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
towards a freer jazz with ashes buried under some trees by a ¿dead? cat in a different key
why do we hush to enter
what are not shrugs
or hugs but still mostly full
of sharp edged petals
shielding colorful fruit
which could perhaps function
—beloved— as chromatic points
in the pentatonics
of The Black Raspberries,
long known to evolve
into a longing to grasp
and risk a crimson pinch
while 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 tidal desire dug by Kearney
from a Pointillist tone poem
of a pond which seems
tailored on the edges by Cécile
or Nate or Cecil pleating
secret theories of jazz
we once tried to retrofit
from “Le Front Cache”
or even the knees
of a more natural
man or woman, yet
keep modeling or yodeling
beyond the velocity
of wavy phrases
or Harriet sleepily mulling
over a syntax of velvet
deities which Apophenia—
our anthemic diva—
dreams to bray or splay
how bananas it is
that they’re berries
or collapsed reasons
for Drunken Gardens
but maybe just fell or felt
like a trio of Autumn Leaves
to shade in or abrade out
these parakeet feelings
seeking to query
what appears to change
or even changes to appear
as we aim to measure
some berried desire
with its green silence
bladed nearly to the point
of a sound science?
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE—Take 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 PLAYED BY THE HORNS OF THE OX IN PARADOX
As a child, 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 one 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
also allowed for the i
in lyric as sine of
an imaginary unit.
But I haven’t heard
if the bird part
of our brains only co-signed
the seeds of language
to angle our tangents
towards an evergreen musing of music.
Can’t the bloom inside a blossom
be 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 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 did they lose the rhyme
between sounds and wounds?
I hear 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 also claim
to 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 see what her breath might leave
in the bowl of my collar bone.
After an errant elbow
freed one front tooth,
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 signal
this—“What horn player’s mouth
hasn’t bloomed
into a misread wound”?
Have you heard how
jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan
could read his Beloved’s sheet music
as easily as her grocery notes,
but still misread
her most notable longing?
There are some nights I think
Pythagoras only grasped 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?
