Raymond Chandler in the Desert

A dead man is heavier than a broken heart
is what he said, and the big sleep
is only a lullaby away.

Beyond a hill, an old man chanted
the call to prayer.

A dry wind tugged
the lapel of his wrinkled suit
and sprinkled sand in his glass of whiskey.

I know a guy who sells Turkish carpets
cheap, I said. Just say the word.

Jen @ 17

There is Jen at 17,
standing alone on a Lake Michigan dune,
listening to the hush and mumble of waves.

The slightest breath of June
teases her long, dark hair,
and the sun settles
a score with Wisconsin.

She presses her palms together,
then opens them.

This is when she releases 37 seconds--
soft & quiet as cottonwood fleece
drifting from light to shadow.

This is when she sings a song
that won't be written for 20 years.

There is Jen at 17,
dune dancing and last-chancing youth.

One by one,
the street lights of Lake Shore Drive
begin to bloom.

Thank you, Raymond Chandler.

The main hallway in the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying.

(The Big Sleep, 1939)

My Last Dance

She sang the forty-four madrigals of night
and the forty-four canzonettas of day.
She played a mean violin.

She said
twice is more than we deserve.
She said it twice.

She bought my shadow for a kiss.

She bought my shadow
and poured it in the river at St. Louis,
and I waited under the Vicksburg bridge
where the pylons rise like Solomon's pillars.

I bare-hand fished my shadow from the shallows,
and it fought me like a channel cat,
my fist in its throat. I wrestled my shadow,
and she played her cat gut violin on the muddy shore.

She cut on those strings and sang
the forty-four canzonettas of day,
the forty-four madrigals of night.