Old Man Jazz 4our

Images stacked one atop the other kaleidoscopically

I have my eye to the keyhole and my fingertips on the wheel.

“How long has this been going on?” the detective asks.

“What?”

“These images all stacked up this away. Arrange them cause to effect.”

He runs me in and I have to explain it to a desk sergeant:

“Have you ever tried to get to the bottom of a kaleidoscope?

It’s a different medium and a different light,

where everything happens from the center

patterns shifting into patterns into patterns

At the fringes it all feels so violent, is so violent, off center

the sword, crazy as glue, whispers to the throat,

I am a straight razor.

The throat is sliced clean and the blood pours out

but in time the bloodless body reanimates zombie style

and starts to strop a straight razor and mutter threats.

He goes out into the streets, advertising himself as a lay surgeon.

He menaces strangers, comes close to the throat, hisses,

Which side are you on, anyway? Right or left?

It’s not long before everybody has a straight razor just in case

Let’s go looking for girls.

The body comes in with a scent, a taste, unplumbed depths,

singing sweetly about a wedding in Cherokee County,

her laughter is music, her feet are happy naked animals.

She dreams that she is on another planet where the men

carry guitars instead of guns,”

here, the sergeant bridles and whinnys.

“Take him toxicology.”