EXPLORATION
Dying to live
only for sax
you day dreamed
of performing,
never forgetting your
Armstrong and Mingus
78 LP recordings
you were given
by mon oncle
who heard you practice
in his basement
all hours of the night
when not eating out of
a small suitcase
in your perennial search
for a hiding place
from parental storms,
near the empty lot
and vacant apartments
between veteran graves,
train tracks
and the old florist shop,
holding in your hands
the filched sax
a pawn broker kept
for you
ready to be redeemed
every first of the month
for such a time as this
always waiting to travel
to any gig anywhere
when you found
that old motorcycle
along the Cape
by the gazebo
when the betting sailor
with broken sunglasses
in a night shirt
swearing all hell at me
by his beach house
yet winning at poker
offered you
a room
Turkish cigarettes
and a hand gun
in a display of bravado
and I’m taking him up on it.
THOSE SEQUENCES
Returning
to that turning score
to a dormant
shattering of notes
augmented as a shaken down
temper of a jazz violin guy
speaks from every
rolling augmented chords
at five A.M.
blinding sinuous eyes
whispers, secrets
buoyed in half-speech
loosing those fragments
of charred words
into love letters
on harboring hours
covering us by this gig
on the shore’s edge
unlocking visions
in a g clef technique
at a recital
of nocturnal scales
from your red eye
lashed from light
along an atonal dawn.