I ride with jazz. Miles of it.
I think about more greatness, chunks of revelation,
huge steerable icebergs, that I should turn back
and draw from half-digested novels.
Taken, tasted, passed, but masticated little
into wizened, inky spittle.

The blue horns
wamp a wam wamm da daaah across from
a man with his crazy cage
piled high; dirty truck of stained street
train survival. I am dumb
full of food.
But since childhood, when taste
bungled itself, I am not filled.
I had no hand in voids that his dirty crease
of bony face forgives.

The child vying to be grown
is sadder than the grown up
seeking lost moments, sadder than the sofa
and the flickering age
of boyhood television.

My thin walls can't mask sex
that I'm not having.
Love making is sworn to my destiny
by the all elusive beauty.
My helpless ideals
fend off sharp culture
teeth that gnash like brash
brass gates clanging shut on honest words.

I am too hot too often.
It brings memories of trepidation,
of one exalted fever, on a night in Toulouse;
after that I gave up
all that was not food,
to resolve within a new sense.
My nerves craved ice water nectar.
Snow on fire, like a running platter
splat of soppy espinaca
tasting sweet as back home pie
when you think you are fucking starving.

Stomachs and trains rumble without much notice
paid to either, inside city-
satisfied and lolling mouths. Agape the ape
who came so long
and cannot wear his proper body,
fighting for lost rhythms, aching to be seen.
How did we come to this jungle dancers?

The answer is in those books
I know I should have splayed and drained,
broken their spines without mercy, disregarded
the fear of what I have
to cure and swallow.