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.

Tell Me Now

You’re only as good as your last work;
you're not sleeping until you’re laying in the dirt;
you’ll never love until you know what it’s worth;
you’ll only bleed if you cry out that you’re hurt;
tell me now, in all your days:
what have you learnt?


You’re going nowhere unless you know where you’ve been;
you’ll never win unless you know how to cheat;
you’ll win friends if you know the enemies you keep;
you’ve grown successful when you harvest jealousy;
tell me now, in all your days:
what do you believe?


You don’t need belief if you know the truth;
you can be sure of anything if you have the proof;
you’re only old if you never think anything new;
you’ll never set sail unless you’re one of the crew;
tell me now, in all your days:
what have you got to lose?


You tell me you ‘sleep, perchance to dream,’
– you can’t act unless you’re in the right scene;
you can’t hold up a candle without striking a match;
you can’t walk through her door if I’ve dropped the latch;
tell me now, in all your days:
have you ever shown your hand?

Nostalgia

There is a hazy time
when catharsis is therapeutic
but this self-indulgence
is bound to induce stagnation.
When a strong man,
one who is heroically individual,
is swallowed up by fictions
– precluded, altruistic jubilance
over the prize of mystic love
from a good woman, the belief
that, had the dice rolled differently,
he could have been saved
from himself, his consuming misery –
he is truly defeated
and nobody can help him.

Then again it is pleasant
to see the lymph rise
from an old wound
with the pump and vigour
of a youthful heart
too often thought lost.

Picking over our memories
is not time wasted licking
our sores. Reflecting
in the westbound waiting room,
we take pause and attempt
to gather up our resources,
devise foresighted stratagems
to meet all exciting new contingencies,
bid to never again run and hide
from impending calamities
or any vexing mysteries
approaching our lives.

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.