Work ain’t hard.

THE COLTRANE IN YOU

por il miglior fabbro

Meaning how you lean

over your desk tonight

with an angel

on one shoulder

and a lion 

on the other

to circle & poke

at the first coal

of John’s gospel

until it darkens 

or lights.

Meaning I trace

how faith becomes

the 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

your notes toward

a supreme fiction

—a gothic of frogs—

that could stage

an ode to elegy.

Meaning I ponder

how at the wheel

of the warship of worship

you whirl as the square root

of minus one extending

a palette which blooms

to maroon 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 want can divine

the pouty mouth

of lament and voice

the angel & lion 

of Evangelion.

Meaning I learn

why the same L

which hinges them—

archaic name

for god or

vernacular for loss—

might laud both

elegy & ode.

Meaning what if

the “good news”

only concludes

the Beloved’s Christian name

is Apophenia?

I don’t know

if sufis such as

Rumi & Trane

knew all twelve ways

to kneel and kiss the ground,

but surely their

chromatic Ohs

could mean 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 “reunion

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 is an American 

Sonnet distilled

by Wanda.

Meaning I trace

your “little songs”

—a minor relative

of a relative minor—

as 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 

brooks Gwendolyn’s lyric 

to mark a cartography

of our human interior

and tonight recites

the Angelion

you train towards 

wholly writ.