Francis Is A Blues Man

Francis is a blues man,
can he wail!  can he strum that guitar!
our eyes meet as we open  a
door to Pete’s Place on the
East side of town.

Don is a friend of mine, poet-activist
tells me that Francis is deep into
protest—fearsome acts of violence are cavernous
breeches in humanity’s tabloid,
tortured follies of mankind,  rising
time and time again, a self-inflicting mortal,
selfish pain and wound
 

I listen to the blues how they return me to
a generous angst, a Black Madonna’s
melancholy devotedly sings and lifts
my body into a sensuous movement of
of succulence and liquid dance.
I drift away into lost chords, I am a cello
held between the legs of a musically
omnivorous Ma, and his deft fingers
masterfully play me, 
he coaxes me beyond the beyond in a dark
and feathering silence, as if a prayer in flight,
soaring and now returning me to the sound of
blues being played by a band in a smokeless
bar in Ohio.
 

Francis works right around the corner from where
I live on the West side; he’s a shrink  is it strange to be a
Blues man,
psychiatrist, activist and Don’s friend?
About 20 or so years ago, I was suffering at the same
counseling service with a teenaged daughter.  A laugh
escapes me, ‘tis a small small world in a Midwest
state between worlds of departures and arrivals
and now he tells me he plays primarily on the East
side where he doesn’t often run into his clients. 
How do you make chit-chat after you know the whole
story?  Perfect.  Non-duality hits another home-run
in the land of Chief Wahoo.
(is there nothing but nothing being said.?)

It’s all about eyes, they say.  If you look deeply
into the eyes you can see the limping plains in the Elysian fields
of  forever,
you can see anything you desire,
in that moment of truth that casts out doubt,
in the light of another I,

but I’m a poet now and I read mostly poems
and the only eye
I can see is the truth found between empty words, crossing
letters and punctuated silences,
words as they flow onto stark white paper, coming from
bleeding I’s, a space that we all enter when we are deaf with vision,
when we abandon tears with laughter in a single word,
clutching the heart in a gasp of recognition
I am being touched by another and I shiver with the lust of longing
I feel your presence
my Darling
we are weary of sleep now,  we disrobe our flowering,
our dark vision of
loneliness is but two shores met in a holy and silent nocturne
Jesus
preaches at the feet of Mary Magdalene
the earth and sky are pleased
in our simple romance,
we
fall through the holes of our souls,
channels of air and  water
indigo starlight enthrall the morning sky
blur all evidence that we meet in dreams
tasting of the afterlife held in celluloid memories,
that, oh-so-delicious ripeness
in the passion-play of our secret flesh,
no longer very young in our white-boned skin,
still crazy after all these years.
 

Sing me your blues.  Write me your poem.
Call me forever yours.