clued into a glance, at the edge of where your eyes are looking,

  just now, where your vision fell just short

  & the moment completely escaped you

  FAST LANE

  for Victor Hernandez Cruz

  fast lane, the ball is up in the lights

  & you are breathing hard, there

  & wherever the flight of the sphere takes your eyes

  in its arc, you find yourself there, chasing

  the music of the curve, up in the air, slick as an eagle,

  or a red-tailed hawk, when it turns & dives,

  its wing-tip become a blade,

  sharp as its beak breaking the flesh of prey

  & from here you are there, too,

  inside the blood-letting, the death of the prey

  horrible, but pulsating as an image

  inside your imagination

  & you are riding a wave of creation inside your mind,

  a current of light & air that takes you to a fertile place

  inside that imagination, deep down within, perhaps,

  an imaginary circle, where you now consider

  the path of the ball as it flies arching

  through the blue, it is a cut-out object,

  an image, black as a period on a white page,

  then you fast-break your mental juices forward,

  your improvising twists & turns inside

  the possibility that you can do whatever

  this thing you thought you could do,

  & it, like you are running backward,

  way up inside the music

  you are listening to, now, inside your head,

  you move the tempo forward, because it is your own

  creation, way forward, past the dot up in the blue,

  that is black now as any moment you considered

  murder as an answer, then shrugged it off,

  as one would a coat swarming with fleas & flies,

  than you bevel yourself into a groove,

  but very much still on time,

  inside this moment you are creating for yourself

  now, you are present there, but here, too,

  on this page, looking out at yourself,

  but that can get very boring,

  so you press pedal to the metal & shoot

  your mind out ahead, running fast

  as the image of that black bird with spinning legs

  in the old road runner cartoons,

  or like a space shot trying to connect earthlings with the moon

  you try catching up with your dreams, fusing them together

  here, with everything you are thinking, now,

  but you are still, by a beat, behind time,

  though inside time, too, & the language, like seasons

  is always changing, is always out ahead of you

  & you are what the music hears inside your dna rhythms;

  language created everyday by you, by someone else

  & played out here, or anywhere else, for that matter,

  in an improvised way, too, you are

  the possibility of what you are listening to, now,

  the music up in the rhythms—soukas, salsa, maracas—

  words of a poem pulsating jazz notes toward the light

  SHADES OF BLUE FOR A BLUE BRIDGE

  For Mildred Howard, Joe Rudolph & Yori Wada

  1.

  three shades of blue

  evoke minnie’s can do,

  soo chow’s, yori wada

  2.

  jimbo’s bop city,

  john lee’s boom boom room,

  history riffing blue matzoh balls,

  fried chicken, soba

  3.

  the jigoku club inside

  j town, bold rebels jamming

  cross from black town, udon,

  grits, barbecue

  4.

  cherry blossoms blooming

  in lady day’s hair, greens & fat back,

  sashimi staining kimonos

  5.

  you walking filmore,

  crossing geary with duke,

  street cars running over ghost-tracks,

  pigfeet in vinegar

  6.

  indigo-blue & white,

  red satin, sticky fingers handling

  chop sticks, hot cornbread,

  sweet potato pie

  7.

  memories brought back

  in a blue mirror, gefilte fish,

  kimochi, lox & bagels

  8.

  filmore auditorium

  jamming beneath miles of blue,

  bird, monk, nihomachi,

  a fake dividing line

  9.

  mixing it all up

  this cultural jambalaya stew,

  kabuki, white linen,

  silk, coltrane

  10.

  music the glue singing

  new images of multi-you

  rapping in the sweet blue air

  TRANSCIRCULARITIES

  across, beyond, moving toward the soon other coast,

  transcending a change of appearance, as when

  transfigurating a moment that is circular,

  as the O of a dead man’s mouth is a circle

  sometimes after his last deep breath has been sucked in,

  becomes the shape of a spinning snake chasing, or swallowing

  its own tail, can be a sign, an omen, perhaps, of what has been

  forgotten, erased from the circular thought-waves

  history provides, the highway of metaphors:

  bombs & bullets & flag-waving guiding the way into madness

  drunk on power, the hypocrisy of slaughter bombastic

  with language rooted in opposing religious fervors, greed,

  the sad war dead made over into blood-dripping saints,

  converted to propaganda-iconography,

  now we find ourselves once again here, as yesterday,

  our speech a copy of a copy of a copy,

  our histories located in roots, clues underground, bleached

  bones, skulls without vanity marking the spots where

  ancestral voices once swelled & grew colorful as bright flowers,

  were there, rhythmic, beautiful, full of surprises, bold with new

  twists inside language grown fresh in an instant,

  then suddenly gone, erased in a blink,

  as history quickly removes those who lose wars of iconography,

  even as music of their speech echo choices they made

  when they stood visible, unbroken, inside their own loved skins,

  their heartbeats thumping drumbeats in time with their spirits,

  their voices musical instruments, they sang & shaped

  a language they danced to then, even now you still hear

  echoes of its rhythms on our own tongues here

  now the faces of those ghosts are invisible as death

  coming in the dark, after midnight when most eyes shut down,

  close themselves off to light, live only inside shifting dreams,

  it is a roundabout way that we have brought ourselves here,

  shrouded in this moment of looping shadows,

  whispering in this graveyard of rundown tombstones,

  whispering to the memory of what could have been, like autumn,

  brown leaves scattered across asphalt, or dirt, or stone,

  after the chill of coming winter’s tongue sentenced them here

  to the fate of dried corpses rotting on a battlefield,

  the eyes of owls, their whooping language of mystery

  our only companions here, as time tick-tocks down,

  our eyes rotate upward toward where we think heaven is,

  as if looking for a sign, hoping for a savior

  from

  THE ARCHITECTURE OF LANGUAGE

  I.

  HAIKU SCENES

  faces of leaves fall

  red as kisses stamped on cheeks,

  pile up brown on streets,

  as pine needles wave

  outside my window, dance slow

  scherzos on the wind,

  the landscape green here,

  dazzling, bird-calling colors,

  fragrant la jolla,

  lavender ice plants

  explode on hillsides in spring,

  glistening with green,

  my thoughts reach out blue,

  look like the ocean when viewed

  high up in the sky,

  also blue when viewed

  from down here, whispering trees

  remind of sea waves

  lapping rocks, spent brown

  leaves crumbling in winter’s cold,

  skeins of words flying,

  geese in summer skies,

  kites, their strings unraveling,

  planes up in the blue

  II.

  VERSACE

  eye watch my cat, versace, roll over on her back,

  four paws boxing the air, she is striking there,

  soft white, brown striped & spotted fur,

  with the coat of a small leopard, she is beautiful flipping

  & flopping, her tail up & down, stretching

  her long, lean body outside my window, in the sun,

  blue eyes opening & closing as she naps

  in a world of her own, at first glance

  she seems so innocent when she yawns, revealing

  those long white nail-like fangs hinting at the possible

  terror she is when she awakens,

  suddenly she is alert, her ears twitching & turning around

  like crazed antennas, tensing she leaps quick as a cobra striking,

  uncoiling in midair, strikes some hapless victim

  she was clocking while she appeared to be dozing

  & it’s all over in a blink except for the futile, spasmodic twitching,

  the horrible death struggle, then she eats the thing whole,

  licks her paw, scratches behind her ear, then

  stretches out again & goes back to dozing,

  but don’t get me wrong, she’s a beautiful, loving friend

  inside the house, always giving of her love freely,

  but outside, in the air—even inside if it’s a shadow that moves—

  watch out, especially if you’re a tasty bird, rat, or lizard,

  watch out, you’ll pay the ultimate price for not paying attention,

  sleeping on the job, it will be all over quicker than the blink

  of an eye glazing over, or closing, in death

  III.

  THE HOURS FLY QUICK

  the hours fly quick on wings of clipped winds

  like nonsense blown from mouths of hot air—

  people—including my own—form syllables, suds,

  words shot through pursed lips like greased sleaze

  & bloom inside all these rooms dominated by television

  babble sluicing idiot images invented in modern test tubes—

  clones—blinking, slathering all over controlled airwaves

  of an up-for-sale world, blinking a paucity of spirit,

  so dance you leering ventriloquists, marionettes,

  you greedy counterfeits, dance, dance, dance

  THREE SEVENS: 21 LINES HOPING FOR CHANGE

  an opaque sky streaks tears down from clouds

  on the other side of murmuring

  a language understood by flies

  after decommposition has been broken becomes

  clear syllables rolling again from a bird’s vibrating tongue

  & music is heard by those who recognize its beauty

  when sound penetrates love to beating hearts

  listen to the antiphonal flow coursing up

  from rivers of ancestors a breathing history lives there

  to know the secret mysteries voiced with codes

  you must first feel the poet’s lashing words

  you have buried deep inside sleep their resonance

  under pitch-black clouds of acrid amnesia

  you have forgotten even the sound of your name

  ghoulish apparitions of flames dance under shadows now

  spreading umbrellas of smoke billowing wings over hunger

  advance through the world like pestilential plagues

  nuclear as evil intentions of men with unchecked power

  unleased under guise of unholy gospels

  & lethal when pulpits are aligned with bullets

  & guns put in the hands of praying congregations

  EYE AM FOREVER LOOKING FOR SHADOWS

  eye am always looking for shadows dropping hints

  where they lost their old bodies, is a matter open

  to question, a conjecture full of mystery,

  eye am watching for bird wings eye imagine

  are eyebrows over two moons in a blind man’s face,

  now my ti-punch is speaking to me

  full of rum, limes, sugar & gingembre, in a language

  full of zouk, clear blue-green caribbean water,

  it reminds me of the translucence of my cat’s eyes,

  now the moments are filled with hesitations,

  the sounds exploding in music so quickly

  they remind me of skiers blowing down mountain slopes

  slick with hard ice & snow,

  but who are we fooling during these frivolous moments

  slick with silly infomercials flooding

  the language we speak, created in test tubes,

  what is the drilling sound we hear inside our heads,

  the loud jackhammer of woodpeckers tapping out

  thoughts with hard sharp beaks like machine-gun fire

  ricocheting off walls & exploding skulls,

  it’s time now to pay attention to where this creaking

  ship is taking us, leaking, taking on water as it goes,

  it’s time to get nervous about not being nervous,

  because if you’re not jumpy you aren’t paying attention

  about being worried, aren’t giving consideration

  to being edgy as a crash & burn junky absent cocaine,

  you’re not paying attention while entire worlds burn

  IV.

  MEMORY, AS A CIRCLE: FOR THE LOVE EYE LOST IN HURRICANE AUDREY

  because it is beyond midnight somewhere,

  between total darkness & daybreak,

  light, pure & simple

  is an echo of someone hidden far back in memory,

  an echo pulsating like a heart beat here, it has intensity,

  like a drummer keeping time alive,

  it follows the rhythms of an artist breathing

  music through a face jumping from a canvas, extends itself

  way up into a future you can’t even see now but know

  is there, perhaps a moon sliding slowly across

  the geography of black skin that is sky, is like a notion

  a pearl once evoked in the mind when it first saw it coming,

  that it was a globe lit up like the round, gleaming eye of a panther,

  or the idea of a black hole imploding with light,

  was your smile, love, come here again, back from memory seducing,

  a light pulsating through imitates your face, where you once were,

  where all these years a hole shaped like a cut-out of you

  flattened itself out daily against my longing

  & eye see a fire burning way out there in the pitch

  black desert of midnight,

  perhaps it is a camp fire encircled by lonely spirits back when

  eye knew you as a deep sea diving lover, always underwater,

  entombed inside your own breath bubbling circles,

  your silent voice now a chain-link of bubbles climbing forever upward,

  toward the surface, light pure & simple,

  an echo of itself, when the light was fading fast

  the way out far up above your memory, light still beyond a doorway,

  perhaps through which a lost fish swam once looking for the way

  back to that baited hook it refused to bite on,

  back when the promise of light above this language was clear,

  reflective, was shimmering like great music, or poetry,

  before night came back washing everything away in darkness,

  before they dredged up your once shining face from that lake,

  fish eaten, bloated beyond even faith,

  our hope a memory now eye have held onto all this time,

  beyond even what language is to great music,

  beyond even what metaphor is to this poem

  DIVA

  again for Dorothy Smith Marshall

  my mother walks with certainty, ballerina-style

  she glides by up on the balls of her feet, tippy-toe,

  her back straight as a plank of wood,

  there is an air of haughtiness in her manner,

  the way she looks at you is a command

  about to happen, no doubt in what she says,

  in her own mind she’s already convinced herself

  it’s right, she’s eighty-seven, a tiny woman,

  when she’s all made up, decked out in her finest clothes,

  her arms, fingers, ears & neck dripping jewelry

  she’s regal in her bearing, but can blow warm & cold,

  radiant when you catch her just right, in a good mood,

  she will bless you with a beautiful smile

  wide as daybreak, her laughter spraying light

  mist all over you as when waterfalls hit rocks & liquid

  bottom after dropping over a cliff, makes you think of music

  entering your space with notes shimmy-shangling, but please

  don’t catch her wrong, say something, rubbing sandpaper

  rough up against her tempermental grain,

  could be anything, large or small, everything changes,

  her temper hisses, then explodes like a lit firecracker,

  better pull back quick when her face clouds over

  her mood turns black as a day about to drop a tornado

  you better pull back quick before she flips her switch—

  her once-warm eyes suddenly turn into twin smoldering

  nuggets about to spit singeing fire all over you—

  better turn your back & go the other way, tout de suite

  before her verbal anger hits you like a category five