Night Dream (Live At Green Mill Jazz Club, Chicago1999)

Lonely the roses of Avondaire /
sing as though somebody still may care.
They live only for the dream of living /
so come follow where /
they will take you there.
I once was apprenticed /
to a man who was living
in the eye if the hurricane /
to know despair,
He knew all the dreams by heart /
just like sailing in a boat of crystal silence /
seeing visions /
of the world / of life within a life.
In a turning /
like a burning /
came turning /
out of everything stirring /
and what had begun before
but all wrapped up /
in one great godly becoming -
Tumbling /
and fumbling /
and stumbling
into bumbling /
and rumbling along -
whirling it /
and swirling it /
and twirling it /
and hurling it /
and overturning it /
and burning it again.
I shared a whirling dervish out on the side of a hill called metaphore vivace
swinging en route to a nascent solar /
with the scissored visored blizzard
wizard /
gizzarding planets and secrets within /
like an avatar.
While meanwhile /
in turnstyling /
and spinning over him
spells bespeaking kingdoms in the dark
calling me to yield /
knighting me in a field /
covered with armies
and with princes. All were signing /
cannons shining /
pennants flying.
And when he spoke to me he sang /
and his words really rang -
this child of the knowledge of the beauty of the night -
he sang to me of masters passing on /
of father after father after father
climbing up into the lotus bloom/
upon the tortoise's back
and of grandfathers /
who danced through their living a longer time ago.
He showed me a palace in time /
in which all the talismans
from all the zeuses /
swing upon a pendulum of secrets
in a circle that remembers /
and when asked a question will surrender
every secret key to every hero's message /
given to every heart in time
but only known to but a few /or so it seems.
When I asked of them /
what shall I do /
to see the god?
They only said /
the goldenrod /
which grows inside of
every secret dream you dream /
while waiting for the god -
it-s a symbol from the man in the fire.
ling you the thing you desire
is a garment that covers the riddle of everything secretly wished for
and of the world of which you are an inheritor.
Suddenly the chamber was flooded with light /
hurling me skyward like a meteorite/
When I fell to earth /
I saw everything in a blur.
I saw that time was accelerating in a curve
and the palace in which I had stood /
it was flowing, like lava, on acres of
woodland
like a pompei-an mountain volcano /
making archipelago
and destroying the planet / at fortissimo
bulldozing everything down /
to make room for what
was a byzantine /
a labarynthine /
knotty mess of
manifolding passageways /
a tangle of confusion /
where the walls made /
an asylum of baroque.
Like a joke / words were spoken
to provoke me / and to toss me
nude and empty / to the sea.
But I would have none of it.
I simply turned my back and walked out/
of the dreamscape/
into landscape /
like a bedroom / where I heard that
Lonely the roses of solitaire /
sing as though somebody still may care.
They live only for the dream of living /
so come follow where they will take
you there.
Stay awake - no mistake - dance the dream awake - and awake.'