LADY IN FLIGHT

Flight 901
      There’s a lady up there
       who rips the sunrise
       right from beneath the street lights
                      She’s a lady in flight

Gambling in the street
     she shoots past
     Ice gazed crystals dance
                                   alight
                                        and take a chance

Out on carnival thicket
    the last charge
               of the fast fleet
                      flickers
                          and then retreats
                      rushes in on gypsy jazz               Madness-at the brink

Hinx minx, the rats slink
    Down the alley way
         Burning Stones with Hollow Bones
          Sipping a concoction meant for you

High and low, on cycles of light
   Helio dives  –  Splatters the nighttime
                                  Shatters the good time,
                                         Gives it All

                                                    To the great unwritten

Down and out on 84th
      Stynus Lewis Elescot Levern
      preaches of a fire
        that’s gonna burn

Just such a fire
   Burning like a flash light
        Torching it's blues
          fires up the sockets of sister Meam

Such a hard time to bleed through all the live wires
     one day empty - one day full
         poetry rocks and roles
             explodes across a window
         upon a canvas -- a circus and a railroad

Painted thoughts in wild lines
        dangling ladies - sliding by
          slick tires and hot sighs
                    its all parading

Tinsel nerves and sparkling colors
        crisscross in a holocaust
                   of splattered shadows
                                                    The world
                                                            flickers quickly
                                                                          curtsies
                                                                                    and then retreats

It is springtime
and it is raining
Carmalade ladies brag
stick there right hands in your pockets and say
                              Make love, be my baby, lets play"

The poorly dressed, in spoken drag
                  straggle down, to pray their grays
   the weary and the lonesome
          inverted in congestion
         stop to listen
    They're the congregation

The Great J. Glorified and Galactical Maize
      Pumps them full of vertical praise
                  He lives - he moves
                  He comes - he goes
                  He challenges your will to suppose
                  He throws it out for you to grab
                              while he holds it tight in his empty hand
                  Hides something from you
                  Pretends he’s the man
                  Flickers his wand
                          over the ocean sand
                 Closes the world
                          in his closet church
                                and goes shazam

He slips down quietly
    the pious steps
    that lie - so gregariously
         behind street-side-six
    meets SiZZilin Sam - the orchestring man
        who’s mumbling medicine
   and Winks So Sly, a soft shoe madam mixing drinks
           fixes the stage for the Colossal Charade
                             to sip in upon,
                             in her fossilized sway
                                        and entertain the still stayed

 Out on Iron Beach
         in a white frothy haze
            empty drinks of music
            splash forth from city streets
  The rudiments of a quite princess      clink
                so helpless and hopeless
                          flicker and shrink
     Scattered brain pleasantries
                           in soft trance
                           prance -- in a carnival circus parade
                                                     everyone dances
                                                     to the feet -- of a bowry crowd stage

Harmony inspiration and insight
            set rhythms in flight
Then again as a lady, she might not last
             past the early morning hours
                                                 of street tramps
                            of hephelumps, and battling amps
                      but this town's her home tonight
                                                     and that’s her right
                                             as a lady in flight

In her minstrels lore
       she walks beside me
           talks within me
         brings me guidance
    when I'm waylaid past midnight

She’s a lady
  In a world that flickers
      She curtsies --and I retreat
           Softly on flight 901, the depths of the night,                                                                            Raise that lady in her flight

---

Gary Lange © 1976