AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH THE HORNS OF THE OX IN PARADOX
As a boy,
the mouth
of a scarlet plush toy
I named Pythagoras
made horse sounds
only I could hear—
until I allowed the adolescent teeth
of a dirt bike sprocket
to sever his single horn.
Newly numb and longing
to sew together his psalm,
I took up the trumpet.
Assuming no mistranslation
didn’t Pythagoras praise
units of music as sacred math—
numbers raised to the highest power?
Note the angle as
the throats of birds
raise the seeds of melody
in the sharpness
of their beaks—
is this not the geometry
my school trumpet sought
as moonlight flooded
our shoebox apartment,
and I pined to practice
what prayer might be aloud?
There are moments
I believe Pythagoras
allowed for the i
in either pine
or flight as sine of
an imaginary unit.
But do even scientists know
if the bird part of our brains
only co-signed the cones
of language to tango
our tangents towards
evergreen music.
I heard Lee Morgan
raise his blue horn
to play “Ill Wind”
and ask why scarlet
can bloom as need
inside a needle
—whether record or pine—
or sow slivers of air
into satin yards of song.
Have you ever smelled oil
on a trumpet's breath
or felt three fingers coil
to kill time round midnight?
Such flight was once branded
with the fleur de lis,
but is that how
we lost the rhyme
between wounds and sounds?
Perhaps, I only used
the trumpet’s bell
to call Apophenia closer
and catch her breath
in the bowl of my collarbone—
blowing the horn
to gather lyrics on my lips
as dew gathers on dogwood leaves.
Soon after a flying elbow
dislodged a front tooth,
i tried the trumpet again,
but found only
a ruby-hard groove.
Scarlet scrawled
on a school bathroom mirror
claimed no one armed man
can play the violin.
Yet every emergency
exit blinked—
“If trumpets sound sharp,
then what trumpeter’s mouth
isn’t an unread wound”?
Have you heard how
Lee Morgan could read
his Beloved’s sheet music
as easily as grocery notes,
but couldn’t read
her most scarlet need?
There are moments
a distant horn reminds
how Pythagoras
only knew music
as a grammar of sound,
but listen—who amongst us
has never hurt to wholly number
the hoarse notes galloping
out a bridled mouth?
