Charles Taylor

Dark Wings

I gave the man a portable radio. They’re hard to find because everyone is ear plugged now, listening to the already known, taking few risks, always pleased, never irritated by a bad song. I gave the man a portable radio I finally found at Radio Shack for twenty bucks. He’s a tall distinguished lawyer man, always nattily dressed, a black man, who spends most of his time on a bench in front of Pete’s Pizza downtown.

He used to always read the New York Times but they don’t sell it downtown anymore, so I gave him the radio to listen maybe to NPR, which can’t compare with the New York Times but is better than commercial pop. I found out today, beautiful man, why you sit each day and do nothing. I learned there was a fire at your home, and you were not there. You wife and children were lost.

This poem I make for you must soon end in silence. Silence is the best prayer I am capable of offering, but let me ramble a moment. I’m sure therapists have said that it was not your fault, but can you believe, ever? We hope your guilt and grief won’t wrap you in a coffin.

Come back to us, brother, if you are able. Take off your ear plugs and hear again the uncontrolled and discordant. The music beating in your head is not the final answer. There is the moment of miracle, when dark wings lift away.

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In My Honest Dreams

literary magazines are calling like coyotes from the other side of the woods. They sound like the 1950's crooner Perry Como. We are holy, they sing under the wide dark vault of heaven. We are lonely fallen stars lost in the tall grass.

Come to us. Feel our pages. Read us, for we feel abandoned. Soon the rains will come and ruin our covers. Soon the cows will come out and cover us with flies and pies. Inside our pages you can hear blood moving through the heart of our arteries. The white of our pages was built from falling moon dust.

What are you waiting for? We are like nineteenth century spinsters, made for your splendid fervid touch.

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Expanding the Public Discourse

I’m glad to learn that the word penis has finally been accepted into public discourse. I noticed it when a guy I was talking to during dinner at Black Eyed Pea said, I’m sorry, I missed what you said, I was trying to discreetly scratch my penis under the table. Would you mind repeating? A mosquito must have made its way up my pants, or maybe I left my fly open.

About a week later, a friend told me, over a hamburger lunch at Burger King, that he had a friend who was schizophrenic. When the friend’s dosages get off he hears voices emanating from his penis–not his head. I replied that although rarely schizophrenic my penis has spoken to me all my life.

Another guy asked me, in gender mixed company over wine, if the vibrations of the car ever made my penis stiff. Not since before I was married, I replied. They measure breasts in beauty contests, a feminist friend commented. When are they going to measure penis size for the Mr. Universe Contest?

What man has not dreamed of codpieces to cover his penis to make Johnny appear more massive–codpieces for all occasions, as numerous as the high heels in women’s closets.  What if one day they find Shakespeare’s codpiece? Or the codpiece of the actor who played Hamlet? Both will be worth millions more than the author’s collected works in the first folio.

People tend to prefer black and white dualistic thinking, my friend Michael commented just when the hot steamy pizza arrived at our table in Pizza Hut. They see the penis as either good or bad, hard or soft, while actually the penis enjoys various levels of tumescence throughout the day.

No silk compares to the silky skin of the penis, I told some friends of mine as we drank beers at Maggie Mays on 6th, and then I shifted in my chair to emphasize my point, or was it to shift my penis off my left leg and to my right?

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