The Last Chance

"I need it like old people need good shoes," -Charles Parker

For Allen Eager

Allen, the world once taught us to ignore

Its song and sing our own but, Jim, that song

Was costly. Sonny, Freddie, Lester, Bird

Died in your arms or fell like fruit before

Your outstretched fingers. Were they all so wrong.

Harvest accumulated in a minor third

For flies that circle ceaselessly and buzz

So loud one scarcely hears the horn still stuck

In the wall. Instead, echoes and echoes

Sound softly as this concrete crossroads does

Its funky and tortuous job. With luck

More ghostly advisors may come and doze

Half smiling 'neath the blooming tree. I doubt it.

Instead, flash and filigree, shook out, may blind us,

May tin our ear. I dreamt long lines of shining

New Ferraries, driven by the dead, all lit,

With Yardbird in the lead; so lapped by lust

They drift like objects Poe predicted, drift and ring,

Till each, brakes failing, cannot make the turn.

They lie wheels spinning in the empty air;

A vari-colored ferris wheel with hues

Of absolution on the coming turn.

Mechanics amble out and tinker with its gears.

It moves, one last grand prix, its organ plays the blues.