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.

Night Train redux

 This is the current version

BETCHA BY GOLLY WOW

(for Phyllis Hyman)

What blue wail is this, whose child so alone

St. Clair Village playgrounds fill with her notes

that drift past Sawmill Run til dusk1? And quotes

brick echoes, bounce as rubber balls off stone

walls reflecting deep in Southside streams

or aim to fill a glass with half-poured woes.

Then pulls bipolar boxcars1 in its flow,

her breath now quickly gaining speed and steam.

Phyllis, how your lips could pucker with flair,

and barely brushed my naked neck one night

with little scarves of whistled melody

whittled from June2 rain. What now haints the air

and dares to dip or flutter by3? What kite

straining at its cord, rising to twist free?

——————————

1 last train   her mascara still running

2 June darkness   fireflies and police lights

3  on the shoulder of a pallbearer  a butterfly