Mythos & Marginalia

2015 – 2025: a decade of days


  • more or less

    “If you want to win the teddy bear, you have to break the rules.’

    Advice from a panhandler, a regular, 
    outside one of two coffee shops. People come and go, 
    tedious ebb and flow of those getting by; life in this city.

    Daily she is here or there, barely warm coat, 
    hands clasped in prayer, paper cup and her frowzy blanket.

    Where she sleeps is often a wonder; 
    women’s shelter a block over, or congregated
    rooming house. Downtown. There are many not far away.

    ‘Any spare change, anything helps.’

    Passersby, some smile, others won’t. Many don’t 
    look down. Not everybody stops, not everybody walks on by. 
    A quarter or two, a coffee or crumpet. Here and there.

    More or less.

    ‘God bless.’

    Slight smile from an everyday face that has braved cold 
    winter winds, scorn and rejection. Her life harder than 
    the dirty concrete where she sits. Every day.

    Empty stomach. Little promise. Few possibilities.

    Some other day.
    Some other time, the world was different.

    So was I.
    So was she.

    Society does what it does.

    We rarely know 
    who breaks the rules and do not question those who make them.

  • like jazz

    Rhythm and pattern easily obscured, it’s what you feel, 
                                       not what is heard. Polyphonic syncopation,                     bass line
          holds the inspiration                 well before anticipation, a rush of melody pushes
                to the fore                              you hear it again, but never have before.
                            Rim shot crack
                cymbals crash, 
                        the beat is burning, and falls
                        like ash.                                      It marches and it swings,
                                                                             like laughter, it is tears. 
                              Emotionally charged, by no means irreverent, it suddenly switches gears.
                 History more than the future, a time though, never passed.
                 As definite as prayer, 
                 cool as a sweaty glass.                             Full moon rising
                                                                                      heroin highs
                                                                                      the music lives on
                                                                                      the player only dies.
    Straight up from the psyche, deep down in the core, no matter the decade, 
    more than less though less is more.                                Solo piano
                       full of vigor                            the notes interpret all you have known.
                       Time signature changes, on a dime, or rolled up bill, the rhythm method, 
                       it comes from the gut
                       no matter how it is played or how it is cut.                        Free form.
    It is life, it is living, it is solid, it is forgiving. As simple or as complex as a saxophone riff,
    no four-chord progressions.                         Never boring.                                  Never stiff.
    Wholly original, as much as it is copied, and studied, sweated over, with notes cast asunder, improvisation,              muddied by emotion
                                            perpetual motion,          realization, over and under.
                      Though practiced                 it is free, it is glossy, and messed up, so dirty it is clean.
    Quietly you dream, completely obsessed.                           A blue note cries out
                                                                                                           to lovers
                                                                                                           and all the others, 
    calmer, smoother sounds, longer linear melodic lines, you don’t listen as much 
                   as you go for a ride.                           Off the charts,
    it’s art and it’s plastered with culture,
    a contradiction not comprehensible, it is not responsible 
                                                  should you dream a life totally possessed.
    More about attitude than instrument of choice, the minor keys and major chords create it’s own noise. Structured silence played oh-so-slow in parts of deep reflection, blood rushing through the vein, it steps back then it rises up, triumphantly, again. Again 
    and again, and again.
                             Only a genre is to say night is just darkness, or a day is but a year,
            it goes down easy with dinner, or a six pack of beer, seedy downtown club 
            or a scratchy vinyl disc
    it comes with a purpose, arrives full of risk. It nourishes the soul from a rhythm, whatever it has,                  whatever it be
                                                         we should all live like jazz.

  • at seventeen

    It was never for the night, but only 
    for the summer.     My seventeenth 
    summer. Never would I say it shouldn’t 
    have happened, because it did. 
    You with a past 
    I would certainly become a part of, 
    and I collecting stories.   An identity. 
    At seventeen. You took a part of that; 
    of all, or whatever, went forward. 
    What I have become. 
    Bones are formed through experience, 
    shaping us emotionally, physically, and 
    psychologically.           Down to the soul. 
    You were there.    There I was, 
    not knowing what to expect, and you 
    expecting nothing but honesty. 
    I didn’t question your motives, nor did I 
    question mine. Age was not important, 
    you said, nor was intent. 
                               There was a difference. 
    Seventeen years. but only one summer. 
    July heat, the scent of patchouli, 
    sandalwood and #5. Intoxicating. 
    I tasted the moon on your breath, 
    and witnessed the clouds in your eyes. 
    A sullen anger, a hurt from before, and 
    your impatient need to get over 
    the emotions.       You talked about it. 
    I could only listen, or try, to understand. 
    At seventeen I could not know. 
    Yet.   I would learn.   Eventually. 
    In times of give and of take, we took 
    consciously. Each of us. Never a moment 
    of mixing the beginning up with the end. 
    We knew.      I wouldn’t ask; 
    at seventeen you don’t.    Of course, 
    I remember fireflies, the music, touch, 
    and the sense and secrets we rarely 
    acknowledged.   Not enough time.   Only 
    one summer.      It was close, something 
    I had never had before, but it was not 
    friendship. A friend you would see again. 
    Not only for a summer.

  • again and again

    After rain, or tears, have extinguished 
    flames of many candles, diminished now 
    to stiff wax puddles from last night or
    the one before that.

    Flowers wilted on the street, solemn vigil 
    is over, but anger remains. Community grief 
    is necessary. People hurt together, even 
    heal together. When allowed.

    Until next night, or the one after that. Another 
    mass shooting, traffic stop or another situation 
    where race meets hate. Another protest over 
    another death. Never changes.

    Again and again, lives once lived, stories told,
    never-ending headlines. Grief forever knows 
    no boundaries. Another night, another life
    gone. Hate makes waste.

  • rendezvous

    Why don’t you meet me in Paris? Half a globe away,
    another lifetime. They write songs about the city,
    in April. I have never been. In any season.
    Spring has yet to find its way here,
    so Paris awaits.
    Rendezvous. City of lights, city for lovers.
    Should we not taste all Paris could be? Could we
    not see nights from a tiny apartment,
    streets below filled with people like us.
    Experience I do not yet know, but I desire
    to feel the city against your skin.

    I have been told one night in Paris
    is like a year in any other place. Language
    I do not understand, but the art speaks to me.
    Culture not found anywhere but Paris.
    History unto itself.
    Art knows no boundaries, no geographic space,
    yet Paris, as I have been led to believe, is
    the capital city.
    Hemingway wrote of Paris, Fitzgerald as well.
    Picasso found poetry in Paris, the painter found himself,
    adopted the city, or it him.

    Artists, from anywhere, are meant
    to spend time in Paris, to discover, to recover,
    from wherever they have lived. You don’t
    get that feeling anywhere else.
    Or so I am told. I need Paris.
    I would write in Paris, I would paint,
    perhaps on the street, because I can only imagine
    what others have lived.
    I can only imagine. In Paris. In poetry.
    In April. We would meet in Paris,
    we may never leave.