Voila!

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH  THE HORNS OF THE OX IN PARADOX

As a child, 

a scarlet plush toy

I named Pythagoras

made joyful horse noises

which only I could hear—

until the adolescent teeth

on a bike sprocket of logic 

severed his single horn.

So newly numb and seeking 

to sew together his song,

I took up the trumpet.

And didn’t Pythagoras 

praise music as sacred math—

numbers raised to the highest power?

Note how the throats of birds 

tend to angle when raising 

the seeds of melody

in the sharpness

of their beaks—

was this not the geometry

of my school trumpet 

as moonlight muted

our shoebox apartment,

and I pined to practice

what beauty was aloud?

I want to believe Pythagoras

allowed for the i

in either pine

or lyric as sine of 

an imaginary unit.

But I don't know,

if the bird part of our brains 

only co-signed the seeds 

of language to angle 

our tangents towards 

an evergreen music.

Can’t scarlet blossom

as the need inside a needle— 

whether record or pine

—to sow slivers of air 

into some sense of song?

Have you ever smelled oil

on a trumpet's breath

or let three fingers coil

to kill time round midnight? 

Logicians once aimed to prove 

that death could form

any number of fugues

—with little logic—

since death was then branded

with the fire of the fleur de lis,

but is that how they lost the rhyme 

between wounds and sounds?

My boy T claims this 

may be the truest thing about beauty:

a lyric can be a useful essay,

but an essay is a useless-ass lyric.

When I play the lyre, 

do I play lyrics collecting on lips 

as dew collects on dogwood leaves?

Perhaps, I only took up the horn 

to learn how to hold Apophenia

and feel what her breath might leave

in the bowl of my collar bone.

After an errant elbow 

dislodged a front tooth,

i tried to pick up my horn again,

but the red graffiti scrawled

in a school bathroom stall

said a one armed man

can never play the violin.

And yet, the hue

of emergency exits

seems to ask—

“Since trumpets

often sound so sharp

what horn player’s mouth 

isn’t a red wound”?

Have you heard how 

jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan 

read his Beloved’s sheet music

as easily as grocery notes,

but never read

her most scarlet longing?

There are some nights I think

Pythagoras only knew music

as the grammar of sound making sentences,

but listen—who amongst us hasn’t needed

to number the hoarse notes 

galloping out of a bridled mouth?

Three Haiku

 Here are three haiku for the algorithm—

1. 

Ramadan—

the weight of the sun

on his back

2.

barely

hanging on

in this elevator

plum blossoms

3.

floating into

the cracked hospice window

church bells

You need another lover like you need a hole in your head (another revision)

 BAM!!!

The Idea of Improvisation at Newport '61

(With apologies to Oscar Hammerstein and John Coltrane)

Butter on biscuits and denim on dresses,

Perfume on pillows and long sassy tresses,

Sweet tea from tumblers in summertime swigs,

These are a few things a cat like me digs.

Raindrops & fingers follow Trane

On the radio of my car, while

Roses fill an empty seat

And mirror your smile, white as

Whiskers curling

On a Sufi’s chin. Curious 

Kittens, they favor your

Bright eyes, those twin

Copper lamps, twin

Kettles of cinnamon.

And what else might feel

Warm as your hands? Not knitted

Woolen scarves, or those red

Mittens you wore last winter. Lost

Brown legs, where are you?

Paper bag brown, rapt

Packages of promise. Are you

Tied up on the phone, caught

Up in some tryst

With a new lover like a

String of pawned pearls?

These questions vex—

Are mere roses sufficient?

A light drizzle falls, a

Few loose pearls 

Of rain dissolve in my hand, as

My fingers recall your

Favorite place to be kissed—

Things they might coax you to say.

Cranberry candles and cognac in crystal,

Flannel pajamas and kisses that tickle,

Feeding you chocolate with raisins and figs,

These are a few things I really do dig.

Final version?

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

AS AN ALGORITHM OF THE BLUES

Although this 

ain’t the ballad 

of a wounded boy,

tonight a needle descends

into a record’s black skin

like a dove winging 

into a window—

until you may hear

in the alto horn’s tone

an extra stress 

on the moan in “Testimony.”

But listen—no matter 

how high the moon—

could even Charlie Parker

chart the burdens of a bird

into “Ornithology”

—especially if 

he never leaves

his wife & infant son

the way autumn 

might litter a lawn?

Let’s be clear—

blues may be nothing 

he ever loves or nothing 

that ever loves him—

just some jive frequencies

of water or sky, or 

a bright bandanna

tied across his brow. 

But if nothing aqua

ever lived in his lungs

how could a moaned “No”

connect his breath

to epistemology?

Joy claims birdsong proves

the futility of words

and what poet could improve

its contrafactual flow?

Some nights 

even the moon appears

to take notes 

as Parker makes a fractal

of their phrase—

then flattens & sharpens 

one eighth into a swollen vein.

This paradox may

remain hypodermic,

a beaked flame of bird-speak

beneath a spoon’s black skin,

but let’s say the song ain’t over.

I don’t know why

some cats try to pull

from Parker’s tone 

as much wit as Witness,

while others say the warp 

& woof of the Blues 

weaves hip bandannas

to flag down the yellow taxis 

of square axioms.

But I do know

that many claim

“Bird lives”

in this address 

of ghost notes

unexpected as ketchup 

on corn flakes.

Of course imagination 

sometimes flares 

into an act of faith

and perhaps even the hands

of an abandoned boy 

might find themselves

waving outside a window

as Bird mines his alto’s 

phonographic memory—

which cannot choose 

what it may or may not save.

Could the tiny eyes

of a baby bird 

ever drive him

to try to push 

the square pegs 

of an arpeggio

into a cobalt whole?

“Take a phrase, 

then fracture it”—

he reciphers

the solo to say 

until even the dirge

of a wounded dove

might fray into ontology—

but still not free

his slender hands

to twist the band 

into a bandage.