Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Visions and revisions


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 PRINCIPLETake X

towards a freer jazz with ashes buried under some trees by a ¿dead? cat in a different key


although surely not shrugs 

and mostly full

of sharp edged petals

shielding pseudo-fruit

which could perhaps function 

—beloved—as chromatic points 

in the pentatonics

of The Black Raspberries,

do we dare snub or shoulder

our longing to grasp

and chance a bright red pinch 

not knowing

if a light note later

the hidden position 

of a thorn section

might tincture i 

or for a time lapse into

some conjugation 

of a kernel dug by Kearney

from a Pointillist tone poem 

of a pond which didn’t feel

tailored in the back by Cécile

or Nate or Cecil pleating 

secret fundamentals of jazz 

we once tried to fashion

out of “Le Front Cache

or even the knees of a natural 

man or woman, yet 

kept modeling or yodeling 

beyond the velocity

of wavy phrases

or Harriet sleepily mulling

over a syntax of velvet

deities which Apophenia—

our anthemic diva—

might bray or splay

into elaborate diagrams

or collapsed reasons

for our Drunken Gardens

but maybe just felt or fell 

like a trio of Autumn Leaves

to venture in or winter out 

any parakeet feeling

as if seeking to query 

what appears to change 

or could even disappear 

should we aim to measure 

such berried desires 

with a silence bladed 

nearly to the point 

of a sound science?




AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLETake Y

a free jazz of ashes buried under some trees by a ¿dead? cat in a different key


or why I may feel

the shrugs merely seemed 

mostly petals which

perhaps might reveal to us—

beloved—laced bullet

points on the pentatonics

of The Black Raspberries

or conceal the red pinch 

if a grace note later

the taxing position

of the horns pierced I

for the first time

via a Pointillist painting 

of a pond tailored 

in the moment 

by Cecil pleating 

some fundamental theorem 

of jazz we couldn’t 

quite fathom,

yet imagined again and again 

beyond the velocity 

of his veined phrases

or the branching syntax 

of velvet leaves which

Apophenia—

princess of improvisation—

appears to fray or splay

as attempts to diagram

for science reasons

a Quantum Garden

or at least a chance

to venture in or enter out

a seam of rustling 

foliage which collapses

when we observe

any berried type 

of ghost note

i might parakeet

mostly because

it is not . . .



THE COLTRANE IN YOU

por il miglior fabbro


nightly probes

the first oh

of this emotion

your dark matter

splays open.

Meaning inky-haired 

& lightheaded,

you begin to trace

a circle at your center

pondering if

in a reunion

of broken things

a portrait of the Beloved 

could be Euler’s Identity?

Meaning since the tint

is at least half the sound

and apostasy can loiter

on the tongue as a lozenge,

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 

which could move 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 heard as splay

—how want might prey 

to probe 

the pouty mouth

of imagination

or query the angel 

and lion of Evangelion

if the same L 

that links them—

archaic name 

for god or

vernacular for loss—

could also superpose 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 ensō

in modulation,

how to be drawn

around a circle of fifths 

or to 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 what you seek to recite 

through your horn

as Psalm.

Meaning since a talent

may also be a weight,

your gift gives 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

from 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 might twist

to conflate or conflict

as they near

wholly writ?


AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS THE OX IN PARADOX


Long ago, Pythagoras

(my purple plush toy)

made joyful noises

only I could hear

until the metal teeth

on a bike sprocket of logic 

severed his single horn.

Newly numb and seeking 

to sew together his song,

I took up the trumpet.

Assuming no mistranslation,

didn’t Pythagoras praise music 

as sacred math—

numbers raised to the highest power?

Here I could note how 

the throats of birds 

tend to angle when raising 

the seeds of melody 

in their beaks.

Was this also the geometry

of my school trumpet 

angling to be muted 

as moonlight bloomed 

in our shoebox apartment,

so I could practice 

what beauty was aloud?

I believe Pythagoras

could’ve allowed for the i

in lyric as sine of 

an imaginary unit.

Perhaps the bird part of our brains 

only co-signed the seeds of language

to angle our tangents

towards an evergreen musing of music.

Could the bloom inside a blossom

be the need inside a needle— 

whether pine or phonograph 

—to equally sow slivers of air 

into some scents of song?

Have you ever smelled oil

on a trumpet's breath

or felt rhythm uncoil

to kill time around midnight? 

Logicians still aim to prove that death

can bloom into a number of fugues

—tho little logic—

since death was once branded

with the fugitive logo of the fleur de lis,

but could they prove there’s any difference 

between numbering or numbing 

our wounds?

I swear 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, I say

I see lyrics collecting on lips 

as dew collects on dogwood leaves.

But do I? Maybe,

I only took up the horn 

to learn how to hold Apophenia

and imitate what her breath might leave

in the bowl of my collar bone.

After an errant elbow 

freed some front teeth,

i tried to pick up the horn again,

but red graffiti scrawled

in a school bathroom stall

claimed a one armed man

can never play the violin.

And yet, the color 

of every emergency 

exit seems to ask 

“What trumpeter’s mouth 

hasn’t bloomed 

into a misread wound”?

Have you heard how Lee Morgan 

could read his Beloved’s grocery notes

as easily as any sheet music,

but still misread her most notable longing?

There are some nights I think

Pythagoras only measured music

as the grammar of sound making sentences,

but listen—who amongst us hasn’t needed

to harness the hoarse notes 

galloping out of a bridled mouth?