Ruffage for the Soul

Running through fields of barley
Bushels and baskets
Breakfast for days on end.

2 for One

I

I've spent time with fallen women. I've risen to their defence in times of need. I've kept musical time with jazz musicians from be bop to Coltrane to post modal flights of high trills in empty spaces. All this in finite shoes, and a Square Corner, too.

II

I spent most of my youth riding buses to avoid a reign of terror inside my head. Diseased, desperate, deleterious thoughts of a Godless demise in Naugahyde leather and the canned laughter of Tuna night fights. Somehow I lived around this reign of terror, until everyone I knew thought just like me. Now I ride trains with a relieved heart.

Petty

You don't mean nuttin' to me. Sweet young thing. You're like the zero calories in a diet coke. The puff in a puff pastry. The air in bubble wrap. You don't mean nuttin' to me. Sweet young thing. But can you give me my albums back? Thelonius Monk on the Riverside Label; so hard to find. No point in being petty about this. Is there? Sweet young thing.

Sallow

Barefoot runner. Flatfooted on bubbly tar, melted on street of steam and heat and pyres of human flesh; smoke rising to Hindu God. Mumbai Hot Docs, western film of human toil, vendors with Mumbai eyes...spotting, seeing: squalor's vengeful demise of leper's fallen line. Lights! Film! Action! Barefoot runner. Act the noble soul in rendered adornment of popcorn fingers--taste the sweet butter from faraway. The starving, empty bellied in worship of needless despair. Popcorn flesh embedded in credit card crowns. I see thee with Western eyes. Sympathy across seven sea. But understand I know you cartoon creature with Taj Mahal heart on sallow skin.

Radio Boy

Once I lived inside a radio. Youthful transmissions. WBZ free and clear. A.M. dial to Beatle Tunes, Stones, Norman Greenbaum Spirit in The Sky. Once I lived inside a radio. FM talk and jabber late into the night. Stories of politics and race, foreign wars. Hosts spoken to Boston boy with wild dreams of Red Sox diamonds on World Series ring. Sounds of songs, grooving riff to wished rebellion of time and place. Dial set, tuned as sixties rage. The Radio Boy, 13 year old awareness of life he lives. Plastic airwaves taken to summer joys. Friends, baseball. Then winter games on street hockey plain. Sticks like Orr. He scores on shallow net. Poses he does falsely of a time always to remain. Now disappeared are those Radio Days into a memory of space and place on Boston shore. AM gone. FM as youth is nevermore. Once I lived inside a radio. But now a radio lives inside of me.

Heart

2,000 words? Tell me how many paragraphs. Tell me how many periods. How many semi-colons stretched along an uneven page. Tell me about the stories, born and reborn. Ideas sent to the edge, to the awful margins of an airless demise. I think I'll disappear into a dreamless sleep. Awake to a new home, a new house, a new goal to write with a discerning heart.

Posture

Sometimes I'll slouch into a Square Corner . I'll stretch my spirit, spread my wings, touch my claws and toes. Blood and words pulsing through these elastic veins. Then I'll stand straight, move about with shoulders strong. But I do as I do, I slide back to the real world: slouched, my body hunched like an old dream.