At the jazz house tonight
conversation litters the music,
the struggling horse of
mutually deaf communication
coagulating into
sprinklers of spit and teeth.
Voices rise above the music which
returns to itself in the
imagined rewards of strangers.

The years pass like strangers,
just like every human being.
Only the days remain the same.
The weeks, the months, the
self-distracted chatter between a
jazzless future and the
ever-changing past which we
feed, we feed the dead to
spite and boo the living.