JAZZ POETRY LOVER
His face like a stone
neck, stiff
aging quickly
under the white collar
his wide mouth opened
from swearing
outside the jazz club
was brought
to my reading
by his third ex,
sat in the last row
last seat,
like an angry kid
kept after school,
yet strangely
at the first sound
of my alto sax
he wept,
then every time
and place
of my poetry reading
he was there,
putting in dollars
by buying up
my collections,
told me since school
he only liked business
but he hated words
Freud and the unemployed
after the local judge
told him to think
about his rage
or get a shrink,
until a year ago,
somehow up in Manhattan
near an Occupy
demonstration
he started to mellow,
and told me by listening
to my Beats
I changed his life
yet that night
he looked
like yellow death
had overtaken him
after I dedicated a poem
and improvs to him,
they carried him out
out of breath
he died an hour later.