What I was maybe trying to do all along.

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS THE PULSE IN COMPULSIVE PRAYER

What’s the difference between chocolate and any other desire darkened? Or pray tell which desire moves deepest in a casino—those giant shrines to Apophenia—where I wager by probability and therefore can’t be addicted, but still encounter the Incompleteness Theorem of a woman named Rosa who dips to serve me dissolved spirits? Desire moves in waves. Is it the Vagus Nerve which makes the octaves of chocolate in her skin feel like a wager on harmony in the music hall of this mouth? If—and only if—you’ve wagered and lost it all, then you might grasp why a choir means to gather, yet still not grasp what it means to hymn. Can we still assume that the phattest asymptote is Objective Reality if Schrödinger’s Equation uses imaginary numbers to model the diffusion of hearts or if no door except endorphins opens our hunger to waving numbers? Is said number or door mascara black or lipstick red? Is this the part of the arc where Schrödinger’s cat seems black as a clarinet strung around Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s neck? Or where I only desire to kneel every night and thumb her name in red as a rosary?

Ceasefire Now!

 

Another Revision

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION IN E SHARP

(after Romare Bearden)

picture a man 

curling one arm 

around a neck, 

before leaning 

the spine

of an upright back

or fretting 

with one finger 

as another finds 

the G string.

Pick your base note

to hover

like a question mark 

or a ruby-throated

hummingbird 

before flitting 

on or off.

Picture a vase of notes 

budding into snowy roses

or grace notes

flowering burgundy 

across the chiffon dress 

of a woman 

whose obsidian hair 

he glimpses

through a white lace 

which worries the air.

From the bandstand, 

the spotlight may

illuminate her face

or a snifter of cognac

until it's amber

and resonating 

as a secret 

middle name.

Even then

he wouldn’t know

if she’s replaced

the only theme 

of his body

of work.

Or if later this night

she might step shiny 

from the shower, 

her hair up

in a towel

her slight smile 

curving now

into a lower clef.

Picture a few fingers 

embracing the piano keys 

of his ribs.

Who wouldn’t

sip this scene

like two fingers

of cabernet?

Pick one arm 

to curl around a neck 

before leaning

the spine 

of that upright back,

or picture one finger 

on a nipple,

and another on a navel

—to quiver or quaver

a washboard belly 

until someone hums 

“Softly as a Morning Sunrise” 

into the eager air.

Welp!

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION TAKEN FROM A PAGE IN APOPHENIA’S DIARY

maybe the one where 

she needs to write 

softly of or on 

some body

until a violet 

or inviolate 

portion of said body 

approaches the border 

of a musical phrase 

the way atone 

might approach

the border 

of intonation.

Because of course I did

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION FOR VIOLIN AND VIOLA
(for Hilary Hahn)

Not as if

your fingers 

never cause 

a rise or fall

in pitch

to slide into a query 

or ever fail to caress 

or pinch a fret 

until certain sounds

begin to unpeel 

from two citrus bodies—

say a blood or

navel orange—

and also not 

as if a sound 

like a body of water  

might ripple below 

a duvet of darkness

or a lilt of the beloved

in the leaps of a ghazal

may lift to question why

any blossom—

blood orange

or navel—might need 

to guide or guard 

the borders of intonation 

while other flowers 

move to bloom 

alongside the sea

of a secret which

—when you toss 

your hair that way—

almost flickers 

like abandon,

but perhaps,

perhaps just once

as if somehow

beyond the usual scale

—while orange petals

wave the air 

above a wick—

doesn’t sit

a Trouble Clef

which even as it knows 

it shouldn’t

begins to denote 

a wisp of smoke

or begins to curl

into a silk scarf of sigh—

pianissimo here—if only 

to warn a length—

now bare—of neck

of what often lies

beneath certain muscles 

which may or may not 

mimic a blood or 

navel orange’s

silent tremble—

as if only until dawn,

as if only until taken

or mistaken for 

something which—

in this failing light—

could rise or fall 

like a lip of chrysanthemum

on a ridge of collarbone.

Poem

 

Haiku matters.

 Special shout out to Murphy Writing of Stockton University, the Noyes Arts Garage, The Mighty Writers and Raymond Patterson for the chance to lead this writing workshop. https://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/education/black-art-matters-atlantic-city-program/article_c8d90ef4-6e06-11ee-8922-339e6420ff65.html

New and revised haiku & senryu

 Brookland cookout

Newport in one hand

half smoke in the other

July sunlight

waving cornfield

cicada song

goose prints

across deep snow

noon prayer

Indian appaloosa

how pomegranate cedes

to elderberry

the cardboard box

but not the old woman

asleep atop it

outside the bank

the woman’s yoga mat

is cardboard 

morning fog

opening the curtains

to a gray blanket

Haiku

fluttering

from a passing car

Whitney’s voice

Insert witty title here

her last clarinet

more people have laughed at jazz

than I have

#senryu

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes” Thelonious Monk

Had Noam only known

where a queen bee sometimes brooks

any lack within her blackness

even as she springs 

towards something closer 

to emerald, sea foam, or moss—

not just phonetically before nightfall

as a fiddling to fight

or perhaps most aptly 

even to flamenco 

any late flowers—

he might could’ve heard or seen how

“colorless green ideas sleep furiously”

between.