a sunday frivolity

be my melancholy baby, with your curious and somber
jitter-bug, come sit with me, let's make clatter with the
gulls, you'll be my found and jolly bauble

let's make clamors, little jaybird, little minor-key confoundment,
maybe rum darkly while your eyes are blue, supper on some
sweet j.daniel sauces, and la-la to a poodle-boy refrain

i may be a windup dally, a playground loop-d-loop, i was a
prima, and had maria's eye before she knew my secrets
and tossed me from boheme

i may be a tuesday morning laugh's affair, staled on
sunset boulevard, a whoopee in a 40 dollar room, and
i never pass a window and can not bear the day's

reflections, and have i earned a lover's prize, wiped
clean of salves and moisturized confections, to fit a
shelf i've crafted with great care, where i can while,

and wait, and taste my sunday teas

a voice

i pour it slowly on the table top, watch its darkness roam, watch
it search for flaws within my day time dreams, and listen for its hunger
waiting for the reverie to call a dance, but my feet can't find their twisty

steps, no pivots no romeo merengues, no young boy pointy-toe delusions
and it waits for me, for my failing, for the magpie songs that tell a gossip's
tale, and it wants my poor caresses, my salty prudish lips, it twitters

in a coy and subtle voice

if

but i never swallowed love entire, as i sometimes relished macchiatos
sweetbreads in a caramel confection, or thought it savory, or sweet,
and when i diddled with my fiddle ferns, conversed with hovering harpies
it was an ever constant meddler, drawing gasps from even mock-flies
come burrowing in the grass

i never sat bewitched behind my bedroom window, waiting for some
fledgling enamorato, a mancini string to draw me with its grasping
shimmer, or brought my polka to a scented parlor, where i might display,
with all due artifice, my shallow glamours, for it rankles like a summer folly
demanding a cavort when a simple arabesque should do

and so i watched you, in your jitterbug retreat, a lucy-boy all jingly
with some desi cucarachas, making shimmy-shimmy 2-steps, making
disco twists, and i may steal your youth away, leave you howling
at the bottom of the stairs, leave you to drape my ancient mirrors,
thieve my whiskey in the night

i was a famous trickster, hawking potions at the door, selling coochie
to bewildered farmers come carousing in the town, but i loved
the night too much, loved too much that all days end with tea and
shelley winters, but i never swallowed love entire, or gave you bon-bons
when your sleep believed in death

yes, if i remember you, i may steal your youth away

untitled #2

mourning morning

shim-sham jimmy

shim-sham jimmy made some cantakerous combobulations,
with a to and a fro that left hizzoner proud, and he glossed
his lips with an inky inspiration from some j.crew poster boy
cause today the preacher-man's a-callin', callin' jimmy's name

shim-sham jimmy took his sherry straight, smooched castratas
with abandon, when the vapors held him in their scintillatin' grip
and told his daddy-tales to strangers on the streets of downtown
beaufort, giving southern comfort where southern comfort's due

he was a grief and a trial and a sore-felt tribulation, was this
fallen magnolia, this splendiferous celebration of a river delta's
pride, and he did a fine bojangle, with a soft-shoe skip-dee-doo
hopping over sidewalk cracks, making root-beer jingles for the crowd

but when the man comes callin', and the dead kick up with pride,
and god's own angels turn away with a snicker and a hoot
then a lad knows as lads have always done that the hard time's a-come
but jimmy was a caution, and the preacher but a man

there is a tale worth the learnin', for the preachers and their wrath,
from the buttery tongue of a shim-sham boy, jimmy quick and easy
never live your sermons or dark old father sun, 'cause when the book
is finally written, you'll know your day is done

to Sally

Saffron Sally made a hula dance; a swishy ode to her karma bangled angst. She was a clamor, was our Sally. A final testing place for mayhem's inspirations. A taco cheese delight with her girly undulations.

Here's to Sally. May the rest of us rest in peace.

lost in queens

i watched his finger tap a samba beat, listening to vivaldi,
but he whispered e.merman jollies from a corner la-z-boy

and still, the sun will set as he darks the air with shades
and little torments, and still, he breathes his minor key
complaints, warbly rodondos, caprices in a sutra style

why am i lost in queens, besotted by some sweet fandango,
causing gently with my old-man and sillied by the sun

why do i fill him up with my 7-penny stories, buy vanilla
frapaccinos for this malted debonair, in his store front
parlor, in his lounge left discarded by a disco dancing swell

he's drawn with such casual dissidence, a jangly composition
and relishes my lies with a hunger raw and sharpened for a feast

or have we simply been misplaced, and chance would have us
make our waltz, make us giddy with our heady and flamboyant
spins, a doo-wop boy and a barber with a sunday night despair

give me my salty whiskey, if i'm to while away the day, so i can
sing some janis joplin, and listen to vivaldi, and finally go my way

the old man

he looped an old man's dance, swigging margaritas of a most
peculiar hue, and tipped and toed in an old man's soft ballet,
with a cincinnati shuffle cause he had a fondness for gardenias
and knew a thing or two why katy does what katy did

and he loved his whiskey sweet with sugar, full of wake-songs,
darked by shady boys come weaving sour and salacious webs,
and he loved his rhumba all aglamoured, twisty, valentino'd,
maybe floozied by a 2am carouse

but lordy, he was taken by an old man's strange desire,
lost within some santeria, all awhispered and full-up in magicks,
and he looped an old man's dance, tossing baubles to the gawkers
making n.sinatra la-la's in his fancy key of c

for he had his cremes and clever potions, mirrors mystical and fey,
confabulations that could turn the dark with footlights, bring
a roar to any crowd, and he would star again with bette in the wings
bring the house up to their feet

oh, how he loved gardenias

and angels have a sorrow
that never fails the dawn

waiting

i watched a laddy dying, laughing as the gulls began their mourning
wail, wrapped my toes in sea salt as the tide began its hungry prowl,
and waited for the angels

afraid

are you afraid, when he breathes your breath, your very own
and takes your dreaming, enwraps your night song somewhere
in the dark,

am i afraid, fancy with my whisky bruises, a truly foppish
delight, wearied in my old bed's shadows, lying neath some
romeo whispers,

catching pasty gossip, waiting for the magpie wails to close
my day, am i afraid, a dancer, a merengue bit of puff, tossing
carnations to the band,

am i the golden boy, a jealous banshee that wrecks your father's
joy, a prancing liar, a conceit in his heart's delusion, am i your slavish
tears,

or a simple fox-trot fol-de-rol, a 3am concoction in a yellow t-bird,
a whoopee-lad with a summer's ditty, am i afraid, sitting neath the stairs,
waiting for the night

do i

do i know the world ends, little locust, little one-step wonder
will i remember, when my role has been unwritten, that it was
underplayed, and in no diva's memory at curtain fall, that darkly

hour, do i know the dazzling flouncer, knocking down my sets
throwing my arts into the seats, into an audience twisted doubled
with atonal twittering, waiting and slandering for my perfect fall

do i