Henri Matisse | Red Interior. Still Life on a Blue Table | 1947
IMAGINATION
A cool greeting
prolongs your day
makes the bread
and onion tea
from Frisco
taste sweeter,
the Matisse
“Red Interior”
looks darker
than any vase’s rose
and red wine
over the blue granite table,
gives us an aimless dawn
a patchwork of sunlight
you never expected,
or the mystery person
all in black
named Corso
you are about to meet
who follows
your Beat poems
along North Beach
in words which leads
to an exciting comic sense,
my alto sax sings to us
which stays with you
as friendly shadows
of a whispering solo;
a luminous welcome
enters your consciousness
of nature making
and you again belong
to what you hope for,
an unexpected moment
as a tree, the pine woods,
an ice pond
circles your quiet body
of wily perception
with breathless insight
even before you chose
an insecure imagination.
AUTO ERASURES
No regrets on Sunset strip
trucking outside
the boxing shadows
of exhausting nights
unwilling to form
an accidental lane
of body parts
in flashed red lights
at a petrified scene
from our seat belt,
glassy and ripped
as a Beat Poet passes
by running invectives
in a thirst for language
on the steering wheel
of tangled voice mails
now imprisoned
to answer ourselves,
words sleep
walking on gaseous
shadows questioning
any empty disillusionment
of a unfiltered future
by driving us crazy
in the fourth hour
with an elegy’s stick shift
toward intervention
of buried grief
on my long sleeves
over highways of picture
postcard verticals
between nights and day
where an imaginary
third lane energetic
synergy of almost humans
operates to a percolating
aroma under stars
by a felled holiday week end
on route 66
STREET PEOPLE
Crowds at dusk
with better weather
here at “The Club,
Last Rainbow”
some Friday night
when out of town folks
with lighter arms
on shirtsleeve notice
taste the smoke
among the barbeques
in fires of hot stoves
by skinny rows
of street people
listening to my alto sax
on the loudspeaker
along the waterfront
breaking glasses
of wine with waves
for tourist friends
on a boardwalk of trees
where crows try to rest
on park back benches
and a new born
on his father’s shoulder
goes berserk with laughter.