Singing in the Rain

Night showers on damp flowers tingled with other smells.
Alleyways on Bourbon, daily ways for urban folks,
human yolks stoppered to stare at Daniel; a human eddy
with money heady, some unsteady, umbrellas ready,
mobile awnings like shadow halos dripping diamond dew.

Funny man with felt hat clutching wet cat, seen turning
like a child on a playground, brickyard, clown spinning down
the way a wobbly top keeps tipping, slipping, sliding, until
one shoe on gutterlip found air and flew out, dropping Daniel
into an entrée with floaters heading out to Old Man.

Lips parting the waters battering his upturned face, grace
for the descending, too tired for bending, unkneeled yet peeled
like an apple without seeds to be planted, Daniel sang using
words unmentioned, a vocabulary without audience, sending him
timespinning backwards to Kate and the loin’s den.

Thoughts unsought, but taught in the manner of life manifesting
a sense of hope, though dense in despair, unrepaired, uncared,
but never unpaired (and in this way ironic), paused him to taste
one spark of love, ark of his blood remembered, but dismembered
in far off moments of darkness unparted and spaces unstarted.

What a bitter patter, Daniel thought, unmattered as he arose
from his bath; laughter heard after bitter breathing flooded
from open doorways into streets; laminated conversations
with the tone of struggles teary, sobs eerie, and ending wearily
as flesh knows the rush of untimed sendings and begins again.

Laughter not allowed, aloud, echoing through sparks of fallings rain,
lost in natal thoughts and fatal faults and stirring hungers, he whirls
slowly, face upturned in wonder, hands outstretched, burning brightly,
seeing crowds of faces blurring in broken panes,
a panoply of mirrors and dark and tearful flames.

Rue Alley stew, a bitches brew stoppered in bottle blue,
anagramatically true, guaranteed to work for you
When just nothing else will do.