BONGO SYMPHONY IN THE KEY OF DOWNER
Word Music In Three Movements


First Movement: Allegro Non Revolto
( If you've got a coda take two of something and call your Shaman in the morning.....)


We're into the pulsing of the City,
the pounding driving echo
rhythms of the bass, the sax,
check out the Monk as you bang the gong,
dig the thunder of that Kerouac man.
Poets snapping fingers,
Sculptors kissing stone,
Painters sniffing the thinner,
now who's the cat
going to pay for the dinner;

Need some Cosmic sugar,
a little herb from the Philosophers garden,
just look around the corner,
here comes that Candyman,
just watch out for that sweet honey.
Feel her tongue, like golden fire
tracing the outlines of the Night
on the blank surface of your soul,
eyes so deep that you fall on in,
hep cat crazy for any kind of love,
but you know it just can't be found.

So tip back that jug,
drink that new wine,
jazz and poetry
will make everything just fine,
even if you're lost in the stars
somewhere north of the border,
and it's not raining,
and it's not Eastertime,
and just where in the hell is Juarez...



Second Movement : Molto Tempesto

( Beware the Ides of Texas: Because you might find out that Maynard G. Krebs might really be the Messiah.....)

Like I fell through some hole in that
space time continuum thing
and it's September Nineteen Sixty Three on
State Street in 'Mad City' at
this joint called the Uptown Cafe,
and I just mainlined four espressos
while Sonny Stitt blew on the jukebox,
I read some poetry,
but hold that thought,
shake it on out,
it's nineteen ninety two
and like I'm upstairs on Downer
in this joint called Kreb's or Gill's or
somebody like that,
Whoa...

Thirty years have passed on by,
I'm still writing poetry,
still slurping espresso,
just hanging around the continuum,
keeping the spirit alive.

Poetry is like sex,
you never forget the first time,
sometimes it gets better,
if you're lucky,
but you always want it,
need it,
after the first time.

It's like hearing a piano concerto by Beethoven,
the first time.
Or meeting Bogie and Bergman in Casablanca,
the first time.
Or finally doing a reading in the Village,
the first time.

Do you still remember your first kiss,
Can you still taste your first lover,
Does the espresso still have that smell, that taste,
of all the mornings in the world...

I go backwards into tomorrow,
everytime, every kiss,
every cup of darkest coffee,
every rainy City Night,
each new lover, friend, poem, concerto,
is another first time,
another memory echo,
another hoped for dream.

So as I sit here drinking my brew,
still on Downer, still Uptown on State,
still then and now,
I light up an unfashionable cigarette,
smile to myself,
look around remembering those first times,
waiting for the next one,
listening to rain rhythms
that sound like a saxophone,
a bass, a piano,
far in the distance of
my tomorrows.


Third Movement : Largo Sangue Freddo

( It is extremely embarrassing to come to your senses, only to discover that you don't have any...)

I just dropped two hits of high voltage espresso,
listening to a disc of sixties rock, watching the
sun struggle through morning while my numb
brain seeks the path of least resistance,
do you know that old Beatnik poets never die,
They just look that way at eight thirty a.m.
because nobody should be doing anything at
that hour, much less trying to be cool.

But hold that thought for just a moment,
like what, he said rhetorically, is cool;
Cool is the ability to be what everyone else isn't,
dress like what you dig,
live on terms that you create,
spit in the face of fashion, fad, or status quo,
not bitching 'cause you're broke,
don't have a set of wheels,
or a pad in the right neighborhood;
it's a dream never born, never dying,
a hope bonded in existence done
just as it comes down the Cosmic Pipeline.

Jean Paul Sartre was cool,
so was Groucho Marx,
and Big Daddy J.S. Bach, he was ultimately cool,
so get fugued,
do what ya gotta do,
that's cool.

I've seen the changing scenes of State Street,
Telegraph Avenue,
Haight and Ashbury,
Bleeker and MacDougal,
Brady, Guadalupe, and
Isla Vista,
streets winding through time, consciousness,
folk, rock, jazz, blues,
classical tempo of coffee pouring as pens
scribble a hundred lines to find one word;
the fault lines of reality shift, realign,
a sort of quake measured on the
T.J. Richter scale of life
as constant performance art,
'Hey you, I'm talking to you...'

I am somehow comforted though,
by the renaissance of Java Joints,
by poetry that endures, continues,
in spite of social despair,
in spite of our mediocrity as poets;
it has been said,
probably by someone whose brain was juiced,
that I represent the 'old guard',
'old school', 'old days',
of art as revolution,
of lives lived in revolt,

( does that mean I'm a revolutionary,
or just revolting...)

So I'm up on Downer, one more time,
sitting outdoors inside while draining
one more industrial strength cuppa
java, jolting loose the tired grey stuff,
playing with this group of letters,
symbols, runes, words,
placing chaos into order then back again,
illusionary symbolism most rhetorical,
framing questions after answers,
the two not always related,
except in these arcane rituals
of the poets mad inventions.

So this is the Coda,
final passage of the poem,
but not of the poet or of the time or even of the place,
because when the music's over,
it's just beginning.