For Gil Scott-Heron (I'm New Here Too)

I'm twenty-one years old
and you seem older than the hills
yet you're new here
and I feel ancient.
We're hard to get to know,
I agree, but I'm easy to forget,
it seems. I'm waiting
to write poems like you, Gil,
I'm waiting with the mist
on my mind, floating
up through my nostils
on the midnight wind
in the magic hour. I breathe
deep and clean until
my vision is shaky
and I can hardly stand.

Then it comes to me:
a thought floating out
of the night (which,
in the city, never darkens)
and I catch it
- my perception is acute,
even if my will faulters.
I draw the enigma
out of the orange sky
of smokestacks and gazometres,
overpasses and bus shelters.
I pick it from the corners
of billboards and from
under litter bins, between
a sleeping vagrant's teeth,
pull it through the blades
of a local green
and into the road
with the pigeons
and drunken stories
gathered up from
newspaper clippings.
- Her with her tits out,
with all the opinions
on me and you, everything,
better she tells it;
I wouldn't be taken
seriously, no second glance,
they may as well have
seen straight through me,
I do, anyway.

That thought I had,
pure as the gum
on my shoe: I picked
that up somewhere too.

I've gone pretty far
now; I have to make
it look intentional.
I did it on purpose,
I heard a poem
on a street corner
and made a turn,
blind as a farmboy
in the age of bluesman
who played slide guitar
and women like cards.

I'm here thinking this
in an old place -
it's a good thought
and I'm new to it.
I'm having fun
so I'll make
the rules up after
I've summed up
the scores, let's
see: one to me,
a handfull of revolutions,
a record deal and
fisherman's hat for you.
Let's start over;
I've got troubles
like everyone else,
no eagles on me,
no broken homes allowed,
we'll keep our voices
of reason, we can
always turn around.

Shooting from the Hip #2 (Blues Bar)

Man, I had the best time at 20

- I didn't care what anyone thought.
I asked, "You've changed since then?"
No; if I had, I'd've gone mental,
been thrown in hospital,
therapy and all that, I tell you
one thing: I fucking hate Woody Allen.

- Photograph by Sharp Noir, August 2010

Jazz, Bleedin' Kohl and a Howlin' Trumpet Blast

I thought it best not to pursue

the nature and causes of my illusions

when I discovered her in the mirror

behind the spirits in a stray cat jazz bar

- one where raucous chapters,

as if written by a feverish

film director, are captured

in the midnight hours by a single

wink of Kegman Kovacs,

crooked on his stool behind

his bandit register – her wide-eyed

glare was the perfect bromide

for this saloon thick with

the accents of moral dissolution:

she’d glimpsed some idyllic

future scene and the thought

remained flushed on her cheeks.

As the creator of this ideal

enlivened with eloquent details,

excerpts from classic fiction

(encouraging second guesses

from Pulitzer marksmen,

compelling in their list-making),

this glossy idol of bourgeois

abstraction feigning realism,

I choose a road that is straight

and narrow, I don’t even need

to determine the direction

I travel – I’m not going back;

She consistently suggests movement,

accompanied by a leitmotif:

the howling blast of a trumpet,

a complex enigma coded

by a triad of valves and the bitter

freedom of a private life

released from public silence.

All this time I accept

she is not next to me

but on stage, amber candent

bulbs warming her face.

The band is her gang:

a vicious platoon enlisted

as a tragic ballast drilled by a single

ambitious woman. An artist,

my essence in my creative capacity,

I hold no monopoly on integrity,

forgetting the monologue,

remembering only the speaker

from the imbecile chaos

of the boot-heel chipped oak floor.

We for the minute are her closest

friends like a chance collection

of driftwood, our scepticism

relinquished from our malt,

for our craving to believe

is desperate and deep.

We beg for reward

like the queue for a soup kitchen

and with just as much dignity.

She offers a flash of information

ripe with sexual suggestion,

the grand spectrum

from love to anger painted

with a vast collection

of colours. This sylph

singing for us, a siren on a cliff

ready to wreck our passing ship,

bewildered by the obscure guilt

of a burgeoning, heated affair,

defending herself

from token wisdom

with a sinister wit emanating

from behind the flash of her teeth

across a twelve-bar riff,

displaying the dagger

but masking its poisoned

flavour with the hilt

In a slow section she leaves a kiss

on the gauze of her microphone,

a blood red smear of lipstick

- she came to sing for them

but she dances for me, hanging

on behind her with my guitar

slung like a weapon.

Before we began she only gave

me a key and a couple clicks

for the rhythm.

My turn, I sharpen my razor wires

on each flinching hat,

a trembling ride, a nickel

wound shake to every kick

from the ground. There’s

alleyway justice in my screams:

a cut to the face if you stray

from your station, every time

I break rank I fear ambush at Cerriglio.

I dissect your mood for the crowd

and find a tune for the words

she couldn’t place but now

lie naked on my operating table.

Bleeding kohl down her cheeks

She smiles at me, having forgotten

the people listening unaware

of the true purpose of our plot.

Sharp Noir (Part V)

Rubix reported a lingering dread

- an idiosyncrasy of this particular

model, although a noble sentiment –

filed undisclosed natural causes;

we all know what that means.

They’ll gibbet Cassis as an example

for striking pins at this level:

life isn’t all beer and skittles

when dealing decks a fatality situation.

Alone in a hotel room,

a light whisper of a night-train

flutters just above the roof,

taps enough to imply the wind

and talk of the sea it’s from.

Picking at the nightmares between

reality and dream, Cassis, half-

sitting, may become a regular

footnote stranger, dissolving tears

in alcohol to avoid making a scene.

Havoc has been wrought

on his midbrain by alternating

sedatives and stimulants.

Rolling up the tag like

a little newspaper, reining in

a bucket from a mossed well,

Noir retrieves a teabag

from Cassis' mug.

We imagine the procession:

two files like heavy curtains

breezing each other

as the mourners wobble

in their short, slow steps;

Rubix smoking because,

like most actors, she knows

not what to do with her hands.

In our darkest reflections, of love and death,

our thoughts are potent with the Colonel.

Sharp Noir (Part II)

In the atrophic night-time,

a bluesman hides between

hotel rooms under an assumed name;

a friend once removed

of Harriet Tubman, “You’ll

be free or die.” He mists

a pane to meet the gaze

of a supermodel’s hound

on the street below:

two orgiastic flashbulbs

over a set of opal barbs.

The illustrious are ushered in

as the midnight wind

turns cooked to raw;

an excessive saccharine

of single line anathemas

punctuate the eluting, grain liquor

payola correspondence of

the cerberi at the door, who

with each glance convict

me of loitering.

I elbow-pin the Herald

as a prop only, roll and spark

to employ the hands,

looking down, counting old gum.

They Zippo lick me with scimitar

eyes well drilled from working

the derby Switchboard.

To a scherzo laced with code,

we infect each other with smiles,

impersonal benevolence: an old-style

injunction now just a passing

trick glimpsing teeth.

I’m standing ad hoc,

antonym to this vulgar mode

and so attract the intentions

of the heaped obscenities

- one enormous flexing nerve

counting Houblons; their effluvium

smacks of it, spectres quickly

make them for tea, pectin,

dunking pound cake.

They got cured fitting last

winter’s coats and turning

out the pockets.

One gorged Boa says,

“Boy – you Kasey Jones?”

A fork to his wit, I return,

“The name’s Romano, relax

- I’m only here for the Jazz.”

“Drag about your Dad,

we’ve got what’cha need.”

The waitress thinks

I’m Omar Sharif minus mustache.

Singularly original, a sufferer

from the delirium of higher intelligence,

The Noir Balladeer calmly sits,

plays Rhapsody in Blue

on a comb and tissue paper;

an outpatient from the

mild deviant ward: sectioned

for incendiary poetry,

she wrote songs on her padded walls,

bade the multitudes get a grip,

amongst the tempestuous noises

of sadism in this sparking jive nexus.

Grab a ticket at the desk.

Dr. Cassis, a hollow-eyed

technician from the plague era,

operates here, a conscript pedlar

of syrup and pills to vexed

kinship systems long overdue

extinction: a shamski lawyer

of medicine, errand runner

at the Chaumière de Dolmance.

There’s a sharpening of vision

in his waiting room:

we’re drowners thirsty to our

last breaths, even the reptile

gamblers adopt the stoicism

of wage earners. We discard

our beliefs at the ballot desk

like heavy, plumed helmets

too hot to wear in the midday sun.

Cassis murdered his guides

to be on the safe side,

carved runes of aptitude

in every cubicle until recruited

to the court of the Rubix Queen.

Her Switchboard mechanism

is perpetual, manned out of habit,

implies its necessity

and so creates pundits and enthusiasts,

equally fecundates the angst

of bitter jetsam to its ascribed kismet.

As one of the Rubix Queen’s courtiers,

lost in spontaneous furies,

surroundings seem incidental;

I stretch wide my arms

as if to perform some kind of dance

- perhaps among the antebellum pillars

of disgrace this desperation will fade.

Now, for the first time,

this protagonist can be spared

tedium and relish scandal in her

high-society supporting cast

of refugee artmen, never redden

again in shame when mentioning

the considered prurient in front

of those too desensitized

by talcum to welcome pleasures

stoked close to core desires,

forget axioms and tenets drummed

into her when she was young and Christian.

Some new lover will glide

into bed like a moonbeam

and I will accede entirely,

consumed by the immediate,

no thought to consequence

- tragedy rewards so the immortal

may die, a comedy is torn:

no audience laughs at the same joke

twice – my mind skips as of

a man bred in the wild,

every obstacle met in silence;

only with the caballi

will I produce ravings

of the most obscure kink.

In the thrill of lovers’ gambit

my watch trips backwards

and a casket of weakness

is exposed, drawing with it

an unctuous sickness,

irresolvable in my discomfort,

as when I thought it ruminative

for great heroes to die young;

one of mine said everybody does.

Some lives cuff out as

mis-quotations of popular phrase,

The Colonel’s was one to glimpse

the truer scansion of the iambic universe,

his history spelt out in short, dim

telegrams like the subject of myth.

always fearing to awaken and find

himself dead, he advised, “Kiss the girl

next to you, take upward flight,

forget the cold outside.”

To each charge I show

a new side to my prism,

a simple note in the margin

of a newspaper column.

maybe, like him, one night

idle love will conspire a razor’s

whisper around my throat.