JAZZ ON A TRAM CAR
Rocking my voice
against the walls
of a tram car
the blushing rhapsodist
shoved out
of his simple doorway
by a greedy landlord
accused of being
young,
a red diaper baby
and without experience
expelled from school
with an F in everything
on his soiled report card
but with a cool disposition
(and for the ruling class
that’s the greatest crime
for the bourgeois principal
against an adolescent)
who writes graffiti
in bold fashion
on signboards and walls
in an unappeased language
no one cares
to read anymore
at a time when words
collapse without
any dialogue or dialectics
and all you hear
are plagiarized phrases
from long term theses
of mind-body Squares
who deny even triangles
of love’s satisfaction
without even
a Platonic sense
of thin skinned sex
everyone dreams about,
when we were
compelled to study
our lessons from dullards
with no Socratic imagination
relying on facts
not of life but facades
of semi-literary prose
three centuries old,
but here is a sax player
who has no teacher
to speak of
asking no favors,
appears on a tram
out of nowhere
at a time
when cities
burned like Rome
and he had to flee
bonfires of reaction
to a shivering space
on the overhead train
blowing his riffs
from slums of indifference
and aunties ignorance
running away
with a back back
in a black sun
of half-eaten memories,
lightening up on an arm
full of improvisation
standing down
on the sleeping car
railing at himself
like any vagabond
or troubadour
without music sheets
with his pawned sax
always aiming to play
over the hottest vibes
even on a cold train.