I

 

The Introduction

 

We like to be authorities on getting ‘round town.

Looking good, going down

To the market and filling our skirts with bread and thick aromatic cheese.

How to be hungry is about how well you get fed.

We're in the business of how to get led.

 

Meet me at the Debut café for a free consultation.

There the Castle is ever looming dark and fallen down.

It's okay, kay?

I got you covered,

With this first guarantee:

 

The human heart and mind are hungry

For movement and noise, always.

 

In this city that is smaller than your head.

Getting fatter but not getting fed.

All directions lead down to the market.

Where we all buy and sell

For passion or for profit.

 

I am the Professional - I wear the suit

of this Business of Dance and Music.

 

We are not in the business of panhandling for scraps

On street-corners from the Stranger getting stranger.

We make with what we get.

And the gettin’ is good

When you’re in the business of how to get got.

Because the journey is long to get beyond

That Castle

In the distance.

 

And, damn,

We look good, going down

To the market

And filling our skirts with bread and thick aromatic cheese.

 

CHEESE!

 

 

II

 

The Case

 

Dr. Planet’s Scientific Journal Vol. One:

Passion is human’s worst environmental waste

That teeters towards us on a toxic precipice.

And each strange fruit buried

Will yield a new crop.

 

For the human heart and mind are hungry

For movement and noise, always.

 

In this city that is smaller than your head

Getting fatter but not getting fed

 

We are living on a corner-store market of

Quick sugar fixes and heavy preservations

And running it off

On our urban treadmill policy

For keeping this jig slim.

 

A fine cocktail, indeed,

Mixing the sharpness of hunger

With this strange fruit of what

Langston Hughes called a

Dream deferred.

 

As a gold-class member with a ready raised glass

I start with this question,

Where we going with all this running on the spot?

 

What lies beyond this four foot long path?

Of straight and narrow black rubber

Overlooking an ancient building of stone and gargoyles.

Under which a MacDonald’s waits to serve me.

 

And over all, these glorious landfills

Reaching for the sky

Is that toxic precipice

Our species’ worst environmental waste

Watch how each strange fruit buried

Yields a new towering crop

 

We will fire, at will, the bulleted list:

 

• Where should we go?

• Where would we go?

• Where are we allowed to go?

• What do we want?

 

 

III

 

The Plan

 

This business will:

 

• re-define

• re-invest

 

This life’s savings; this hanging love

A thinning grown so thick and heavy

Like over-ripened fruit helplessly dripping from a rooftop vine.

Let the Farmer handle you

And let’s see your Return.

 

These fermented dreams will be the untamed resource to power even our most forgotten cells.

And crude enough to drive right through this strange number of

Politics and War

We will no longer save for days

That hang in that distance,

But pave our roads, burning

With our fresh investments.

A steady, heady momentum of rhythm and rhyme.

Renew

Recycle

Reinvent

This disposable love

And ride this New Business of Dance and Music

Into a gentle retirement plan.

 

Finish your brew ‘cause we’ve got work to do.