the Pope as Jazz Saxaphonist.

When I saw Roland Kirk, still blind, before he died,

then Archie Shepp before his teeth came free of jaw

and embouchure

floating on a string, into some

crazy space of much magnificence. I pretended

poems had well up in his eyes

like some man, old and Argentinean,

who places his palm against the cheek of a brown

girl in a room full of statues,

iron crosses and energy. I smile as if I've seen magic

for the first time. Pity and beauty being dragged before me

like a man blowing multiple instruments.

I told this story to my psychotherapist who smokes cigarettes

and breathes heavy while hovering over my dreams

as his pectoral cross of the crucified Jesus dangles down

his belly like a dick that no longer works. Told him how sweet

sound, like fringed white fascia and pale succhetto,

was as pure as  bebop  could ever get.

Reviews

[emmajoy]

You create where others try, ' I told this story to my psychotherapist who smokes cigarettes .. and breathes heavy while hovering over my dreams.. '

Tis as near a poet can get to painting a performing triptych: seeing a figure between dark outlines and pale grey shadows led by the circumference of the whole. Which is the overture, Music or Mass?.

[h d e rushin]

great words from a great writer...thank you my friend...dana

[emmajoy]

Your words touched..

[W.k.kortas]

I agree with the wise ms. emmajoy; these are not natural, or at least easily apparent, comparisons to be making, saxophonists and psychotherapists and pontiffs not things that necessarily work together, but you have here (and everywhere, for that matter) found the threads which bind them (and us) all together.

[h d e rushin]

so much about comparisons we take for granted (in poetry) wk. The trick is to make those
comparisons approach each other in some homogeneous mixture...interdiffusion I think it is called. Thanks again for stopping by to visit me....dana