Birds in the rafters

riding heavy metal hair

branches whose forks liquidly multiply

extending warm wet growth of grandeur

cooling through mercurial sunsets

roots coiling beneath the cord

of connected skies.

STONES OF THE SOUTHERN SKY (after Neruda)

Red jasper, beautiful

brick red blood of earth,

bright and rough rock of persistence,

stone of my mother who plants

in the darkest dirt,

stone of our humble ancestors,

known by our Chilean cousin.

Pablo, your hands are companion

to omnipotence now.

These stones are for you and for me,

each splinter of chert, each undissolved

dramatic cluster, dark quartz closely packed

from its molecules outward,

jasper for Greg Devlin's hands,

chert for mine and Pablo's,

we make a time-resistant fire,

we make the blood of man create rock

in these holes of boiled dust,

stones of light

sailing through constellations,

changing the maps of space

sky seen from a southern depth

stones deep in a nurturer's net

bright stones of June's December,

January's April rent.

GREG IN REPOSE pt. 3

I listen to Andrew Hill's Point of Departure,

and picture you meeting a broad sky.

I picture your ecstasy made universal,

in final harmony with all your heroes.

I see you seated in essence with honor

ranked among compassionate hearts

and the most perceptive eyes.

I see you elevated and adorned

for your devotion to those who create,

which was second to none.

I know you make common cause

with a loving God, Who knows

your every name, in jazz aligned

designed your rogue chimera,

everlasting primavera.

GREG IN REPOSE pt. 2.

You were right to favor mercy.

I was wrong.

I thought judgement

was the parlance of the strong.

The strong favored me wrong.

You sang again.

The bridges flexed

around the coops and glens.

I favored wrens.  I favored

secret weaknesses in friends.

Gregory in relapse sleepless

still in fine form, cooking shirtless

to Ornette, or talking

ceaselessly of Todd Rundgren,

Mark E. Smith vs. Damo Suzuki,

big knuckles of brass,

all our eye's lips are kissing

Foxy Brown's ass,

and the half-year's new at last,

and the marsh-hen's a wriggling down

Beefheart lane, Greg Devlin's memory

is Europe's and America's,

paid tribute to Ravel and Matisse,

honored our deep and fatal

ancestors, and has not

failed them yet, and never will.

1968 )( 2026

Catcalls of riotous looters,

the infection of belief systems

crashing on an all too human wall,

walking around the deportation camps

with Allen Ginsberg

weeping for trapped humanity,

hungry for more than the slippery grasp

of nebulous eyes, hungry for more

than the slogans of profiteers,

hungry for a third American Revolution,

hungry for the thirst of evolving soul.

GREG IN REPOSE

I see you in your armchair,

all transactions pending in heaven,

praising the searing

colors of Bonnard

in all their domestic gentility,

carving a bathtub of rain

out of the air,

stuck to a cross

of swatches and switches.

You tap your ashes on a Mingus CD,

brush them carefully into the trash,

straighten your chest,

listen to Pithecanthropus Erectus.

I am the darkness within,

the voice of the denied.

I am the furious ecstasy

borne upwards by all your hatreds.

Mine is the blood on your hands,

that has learned to speak.

I am the cancer of civilization

given divine status.  I am the menu

splattered with infant shit

as you make your decision.

The wellspring of life has dried up.

The dead rule now: they seek only

to punish the living.

Inspiration is gone

from these streets of automation.

The empire of bright lights

has gone down to sackcloth and ashes.

I mourn in a moldy fireplace,

gnawing at my rags for dirty moisture.

The smell of shit fills the museums.

The gas of senseless rage

blows through the libraries.

My body is an instrument

tuned perfectly against itself.

I can't help.