Kind of Blue

TRUMPET LESSONS

It eyed me at adolescence,
hot air trembling
along the curves of its bell,
hovering like held notes.
From the hallway,
the classroom beckoning
as if blue lit.
All it wanted was
to be carried home
in a case with handles,
a velvet lining,
a conical mute.
It promised to teach me
how to moan
in private.
My own mouth,
moistened so few times,
became a double bed
for it to dream in.
I recall a soft cloth,
stroking sheen,
the bright curving smile it left.
Found its body
a balm for stiff fingers,
even when I couldn't
handle its bursts of brassiness,
even when anything but
the Blues would do and
the deepest Blues
were all I knew.
And Miles
above us both—
hoarse whispers
haunting a muted mouth,
heresy set adrift on air.
There was a scented oil
glistening its valves.
Inside its coiled body,
my wet, rhythmic breath:
a note awaiting
an open ear.

On Glossolalia

The Way Faith Works

invokes notes
threading from
a flooded throat,
moving through tongues
pink and purple,
something
rising in ourselves,
but beyond us:
shrouded forms
spiritual as mist
floating across a river,
variables in
an equation of flame.
The way psalms work
is swirling sideways,
notes taken or not,
silence taken
advantage of.
Prayer is
a tongue trying
to trust lips and teeth,
cowed, yet called by
rising or open vowels
to Amen.
I hear the hymn
of your tattooed ankle,
arched eyebrow
and scarred lip.
I believe
exquisitely as a long kiss
in all the ways
our Tongues can twist.
Can the melted music
of our mouths
be held
as communion?