Passing For Blue
--- For D.N.K.
“The blues is a black man’s music, and whites diminish it at best or steal it at worst”
– Ralph J. Gleason – Jazz Critic
My best friend
died last year,
in a 24-hour store --
shot by some shaky kid
when he walked
in on a 32 dollar holdup
to buy a pack
of Marlboros.
He was a blues-man.
He knew more
about Robert Johnson
and Tampa Red
than Amiri Baraka -- or Leroi Jones.
He used up most of his time,
and all of his options
preaching to the blue
multitudes, jammed
into the cheap neon
playgrounds, along
the whore-haunted streets
of late-night Memphis;
where no accusing eyes
ever questioned the
heartfelt disguise, he wore
like an invisible man.
And on the day
his ashes were
tossed toward
the rain-polished sky,
there were no
sad fans weeping,
no sanctifying poetry
from Langston Hughes,
just a southbound
breeze to ride on,
for the white boy
passing for blue.
Exit
“Even death will have exits like a dark theatre”
--- Charles Bukowski
I.
Too spent to calculate
the sum of scattered thoughts,
he sits bent forward,
hands folded in front of his face,
like that Sunday school painting
of Jesus in the garden,
praying for a way out.
He’ll spend the little time left
holding to slippery half-truths,
trying to convince himself
that he did what he had to do.
Pushed to the edge,
he lost all balance & stumbled
into a hole so deep
there was no way to gauge the fall.
Suddenly, as if stunned
by his own desperation,
his body shudders & a short moan,
like the parting sound of hope,
escapes from some dark place
very near his soul.
Just to be moving,
he gets to his feet & walks
to the small cell window,
where he watches a thin cloud
slowly shroud the half-moon.
In his head,
he begins to gather
fractured images,
struggling to frame
the still distorted scene…
II.
…Standing just out of range
of the street lamp,
he eyes a cab as it crawls along
an otherwise deserted avenue.
His attention shifts
to a small, unlit house on the corner.
When he spots the beat-up blue Chevy,
that belongs to her new friend
still sitting in the driveway,
something close to a smile
plays along his face.
Every lousy little detail,
behind those cheap curtains,
burned, by time, into his brain:
every corner, every crack in the floor,
every angry scar on every faded wall,
every broken glass, & every broken promise.
Every meaningless minute spent
begging mercy for every wrong thing.
Feeling strangely numb,
his hand moves against
the cool metal of the .45
tucked inside his jacket pocket.
Somewhere, a lost dog howls…
Slowly, as if on cue,
he lets a spent cigarette
drop from his left hand,
steps from the curb,
& is taken,
like a wind-blown bird,
into the crazy night…
III.
…No last words
He lies flat on his back,
arms & legs strapped tight
to the contemporary cross.
Staring straight up
into an overhead light,
he fights hard to stay awake
as the fatal fix roars
like an express train
through his veins.
For the first time in weeks
things slow down
enough to allow
his brain to latch
onto a clear thought…
Still,
no answers,
only one
last question…
Jesus,
if you’re real,
& can look
through this
concrete & steel.
After having seen
what you’ve seen,
& knowing
what you know,
can you still
stand by
that altruistic suicide?
Heshu
---“ On October 12, 2002, Heshu Yones, a sixteen-year old Iraqi Kurd who was planning to run away from her family home in London had her throat cut by her father, because he believed she was dating a non-muslim and had become too westernized” --- from Harper’s Magazine
and when he had slaughtered
his wayward, western daughter,
the one he could not comprehend,
him crazy -- out of control,
like some blind and willful beast.
when his anger was spent,
and the silent room began
to whisper its accusations.
what then?
did he scream out her name?
did he bend to touch
her perfect face, and gaze
into staring, black eyes?
did his blood-stained fingers
trace the long, dark
waterfall of her hair
to where it flowed
into that cruel, red river
just below her throat?
did he now, in utter despair
of his own fatal vision,
turn the blade on himself
and write a fitting end to this
pathetic, one-act play?
or?
did he coldly
lay the knife
on the killing floor,
place a call,
and wait ______
Where Do They All Come From
“Then this morning I went to the bookstore and bought The Catcher in the Rye. I’m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil.”
– Mark David Chapman
He lies, face-up, on the floor
of a hotel room he can’t afford.
His eyes are closed. On his chest,
a closed paperback moves slowly up & down – marking time.
The plan is clear.
Everything he wants to say,
reduced to a
single blinding point.
A warning message to false prophets.
A Technicolor caution sign
to purveyors of empty noise,
& meaningless bullshit.
A .38 special delivery
from a real nowhere man,
to the used-up hero
who haunts Dakota halls,
& hides behind elegant walls,
that cannot save him.
Lost to himself, hopelessly slipping
into some half-assed parody…
He opens his eyes & checks his watch.
Almost time to rock & roll,
lock & load,
cross the street, & disappear
into the faceless
New York hum –
“All the lonely people,
where do they all come from?”
BackPage 68
“you better run through the jungle – don’t look back”
--- Creedence Clearwater Revival
Another troubled night falls.
The triple-canopy darkness
closes around me, like a body bag
being zipped slowly shut.
In the titanic darkness,
the jungle breathes, like a living thing,
& I sense the ghostly company
of things that roam late.
From the corner of my eye,
I catch glimpses of shifting shadows
that freeze in place whenever
I turn my head to stare.
Five months in-country, & still uneasy
with the weight of the rifle in my hands.
Still looking back toward old rules
that no longer hold, & old order
that has spilled over into chaos.
A strange storm, just before sundown,
seemed to bring some ancient evil
from the highlands. How long can my
angels shield me from the fangs
of this forever-hungry beast?
A trickle of sweat, finds a trail
down the center of my back.
My dexedrine-charged heart slams,
like a ten pound hammer, against my chest,
intruding upon the heavy silence.
How much more mad input,
before this heart is stopped
for good?
How many more
blinding-white days,
& bullet-torn nights
until I reach
the cold understanding
that the best part of me
already lies twisted & rotting
in the dense, tangled green.
the ward
"I'm a Vietnam veteran. I gave America my all, and the leaders of this government threw me and others away to rot in their VA hospitals…" – Ron Kovic
sometimes at night
after the last light
has been doused,
& the holy drugs
have rendered me
temporarily oblivious
to the pain,
& putrid
night-smells
of the ward,
i can feel
the void
that stretches
out from my body
in every direction;
360 degrees
of seclusion,
as dead
as a disconnected
phone.
& sometimes,
i reach blindly into
that coal-black
absence,
hoping
my fingers
will brush
against
something
i can hold onto.
maybe
a wayward angel,
who might
allow a little
unaccustomed mercy,
& lift me
above
these broken places;
back to the days
& faces,
i hadn’t even known
i’d loved.
