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 loved or nothing 

that ever loved 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 human 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.