What I was maybe trying to do all along.

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS A PULSE OF COMPULSIVE PRAYER

What’s the difference between chocolate and any other desire darkened? Or pray tell which dark longing preys deepest in a casino—those giant shrines to Apophenia—where a guy wagers by probability and therefore can’t be addicted, but still seems to crave the crimson lips of a dark-skinned Incompleteness Theorem who dips to serve him dissolved spirits? Not only water moves in waves. Is it the Vagus Nerve which makes the octaves of chocolate in her skin weigh the same as a wager on gospel harmony in the music hall of his mouth? Is the phattest asymptote Objective Reality if Schrödinger’s Equation has imaginary units to echo the superposition of hearts or if no door except endorphins opens our hunger to rotating numbers? Are these Arabic doors & numerals mascara black or lipstick red? If you’ve never wagered and lost it all, you might get why a choir means to gather, but still not hear what it means to hymn as something closer to erasure than absolution. Is this the part of desire’s arc where Schrödinger’s cat appears black as a clarinet strung around Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s neck? Or is this the part where what’s needed is to kneel at night and thumb her name 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 FOR VIOLIN AND VIOLA
(for Hilary Hahn)

Almost the way

one of your fingers 

could begin a slide—

a bending in pitch—

or insinuate a query 

which might caress

or pinch one fret 

until a layer

of certainty sounds

as if it’s unpeeling

from two citrus bodies

—say a blood or

navel orange—

and yet not a ‘sound’ 

as in some long passage

connecting two bodies 

of water below 

a duvet of darkness

or waves of intonation

from my lips

making the leaps 

of a ghazal

into the sea

of a secret which

—when you toss 

your hair that way—

seems to flicker like

what in softer light

could be called

abandon.

But sound—

and only now

while orange petals

warm the air 

above the curl

of a wick—

as if we too

could become notes

huddled so close 

beside a Trouble Clef

that even as 

one knows it shouldn’t

another begins to silken

into a scarf of sigh

—pianissimo as budding violets—

or perhaps warns

a bare stretch

of your thigh or my neck

of what surely must lie

buried beneath 

our uncertainty,

now muscular,

where we imagine

said blood or

navel orange’s

silent ache

or don’t—

as if only until dawn,

as if only until 

a filament

—of that flickering light—

feels prone to rise or fall 

like a lip 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