Work ain’t hard.

THE COLTRANE IN YOU

por il miglior fabbro

Meaning you lean

over your desk tonight

with an angel

on one shoulder

and a lion 

on the other

to poke

the first coal

of John’s gospel

—how improvisation

makes a gift

of the present—

until it darkens 

or lights.

Meaning I trace

how faith becomes

a basis of

half the sound,

even as apostasy

loiters as a lozenge

on the tongue,

how you—painter

on a bullet train—

seek to phrase

all notes towards

a supreme fiction

—a gothic of frogs.

Meaning I ponder

how at the wheel

of the warship of worship

you whirl into 

the square root

of minus one—

a palette which maroons

in the bluest mountains 

of duende.

Meaning I discern

how certain starred charts

—once incomplete—

fill with symbols

in a bitter suite

as incensed ropes of smoke

muscle music 

from hunger

—how the gloss

of want can divine

the pouty mouth

of lament to voice

the angel & lion 

of Evangelion.

Meaning I learn

why the same L

which hinges them—

archaic name

for god or

vernacular for loss—

becomes locus

for both 

lilac & lotus.

Meaning what if

the “good news”

somehow concludes

the Beloved’s Christian name

is Apophenia?

I don’t know

if Rumi & Trane

knew all twelve ways

to kneel and kiss the ground,

but surely their

chromatic Ohs

signal ensō

in modulation.

Meaning I hear

how inky-haired

& lightheaded,

you float in the space

between to trace

this central question—

can Euler’s Identity

reveal a portrait 

of the Beloved

as a “union

of broken parts”?

Meaning I wish

to learn how 

to be drawn

so to speak

into a circle of fifths

or to Picasso piano keys

into a grander motif.

Would this re-choir

any Acknowledgement

of “our father”?

Meaning I watch

your language to sense 

how a talent may 

also be a weight,

how a gift 

can give pause

or purple

any possible Resolution.

How wind from a box 

wants to spill bottled spirits

—e pluribus unum—

as if God was an American 

Sonnet distilled

by Wanda.

Meaning I trace

your “little songs”

—a minor relative

of a relative minor—

keys to infuse Pursuance

with a full-hipped logic,

to Bearden the burden

of our double basses

until battered sticks shatter

and every cymbal

feels brushed by

what seeps from

your horn as Psalm.

Meaning I begin

to wonder if

in the beginning

was the word

and the word was moan.

Because you mimic

Matthew & Mark

but your canvas

of John’s four syllables 

seeks a lyric cartography

of our human interior—

which tonight 

means to frame

whatever words

you train towards 

wholly writ.