tales

a few weeks ago i was sitting outside with my grandmother

it was nighttime and we were watching fireflies because our area doesn't have them

she pointed out the moon and said that there was a story they used to tell when she was a little girl in Iran,

about how the moon got all the craters on its surface:

"we used to say that when the moon was a little boy his mother was baking - while she was kneading the dough she turned to the moon and patted his face, getting flour all over him. that's why the moon looks like he has spots."

ode to allen

your generation has grown and abandoned the Red

it appears to be a disease that comes with age

accompanying the degeneration of body and mind

the degeneration of soul

and so we of today sit trembling

with our own bottles of whiskey and

clutching the old poems

a palimpsest of jazz whether consciously or not

we await the old enemy

Time

that robs us of our ideals and hope that

this time we have It right

our Shakespeare has grown to be plain

his metaphors are trite

but he is still revered

the message has not changed

so we shout it from the rooftops to the stars

and your Eternity

our Denvers much less exciting but enthralling in their own right

we have all grown mad but that is to be expected

and so our streets are full of the crazy

run by the insane

as our madhouses sing to the Gods of sanity

and genius has been subdued by a red stamp

and shackles

blindly we trip through alleyways searching for the Love that will save us

while Buddha sings his Ohms 

and you watch from your paradise and smile

because we are still hysterical

and have not yet found our clothes.

measures and bars

i lay beneath the stars as i was carried away through the city. on my back i watched the moon turn the grass blue and wondered if this was how it was so named. i watched the birds flutter past and sit on electric wires. old men and women stood by picking fruit from the trees, their skin was stained from the earth and was turned to a leather. on their heads they wore sombreros although though there was no sun. they straightened up to get a better look at the odd twosome that was riding by. the heat was moist and made my shirt stick to my back but i didn't mind because your music was all i felt. you used the machine to quench our thirst and satisfy our hungry minds. the soft chords and your low voice cooled my skin and brought me to a world far away. you played until the sun turned the horizon red and i was carried to sleep on your measures and bars.

just

be