Brahms
I'll meet you outside Symphony Hall
Where the violins play
Where a prodigy touches white keys
Where a conductor dances batons as sharp as needles
Where silver haired men in bespoke suits carry front row tickets and lead the hands of mink draped women in strapless dresses
Where they huddle, then move through open oak doors nearly as old as the day Mozart slumped into a pauper's grave
I'll meet you outside Symphony Hall
But in the hours past the evening performance
When the paupers come out of their graves
I'll meet you by the musicians' entrance
I got your call
You're a junkie now,
Since Julliard, when they said you were the next Stern
When you raised the soul of Brahms with your violin
When you stuck pathway needles of melted white junk into your veins
I'll meet you outside Symphony Hall, again
This time is different, again
When you'll give up the junk, again
Get off the streets
Start to play once more
You just need one more fix, you need money and sugared sweets
I'll meet you by the musicians' entrance
And give you the money, give away the strung out sweets and listen to your beggared story
Because, why?
Because I hear the crying souls of Brahms and Stern in your last, dying voice, again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oykarLuFoS8

It Happened 
When you left me, I broke.
I shattered like brittle old glass--
Breaking on a hard wood floor
Shards cutting the bottom of my naked feet,
Not too deep,
Just little streaks of a man's blood,
Alone I sat on my saggy powder blue couch with old whiskey stains
I twisted my foot sideways on my knee and took tweezers and pulled out the broken glass
Small tears rolled down my cheeks, and rested on my bottom lip and tasted like salty whiskey stains
I called my friend Eddy and told him another girl left me
He asked if brittle glass broke on a hard wood floor and if its shards bloodied my naked feet.
I said, Yeah
He said: I hate when that happens

Rock 'n' Roll Star
Once I was a rock 'n' roll star
With a blazin' guitar,
Lit by pulsing lights and a smokey stage
Blonde girls, Birds with flyin' wings
Risin' to hear me sing, to touch and feel my strings
Once I was a rock 'n' roll star
But only in an old boy's dreams

Now I have been reborn to jazz
The grace of Coltrane
The Spirit of Charlie Bird
The soulfulness of Miles
I am a Good Man now,
I embrace the beauty of jazz when I listen to its reverent sound
But when I sleep, I still dream I was a boy,
...and command every time...
Oh Jazz Man Masekala!! Play your South African Trumpet like a rock 'n' roll star. With my electric guitar we play loud to Byrds with flyin' wings!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMoop0rn780

Ghost Warriors
A young boy looked through the frost of a winter window. He saw his father dressed in thick wool clothes bring down an ancient ax to split frozen logs.  The father put the chopped wood  in a large canvas bag.  He hoisted the bag over his powerful right shoulder as he made his way through the snow back to the farm house.

The young son waited and felt proud and secure as he opened the door for his father. The boy felt the cold wind and heard the laughter of nervous work horses from the stable. With his small, strong hands he helped guide the bag of logs to the wooden floor and dragged them to the fire place. He placed a couple of logs into a fire. They steamed and burned poorly.

His mother stood over him and spoke with kindness. “We have enough wood for a fire for tonight. You must sleep. Tomorrow we must travel far.”

The boy nodded. He overheard his parents speak of the same dream they had the night before. The same dream that villagers and settlers across their country land had: of deadly ghost warriors arisen from the past…and of the villagers' ancestors, without reason or mercy, savaged and slaughtered. The old. Children in their slumber. Women crying hopelessly for life. The warriors were returning—the dream foretold. To slaughter the descendant settlers of this land.

Were the horses strong enough for the journey? The mother asked the father. He said they were, if the road to the forest was not too long. They would join the caravan. They would settle and fortify behind the tall trees and kill the ghost warriors with axes and sharp tools. The mother began to weep.

The young boy went to his room. He stood atop his bed and pretended to swing his arms as if he held an ancient ax. By morning he believed he would be strong like his father and would fight the ghost warriors behind the same tall trees.

A Thousand Monkeys
A man stepped into another cold morning
Human fog glistened 
Human skin turned as red as blood
A woolen cap was pulled over his ears
Melton gloves covered his hands
He looked up and down the street and saw no one,
But he heard the sound of footsteps made louder by the slowing molecules of the cold
He heard more steps, like an army, but saw no faces, no human forms
For a moment he felt fear, but that passed with the gust of wind that sang like an icy whistle
Then he heard more frozen steps…louder and louder…but still no human forms
He heard the cries of screaming death, of gunfire
Then a thousand clouds of human steam rose up past the street lights and ascended into the disappearing night sky
The man pulled off his cap
He pulled off his gloves
He cupped his ears and then held his eyes, then covered his mouth like Nikko snow monkeys
That night he sat in a steamy bath and feared he saw evil but could not speak its name

The Wind
From the breath of an autumn wind, groundless leaves rustled along a dark street. They raced past my feet and settled briefly along shallow gutters before being transported by a quick gust. The sound of movement was musical-- like the crash of waves along a rocky shore or the snapping of thick ice atop an empty lake.  I tried to sing along, but the same wind that moved the leaves filled my voice and silenced me. I tried to walk, but the same wind held me back. I tried to think anew, to believe again, but I was frozen in time.

I waited and waited, alone under the moonless sky, with nothing but abandoned homes along the emptied street. In weeks the old tar would be covered in a snow settled for the season-- melted only by a spring sun.

Sometimes, during the depth of a frozen night I would trundle through the street’s snowy drifts and ask for the appearance of a warming sun. But my feet would get cold and my skin would sting and I would take to an abandoned home and make a fire to become warm.

Those days were in the months to come. On this night I felt as groundless as the leaves, as powerful as an autumn wind. And for the first time I felt content that old tar would be my eternal home.

The Return

I

Zigman Zibanski rented a single room occupancy above the One Lucky. It was 2am when he heard the barkeep Beer Mugs Moran yell Last Call!

Zigman couldn’t afford to drink at the bar, even at its bucket of blood prices. So as he did most nights he drank cheap booze out of a small bottle as he sat at the edge of his bed. He let the half full bottle slip from his tipsy hand onto a stained floor of old piss and dried whiskey.

He drew on his cigarette as he watched late night TV. He blew a circle of smoke like a diamond ring. A young, British starlet laughed at the talk show host’s Hollywood jokes. His old Polish voice said: “You marry me, no!”

But the commercial came on, and she was gone into his lost forever world of sadness and make believe. The aging Pole cried. He wept through the flickering light of the television. Through the smoke of acrid cigarettes. Through the last of sounds of the bar beneath him as he heard Beer Mugs lock the front door and sweep around the disorder of old chairs.

Zigman dropped his cigarette onto a puddle of booze where it fizzled and extinguished in the old carpet. He wiped his tears and lay back in his bed. He hoped to hear her voice. But it did not return. A blanket of darkness swept over him as he slipped into the blackness of a drunken, dreamless sleep. The commercial was over.

The Hollywood host had made a last joke about lonely old men in single rooms who dream of English girls. But Zigman did not hear.

II

I am not the man who sleeps dreamless and alone, losing to the blackness of his dying mind. I am not the light of the sun that brings back life. I am not the refection of light under a midnight moon that brings wonder. I am not the afterglow that draws a dead soul to his heaven.  I am only that crack of light who illuminates the dark edges of death.  And together with the last breath of a dying man, I too will shine no more.

III

Zigman Zibanski's eyes fought against the first light that streaked through the window of his single room occupancy. Last night he was too drunk to close the curtains. This morning his narrowed pupils saw white spots and his head hurt more than usual. He was relieved. He was alive, and he knew that someday his drinking, his smoking, his deluded thoughts of a young lover would kill his old heart.

He could hear Beer Mugs Moran open the One Lucky. Soon the drinkers would arrive and the smoke from their cigarettes would waft into his room. He imagined no one could blow smoke circles like diamond rings as he could, but he couldn’t be sure.

The old Pole lifted himself from his bed and turned off the television that stayed on through the night. It was 10:00a.m. and the morning talk shows were over. The small refrigerator was as empty as his belly. And they were both as empty as the whiskey bottle that he had accidentally poured onto his stained floor.

The soup kitchen would open for lunch at noon. So Zigman stood hungry at his window and strained his eyes as he peered into the long light. He wondered if in his death the light dies too. He lay back in his bed and waited for another sleep’s darkness. And for noon, when his belly would be full.