Old subject—New poem.

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

IN THE MANNER OF WHAT

SOMETIMES BURNS THE TONGUE

What is it about the way heat

consumes—not all at once, but 

as if choosing what to flame first: 

the dry leaves, then the green wood 

which resists browning and blackness

before becoming a mirror of smoke? 

Like this: how my brother entered 

my life dancing sideways 

and splintered as a flame with 

razor tipped glances becoming 

the arrows of my unmaking. 

I had thought myself complete, 

a manuscript already illuminated,

bound in the leather of certainty,

my quiver full of notched couplets.

But then, there in the courtyard,

he traced a circle in dust,

& asked me to step inside it.

I did. And the circle began to spiral

a mandala into my chest.

Of course fire quivers differently 

than we do. It fills the spaces 

between words with light or

a flight we thought was silence,

and makes both of them a door. Or

is door the wrong portal? Perhaps

more like a window through which

we see how a deer, drinking 

at stream’s edge, lifts its head

to acknowledge the arrow already

in flight—a blink before

transformation, wound and gift

indistinguishable. Even now,

I am not sure who is the archer 

or the deer, if love came to me 

or through me, if my brother

was the arrow or I was the singing 

bowstring, grateful at last

to have found a purpose: to vibrate 

enough that someone, somewhere,

might have a chance to warm 

their hands in the light.

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.