Work ain’t hard.

THE COLTRANE IN YOU

por il miglior fabbro

Meaning you sit 

at your desk tonight

with an angel

on one shoulder

and a lion 

on the other

to circle & poke

the first coal

John’s gospel

darkens or lights.

Meaning we see

how inky-haired

& lightheaded,

you float in the space

between to trace

a central question—

can a “reunion

of broken parts”

forge a portrait 

of the Beloved

as Euler’s Identity?

Meaning we learn

how faith might shape

at least half the sound,

how apostasy might be

a lozenge loitering

on the tongue,

how you—cartographer

on a bullet train—

seek to phrase

your notes toward

a supreme fiction

—versus gothic of god—

and move past 

mere odes or elegies.

Meaning we ponder

how at the wheel

of the warship of worship

you whirl as the square root

of minus one extending

into chords which bloom

to maroon in the bluest

mountains of duende.

Meaning we discern

how certain starred charts

—once incomplete—

now become guide

in a bitter suite

as incensed ropes of smoke

muscle music 

from hunger or hunter

—how want might pay

to probe the pouty mouth

of lament or outline 

the angel and lion 

of Evangelion.

Meaning we trace

why the same L

that hinges them—

archaic name

for god or

vernacular for loss—

may laud both

ode & elegy.

Meaning what if

the “good news”

concludes

the Beloved’s Christian name

is Apophenia?

I don’t know

if sufis such as

Trane & Rumi

knew all twelve ways

to kneel and kiss the ground,

but surely their

chromatic Ohs

mean ensō

in modulation.

Meaning what if

we wish to learn 

how to be drawn

so to speak

into a circle of fifths

or to Picasso piano keys

into a grander motif.

Does this re-choir

any Acknowledgement

of “our father”?

Meaning we watch

your language to sense 

how a talent may 

also be a weight,

how your gift gives pause

before purpling

in turbulent Resolution

of relief.

How wind from a box 

may spill bottled spirits

—e pluribus unum—

as if God is an American 

Sonnet distilled

by Wanda.

Meaning we sense

a minor relative

—or a relative minor—

a key to infuse Pursuance

with a full-hipped logic,

to Bearden the burden

of our double basis

as battered sticks shatter

and every Zildjian

shivers into

a symbol brushed by

what seeps from

your horn as Psalm.

Meaning in the beginning

was the word

and the word was moan.

So you hear

Matthew & Mark

but chant John’s

enchanted four syllables 

to brook Gwendolyn’s theory

of the lyric between lines

which tonight—

as the angel & lion

conflate and conflict

—you train

towards wholly writ.