I may be merely deluding myself, but I have always considered myself a poet in the tradition of radical love, like for example the Sufis. These revisions of a few poems from my book “Ideas of Improvisation” on Thread Makes Blanket Press, might be the closest I’ve come yet to achieving that dream.
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH THE YOU IN NOCTURNE
for Yen
Heart-taker,
haven’t I always loved
to say 'acetaminophen,'
even before I knew
if it rhymed
with the currency
or voltage of your name
or even before the faces
of other women
appeared to warn
how words could twist
into the darkness
of nibs of licorice?
Unlike your name
acetaminophen isn’t
a flame-colored word
pitting spots of Sriracha
on the white cloth of silence,
although both have
been known to raise
a man’s blood pressure
like the top of Schrödinger’s box.
I still dream of some words
Swedish massaging
knots of my heart,
even as others
like 'acetaminophen,'
sharpen into steel swords
to draw blood.
Your name
retains a nocturnal hum—
a lunar pill in a language
not under my tongue.
Old men
who draw thin
in poker games
continue to claim
Hope never becomes
habit forming.
A Knave of Hearts,
i may have licked
its stains from both lips
while attempting to smile
in neurotypical.
Did Hafez not write
that the gnarly roots
of hope
may be boiled
into an extract
to alleviate
even the barking cough
of loneliness?
Some nights my bark
is a listing boat,
other nights
an overcoat.
Because it
sometimes seems
your eyes dot
an expired prescription,
my cheeks still seek
to rhyme
with acetaminophen.
Perhaps this simply
lacks a calculus
of lavender,
but tonight
let one sliver
of the white pill
of the moon
find the mouth
of this man
kneeling
to lift the weight
of your name
until light.
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE—Take X
a free jazz of ashes buried or scattered by a ¿dead? cat in a different key
which perhaps could appear
—beloved—as points
on the musical taste
of The Black Raspberries,
although the shrubs might be
mostly bladed petals and
it was quite a pinch
when a light note later
the tax purposes of thorns
entered us for the first time
via a Pointillist painting
of a pond that sounded
tailored in the moment by Cecil
pleating some fundamental theorem
of jazz i hadn’t fathomed,
yet heard again and again
beyond the decaying
of those phrases
or the raspy syntax
which Apophenia—
that cleromantic diva—
might’ve brayed or splayed,
maybe to diagram
for spiritual reasons
as a Drunken Garden,
but why not also
to venture in
or splinter out until
some feeling inspires
a round of blade-dancing
raised up to the peak of
a sound science?
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE—Take Y
a free jazz of ashes buried or scattered by a ¿dead? cat in a different key
which might appear—
beloved—between points
on the musical taste of
The Black Raspberries,
or why I believed
the shrubs could be
mostly petals and
it was quite a pinch
when a grace note later
the tax purposes
of the horns pierced I
for the first time
via this Pointillist painting
of a pond tailored
in the moment
by Cecil pleating
some fundamental theorem
of jazz I couldn’t
quite fathom,
yet heard again and again
beyond the decaying
of these phrases
or the gaspy syntax which
Apophenia—
princess of improvisation—
seemed to fray or splay
into hours to diagram
for science reasons
into a Quantum Garden
and why not
venture in or enter out
until some desire requires
a godly type of ghost note
i might believe in
mostly because
it is not . . .
THE COLTRANE IN YOU
por il miglior fabbro
nightly probes
the first oh
of whatever emotion
your dark matter
splays open.
Meaning inky-haired
& lightheaded,
you trace
a circle at your center
pondering if
in a reunion
of broken things
a portrait of the Beloved
might be Euler’s Identity.
Meaning since the tint
is at least half the sound
and apostasy can loiter
on the tongue as a lozenge,
won’t you seek to phrase
which shade of faith
versus gothic of god
might serve more
than mere ode or elegy?
Meaning at the wheel
of the warship of worship
you vie for the root of unity
to unravel extended chords
and strive to maroon
in the bluest mountains
of duende.
Meaning certain starred charts
—once incomplete—
may become guide
in a bitter suite
as incensed ropes of smoke
muscle music from hunger
also known as splay
—how want preys
to probe
the pouty mouth
of imagination
or queries the angel
and lion of Evangelion
if the same L
that links them—
archaic name
for god or
vernacular for loss—
also superposes the word
in the world.
Meaning what if
the “good news”
merely concludes
the Beloved is Apophenia?
Since all musicians
learn at least twelve ways
to kneel and kiss the ground,
surely the second O
of said emotion
could mean all things
in modulation,
perhaps how to be drawn
around a circle of fifths
or better Picasso keys
into a piano’s grand motif?
Maybe re-choir
the Acknowledgement
of our father?
Meaning a relative minor
to greater absolve
any resolve for Resolution
or a full-hipped logic
to Bearden the burden
of our double basis
until battered sticks shatter
and every Zildjan
begins to shiver
into symbols
brushed by the breadth
of our questions.
Meaning since a talent
may also be a weight,
your gift can give pause—
purpling in turbulent
Pursuance of relief,
wind from a box
spilling uncertain bottled spirits
—e pluribus unum—
as if God was an American
Sonnet massaged
into the Psalms
of Wanda’s hands.
Meaning what
of this gift—
this petition
signed by two lips
bobbing about
a Brooks theory
of the Lyric
between lines
that can twist
to conflate or conflict
until they near
wholly writ?
