What I was maybe trying to do all along.

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS A PULSE OF COMPULSIVE PRAYER

(¿Voy buscando una muerte de luz que me consuma?)

What’s the difference between chocolate and any other darkened desire? And which dark longing preys more in a casino—those shrines to Apophenia— where I wager by probability and therefore can’t be addicted, yet still crave the crimson lips, anthracite eyes or static charge of a dark-skinned Incompleteness Theorem who brushes my arm when she dips to serve me dissolved spirits? Not only water moves in waves. Does the Vagus Nerve make the octaves of chocolate in her skin taste the same as a wager on gospel harmony in the music hall of my mouth? Is Objective Reality the phattest asymptote if the wave function has imaginary units to mark the superposition of hearts or if no door except endorphins opens my hunger to dervish numbers? Do Persian doors & Arabic digits feel mascara black or lipstick red?Do I discover these differences or invent them? If you’ve never wagered and lost it all, you might get why a choir means to gather, but still not hear why what it means to hymn is more dissolution than harmony. Could this be the part of the arc where Schrödinger’s cat appears black as a clarinet strung around Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s neck? Or where you begin to kneel at night and thumb her 99 names in red as a rosary?

Ceasefire Now!

 

Another Revision

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION IN E SHARP

(after Romare Bearden)

picture a man 

curling one arm 

around a neck, 

before leaning 

the spine

of an upright back

or fretting 

with one finger 

as another finds 

the G string.

Pick your base note

to hover

like a question mark 

or a ruby-throated

hummingbird 

before flitting 

on or off.

Picture a vase of notes 

budding into snowy roses

or grace notes

flowering burgundy 

across the chiffon dress 

of a woman 

whose obsidian hair 

he glimpses

through a white lace 

which worries the air.

From the bandstand, 

the spotlight may

illuminate her face

or a snifter of cognac

until it's amber

and resonating 

as a secret 

middle name.

Even then

he wouldn’t know

if she’s replaced

the only theme 

of his body

of work.

Or if later this night

she might step shiny 

from the shower, 

her hair up

in a towel

her slight smile 

curving now

into a lower clef.

Picture a few fingers 

embracing the piano keys 

of his ribs.

Who wouldn’t

sip this scene

like two fingers

of cabernet?

Pick one arm 

to curl around a neck 

before leaning

the spine 

of that upright back,

or picture one finger 

on a nipple,

and another on a navel

—to quiver or quaver

a washboard belly 

until someone hums 

“Softly as a Morning Sunrise” 

into the eager air.

Welp!

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION TAKEN FROM A PAGE IN APOPHENIA’S DIARY

maybe the one where 

she needs to write 

softly of or on 

some body

until a violet 

or inviolate 

portion of said body 

approaches the border 

of a musical phrase 

the way atone 

might approach

the border 

of intonation.

Because of course I did

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS ADAGIO FOR VIOLIN AND VIOLA
(for Hilary Hahn)

Not unlike

a twinning of fingers 

to begin a slide—

a bending in pitch—

until a layer

of uncertainty

begins to merge

two citrus bodies—

say a blood or

navel orange—

in a still life.

And yet not a ‘sound’ 

like a long passage

connecting two bodies 

of water below 

a duvet of darkness

or as waves 

of intonation

from camellia lips

making the leaps 

of a ghazal

into the sea

of a secret which

—when you toss 

your hair that way—

seems to ripple like

what in softer light

could be called

abandon, for now.

But a sound

of fingers

on taut strings—

while orange petals

warm the air 

above the wisp

of a wick—

as if any two

wooden bodies

might share a note

—or anything 

hand drawn—

to inscribe us so close 

to a Trouble Clef

that a silkening seems

to blend us into 

one long scarf of sigh

—almost pianissimo 

as freshly cut violets—

or perhaps reaches

beneath a bare stretch

of thigh or neck

that surely must

ripple with the blood 

or navel orange’s

silent ache

or not—

as if only until dawn,

as if only until 

the filaments

—of said ripple—

become prone to rise or fall 

like a brush of red chrysanthemum

on a ridge of collarbone.

Poem

 

Haiku matters.

 Special shout out to Murphy Writing of Stockton University, the Noyes Arts Garage, The Mighty Writers and Raymond Patterson for the chance to lead this writing workshop. https://pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/education/black-art-matters-atlantic-city-program/article_c8d90ef4-6e06-11ee-8922-339e6420ff65.html

New and revised haiku & senryu

 Brookland cookout

Newport in one hand

half smoke in the other

July sunlight

waving cornfield

cicada song

goose prints

across deep snow

noon prayer

Indian appaloosa

how pomegranate cedes

to elderberry

the cardboard box

but not the old woman

asleep atop it

outside the bank

the woman’s yoga mat

is cardboard 

morning fog

opening the curtains

to a gray blanket