room, I sit

On my bed to smell
The air, and listen to the
Gentle footfalls of rain
As elfin feet trip on my roof,

Tipple down the tin gutter
Rattle in the old pipes, drum in the barrels, and
Drop by drop purl in a pool outside my window.
This is remarkable music!

I gather my old Les Paul to my lap and let my fingers
Race with the rain as it sprints through the gutters to the many accidental
Flowers outside my home. I fly through my own rain soaked dream of leaves and
Leprechauns marking each step as soft elfin shoes race up and down the stairs of my home.

What a ride, what a thrill, to slide the bannister all the way down to the door!
The rain song quickens, my foot keeps up the pace and
I answer each ringing drop and ripple with strains from my guitar.
And I look to see, yes, I see the elves are getting up to dance,

Bright and rowdy proud, they are,
Getting up to dance to this music!

Somehow, my fingers catch hold of a single note,
It quavers in my hands, a small flame,
Then bounds into the night,
A great bird.

Do you hear that sound?

And there,
There I stand with my guitar, flat-footed and thunderstruck in paradise.

The heavens unlock, break open and
The rays of a greater sun shine into the night.

O, do you hear that sound?

A sound as beautiful and profane as day and night,
God and the very angels,
I die in that sound,
I am reborn in that sound.

I am the sun, the plain,
The unfathomable continuity,
I am.