Some men are born
gathering a nest
of white and dark
fabulous musical notes
to them,
and some men,
born broken like two halves
of the April moon,
discover that to drink
alone at night –
under the glass chandelier’s
metropolis of stars
buzzing over a river’s
boardwalk where tugboats
usher in ships
whose melodic horns
blow mournful refrains
like liquid train whistles
over the bay –
is to discover
the very edge
where heartache
and music, those twin
companions, prevail.
And so at night,
they lift up
their strong arms,
and they carry their horns
under a twilight,
and they saunter out
where the moonlight glows
like a great partridge pea
hanging loose in the sky
so that they can feel
all that aloneness
there, holding court.
And then they blow their horn
to the moon,
and to the Goddess body,
and to the many bodies,
and to beauty
and to soul,
and to the vast category
of inscrutable love,
and thus is their benediction –
many forms: a tuneful ladder.
And when they find it,
their song –
they become forsaken
by every sweet summer
night,
every lost love
they could never
hold tight,
and, within themselves,
smoked holy
with the music one feels
when one is blessed full
with camphor and blues,
they depart.
Ken Meisel is a poet and psychotherapist from the Detroit area. He is a 2012 Kresge Arts Literary Fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, Swan Duckling chapbook contest winner, winner of the Liakoura Prize and the author of six poetry collections: The Drunken Sweetheart at My Door (FutureCycle Press: 2015), Scrap Metal Mantra Poems (Main Street Rag: 2013), Beautiful Rust (Bottom Dog Press: 2009), Just Listening (Pure Heart Press: 2007), Before Exiting (Pure Heart Press: 2006) and Sometimes the Wind (March Street Press: 2002). His work in over 80 national magazines including Cream City Review, Rattle, Ruminate, Midwest Gothic, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, Boxcar Review, Otis Nebula, Kentucky Review, Birdfeast, Muddy River Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Lake Effect, Third Wednesday and Bryant Literary Review.
