Tony Grows Some Horns and Blues Again by Barry Wallenstein

Someone yells in Tony’s direction
“you’re one horny piece of the devil” –
while he’s out in the yard talking sweetly
to a curved stick he’d just found, whittled clean
and sanded smooth enough to lick
and not risk a single splinter.

There’s a jewel set in the one knot hole.

He doesn’t mind their listening or their jibes;
those over there in the distance
forgave him once so why not now
he’s thinking.
But during sleep, bumps sprout on his forehead;
when he wakes he flinches, feeling for them

Blues Again

Lying in bed, waiting for sleep
or something entirely different
to come up,
I heard a whimper in the tick tock blue
and dipped into the distance, sky blue
and far from this room with its eight bar blues
and the tick tock again of the clock
with your voice going out the door.

The weight of these sounds still bears
the color of water under a blue dome
and I am alone with a twelve bar blues,
love having fled its comfort;

lying in bed now, sweating blue bullets
a paint ball splatter to the skull—
my eyes closed, my ears dimmed;
the keenness of sleep is yards away
blinking, darting fitfully into a blue day.


		Barry Wallenstein
		Tony Grows Some Horns
		Someone yells in Tony’s direction “you’re one horny piece of the devil” – while he’s out in the yard talking sweetly to a curved stick he’d just found, whittled clean and sanded smooth enough to lick and not risk a single splinter. There’s a jewel set in the one knot hole. He doesn’t mind their listening or their jibes; those over there in the distance forgave him once so why not now he’s thinking. But during sleep, bumps sprout on his forehead; when he wakes he flinches, feeling for them Blues Again Lying in bed, waiting for sleep or something entirely different to come up, I heard a whimper in the tick tock blue and dipped into the distance, sky blue and far from this room with its eight bar blues and the tick tock again of the clock with your voice going out the door. The weight of these sounds still bears the color of water under a blue dome and I am alone with a twelve bar blues, love having fled its comfort; lying in bed now, sweating blue bullets a paint ball splatter to the skull— my eyes closed, my ears dimmed; the keenness of sleep is yards away blinking, darting fitfully into a blue day.
		Barry Wallenstein is the author of five collections of poetry, Beast Is a Wolf With Brown Fire, (BOA Editions, 1977), Roller Coaster Kid (T.Y. Crowell, 1982), Love and Crush (Persea Books, 1991), The Short Life of the Five Minute Dancer (Ridgeway Press, 1993), A Measure of Conduct (Ridgeway Press, 1999). His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals in the U.S. and abroad, in such places as Transatlantic Review, The Nation, Centennial Review, and American Poetry Review. His 1971 book Visions & Revisions: The Poets’ Practice [T.Y. Crowell] was reissued in a new and expanded edition by Broadview Press [2002] (coeditor, Bob Burr).
		© Barry Wallenstein All Rights Reserved