The Jangling Man
Everywhere nothing, nothing everywhere
translucent in the murky green of enclosed gas
random with executed forms.
Here is the jangling man
singing in the streets - sweet song
black in his glory
spit shine - melodious
into buses - into cars - into the street
the jangling man
loose with tomorrow and wine.
Vast stores of incomplexities
complex in the incomplexity
deified by repetition, constructed
in shards of thick myopic glass - inviolate.
Now old as her stoop
bent with the message
the message of tote bag Jesus
listen:
not to the message
but the right,
listen to the right,
to change "the evil world,
if anyone can."
Miniaturized trees grow out of concrete
not surreptitiously like blades of glass
but intentionally as if to recognize
the scheme of things:
a physical fecundity-
whore's fecundity.
Then I came unto
the valley
and he sat in shadow
head between legs
and as I approached
his eyes rose from my feet
like ratchets
section by section,
to my eye appears
his look of utter astonishment
and fear.
The clouds eat the rain
of days that turn
the inescapable earth
from water, to steel, to fire.
Say the prayers
bead on to bead
each in line
behind the screen
under the breath
whisper, bead on bead
Ave Father, Ave Maria
Lord into this sanctum, this sepulcher
whisper, whisper
Then you must scream,
scream until
your lungs clot with the blood.
Los Angeles
September, 1977
Los Angeles Series
©1977 The Jangling Man — Joseph W. Yarbrough
Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
translucent in the murky green of enclosed gas
random with executed forms.
Here is the jangling man
singing in the streets - sweet song
black in his glory
spit shine - melodious
into buses - into cars - into the street
the jangling man
loose with tomorrow and wine.
Vast stores of incomplexities
complex in the incomplexity
deified by repetition, constructed
in shards of thick myopic glass - inviolate.
Now old as her stoop
bent with the message
the message of tote bag Jesus
listen:
not to the message
but the right,
listen to the right,
to change "the evil world,
if anyone can."
Miniaturized trees grow out of concrete
not surreptitiously like blades of glass
but intentionally as if to recognize
the scheme of things:
a physical fecundity-
whore's fecundity.
Then I came unto
the valley
and he sat in shadow
head between legs
and as I approached
his eyes rose from my feet
like ratchets
section by section,
to my eye appears
his look of utter astonishment
and fear.
The clouds eat the rain
of days that turn
the inescapable earth
from water, to steel, to fire.
Say the prayers
bead on to bead
each in line
behind the screen
under the breath
whisper, bead on bead
Ave Father, Ave Maria
Lord into this sanctum, this sepulcher
whisper, whisper
Then you must scream,
scream until
your lungs clot with the blood.
Los Angeles
September, 1977
Los Angeles Series
©1977 The Jangling Man — Joseph W. Yarbrough
Reproduction prohibited without written permission.