At the Jazz Club

There is music seeping through the room, saturating
It can be seen in every moving thing
Like smoky wisps curling blue through the air
The drip of perspiration down the cocktail glasses
Wiped from the Jazz Man’s glistening brow.
I have seen people who can play music
With each note falling in its right place
To a rhythm flawlessly repeated indefinitely
A hitting of notes in cold, mathematical perfection.
Not tonight, tonight music is being made.
Something wholly unrepeatable is happening
Like a sprawling sunset, the dance of flame
Seen many times but never the same.
The sound is soaking into the living
And bringing the lifeless alive.
The Jazz Man is playing us like the song
Making us into the music, beating our hearts
Moving our feet, compelling our breath
Twisting and turning us in between tables
Projecting visions to our minds in color
Opening our mouths in whispers
Playing our fingers across the table tops
While blowing through her hair as a soft breeze
Falling soft across silken cream shoulders.
Parting thin lips as red as the dress
Stretched taut across my mind to the knee.
A Girl I Used to Know...
The girl I used to know...
Just some girl I used to know.

A Tangle - (J. Porter)

A Tangle

You point at two shadows, long in the evening decline and meshed like clouds, crossing out where we end and begin in an awkward and incomplete scene.

Written over and over by Shakespeare or Balzac, through centuries we've remained a tangle darkened by an ego, and when you turn your head to whisper about the past, you disappear, eclipsed by my lumbering frame with no definition but the absence of light.

Afraid to let yourself resurface, we slide deeper underneath the two shadows, under tar and gravel and clay – here in the heart's darkness, where no hand can reach out and squeeze another or press itself warmly into well-earned flesh and feel pulse.

But as the sunset quickens, our figures thin back to their solitary states, where each hand idly extends to hold its match in shadow, singing, our love was once an awkward and incomplete scene.

City Deer

city deer

the snapped twig was all it took,
sending the city deer scuttling down the hill
and you called over to see if i'd seen her,
so I walked over to where you were standing,
snapping more twigs with every step;
it was early spring and the ground was covered
in remnants of dead grass and Corona bottles.

we saw the deer cut a path further down
toward the railroad tracks until she disappeared.
the grey clouds sunk over the downtown skyline,
and the garbage reservoir rippled below,
little waves of poison reaching toward the city's center,
and as we stood there on the undeveloped plain
you asked me if i was getting sick of you yet.
how could i not say no?

Original 4/5/11

Revised 6/6/12 by J. Porter

before you go

before you go, I'd just like to say
the sun is less bright while you are away
the wind has more bite
the nights are too long
it doesn't feel right whenever your gone

before you leave, i want you to know
no matter the day, wherever you go
I'm thinking and dreaming
of you out exploring
my mind will be teeming, my days will be boring

when you come back, if you ever do
I'll be saving inside a soft kiss for you
I wont give it away
to those who come asking
for I hope that one day, we'll be basking in love

Favorite April Poem

Lets get posting friends, here is my favorite of 9 posted poems written in April, available on my blog. "Untitled No. 382" or (for us broken winged birds)

One pigeon in the plaza
Walks with a wounded wing.
Weakened by the weight
It wobbles from knee to knee.
It's feathers are dirty,
They don't plume like the others.
So boastful and beautiful and fit.
This one flitters from place to place
Feeding on the pity of people
Throwing seeds to the ground.
It can't fight the flock that flies
From hand to hand at the sound
Of the seeds falling down.
So the broken-winged one
Can often be found, dejectedly waiting
For the next observant and softhearted
Hand to single it out.

"Denny" - a Video Poem by Jordan

The Streets of San Jose

The streets of San Jose are paved with broken concrete
that juts out at your toes until you learn to watch where you step.
The cobbled stone turns from gray to dirty brick red and back
as different materials come down from historic buildings
falling in disrepair or replaced by modern international giants;
McDonalds, Taco Bells, Pizza Huts, even Kentucky Fried Chickens.

The streets of San Jose are covered in greasy fried chickens
with a side of salisbury steak and heavily MSGed barbecue sauce.
More cheap than the bounty of vegetables growing in the countryside,
on every corner the fatty factory protein is available
for only $2.50, some self respect and a lifetime of high cholesterol.
You can watch the grease slide from mouth to exposed flabby skin.

The streets of San Jose are drowning in obese, flabby skin
rolling from the sides of densely packed pedestrians.
Plunging over tight waistlines and bursting out of single stitched seams.
Enormous spongy buttocks swallow small stools and two toothed women
are orbited by tiny tables with confusing lottery tickets, "29 Chances!"
or hawking backdated Chinese crap fresh from the warehouse.

The streets of San Jose are pock-marked with cheap Chinese crap
that must arrive at the dock to a line of barkers. Waiting
to fill their black plastic bags with the same shit they will sell
on every street, in every corner, at any price, to anyone with money.
Remote controls, power cords, textiled bags, plastic toys from dime store machines.
All laid out side to side on industrial garbage bags like well organized trash.

The streets of San Jose are littered with unorganized trash
that has already been picked through, shat on, slept with and discarded
by the numerous wandering vagrants that sleep in the most visible areas.
Preferably on sidewalks and under business awnings of major streets
where more tourists will disgustingly throw colones on the ground
to keep the clever hands from finding their way into clean pockets.

The streets of San Jose are filled with clever hands and bold thieves
who will kill you in broad daylight for just a few dollars.
Leaving you to bleed out on the gray concrete cobblestone,
staining it a dirty red just blocks from your hostel and the police
who will let your body lay uncovered in the sun while inspecting the scene
before bagging you and taking you off the unwashed streets of San Jose.