Verbawhores

Cut, snipped, parsed,
mercilessly pounded out of round,
a language abrupted, unadorned
a blunted force-

which can, true enough,
convey a cleansed idea or image
neatly shorn of fat
but often rendered fleshless too,
severed of spice and complex flavors.

Aligned are they in assanine,
anti-adjectival stance which often
Charlie cannot stomach, savor-

for given stage
and audience and music,
a choreographers cornucopia
of language lithe and readied,
choose they to reduce it
to a few brute moves
and clumsify the dance.

But humble Chuck wishes
not to deride or flout,
let's hope they all at least
had choice enough
to don dress or pants
and don't at wit's end end up
like poor Hem: a suicide
with all their brains blown out.

Enter Satchmo

The doors of pearl swung
soundless, wide-open,
seven silver cornets
through angelic embouchure
blew high, bright grief;
four portly cherubim stately
did counterpoint the melodious mourn
on four lugubrious, gold French horns-

Charlie's old, obsidian soul
found, at all, no relief.

No Doe

From Charlies arms hung
too soft hands that yearned
for harder ways of work-
occupied as they'd so long been
with the minute manipulations,
the quite tiny concentrations
that comprised a humanistic
kind of care which was his bloody job.

His hairy paws had suffered several
sport-related mashings, dislocations,
drunken bedroom trashings and,
for the wear, were not much worse-
nimble still enough to worry fretfully
over quirky samba-jazz chords
and scribble illegible, little read verse;
though cursed too were they
with remembrances
of wondrous, womanly geographies,
that so slow, roaming over joy of
loverly exploration now and anon.

"Those times," the sigh-stained
corny calendar remarked,
"Be long, long gone-
Despite burnt incense,
prayers and invocations."

This left him reeling;
starved and stark
his hunger felt he
on him like a rut-musk;
and, thus perfumed,
caused the roll of shoulders,
the cower, shuffle and slink,
infected his think-speak,
seemed to salt the very
brook at which he stooped to drink.

2nd Amendment Blues

It were a thing
to think about- and well;
though fully far
from easy grasp.

And all on irate elbows
leaning bewildered at the bar
murmured, opinionized and gasped
" Jesus, Mary and Joseph!! Hell!!... "

An armed, imploded ingrate
laid waste a couple/few dozen
still sprouting, yet flowered lives;
a fitful shyness alchemically altered
into premeditated murd'rous rage,
placed before us bleeding
as if on a fucking stage.

So, over shamrocks left
in the fine, thick foam
in his several stouts
unquiet Charlie chewed on if
in life and death danger clear,
(mind you, not mere doubt)
amid all the Fear-frantic noise,
he'd still have the stones, retain the poise
to strike a shark upon the snout.

A natural progression-
easy as I, IV V...

and Charlie, miffed,
obliterated yet still alive,
flattened by an amber fifth,
howls the blue note long and low...

then uncoordinated of muscle,
almost completely limp,
offers through his grizzled muzzle-

" Some pissed off wimp, I know,
could not have done it with a cudgel."

The Ninth Degree

Came she serpentine,
salacious something’s murmuring
through wine-purpled lips
into the echoing conch-whorls
which were his fearless ears.

Too soon, near-full swooned again
perceived he the sharp-edged
omnipresence of life's best jewels
pulsing in the improvised melody
whistling through his pursed and impish lips.

A gifting impulse bold and undeniable
appeared in his opened mind/heart/hands;
as history’d have it, this was deeply unreliable.

For hard she was
in all the wrong places,
best Mysteries kept occult
in the fierce facets
of the faces she thought
went unobserved.

Unnerved of this
new-cautious Charles
attempted, wincingly,
a gently wrought extrication
from this fast, false intimacy;
relentless lashed himself of nights;
prayed and fasted;
whispered weird-wrung,
apoplectic apologias and
sleep depraved ditties;
to sing or dance refused
the Muses being most unamused.

The Prayer of the Romantical Chump

Sun-sprig, light-stalk,
love's own lithe limb;

Fire-keeper and fury-quell,
milk-river purl,
curve-song complete;

Flower-font mellifluous, repository,
seed-bed waked and willing;

Wonder-guide, slaking freshet,
Grace's fine first taste
for every babe that was ever got;

Beacon in confused fogs,
in Winter sleet, sweet warmth
more marrow and less cloying
than all nutmegged, rummy nogs.

Fever-calm and spasm-stop
rests in your very fingers' tips
which pluck melodious that iron string,
smooth all knurls, unwind each knot.

Kiss Me K... Cathy?

Can catch-as-catch-can Charlie
communicate to Catherine
the efflorescent fact that,
bamboozled as any bee
among the blooms nodding
in sagacious silence
of dusk-born breezes,
wanders dreamily he,
steered ( though no lowing ruminant)
toward infinity and the sole,
un-lonely,Cause of Be?

Toward where the cup's unbranded,
more crude than crystal
and lifted, four handed,
by some two celebrants,
some unknown Us:
Anima and Animus.