on small silences
we fit ourselves into.
High heels at daybreak
is the saddest refrain.
If you can see blues
in the ocean, light & dark,
can feel worms ease through
a subterranean path
beneath each footstep,
Baby, you got rhythm.
TOGETHERNESS
Someone says Tristan
& Isolde, the shared cup
& broken vows binding them,
& someone else says Romeo
& Juliet, a lyre & Jew’s harp
sighing a forbidden oath,
but I say a midnight horn
& a voice with a moody angel
inside, the two married rib
to rib. Of course, I am
thinking of those Tuesdays
or Thursdays at Billy Berg’s
in L.A. when Lana Turner would say,
Please sing ‘Strange Fruit’
for me, & then her dancing
nightlong with Mel Tormé,
as if she knew what it took
to make brass & flesh say yes
beneath the clandestine stars
& a spinning that is so fast
we can’t feel the planet moving.
Is this why some of us fall
in & out of love? Did Lady Day
& Prez ever hold each other
& plead to those notorious gods?
I don’t know. But I do know
even if a horn & voice plumb
the unknown, what remains unsaid
coalesces around an old blues
& begs with a hawk’s yellow eyes.
TWILIGHT SEDUCTION
Because Duke’s voice
was smooth as new silk
edged with Victorian lace, smooth
as Madame Zajj nude
beneath her mink coat,
I can’t help but run
my hands over you at dusk.
Hip to collarbone, right ear
lobe to the sublime. Simply
because Jimmy Blanton
died at twenty-three
& his hands on the bass
still make me ashamed
to hold you like an upright
& a cross worked into one
embrace. Fingers pulse
at a gold zipper, before
the brain dances the body
into a field of poppies.
Duke knew how to listen
to colors, for each sigh shaped
out of sweat & blame,
knew a Harlem airshaft
could recall the whole
night in an echo: prayers,
dogs barking, curses & blessings.
Plunger mute tempered
by need & plea. He’d search
for a flaw, a small scar,
some mark of perfect
difference for his canvas.
I hold your red shoes,
one in each hand to balance
the sky, because Duke
loved Toulouse-Lautrec’s
nightlife. Faces of women
woven into chords scribbled
on hotel stationery—blues,
but never that unlucky
green. April 29th
is also my birthday,
the suspicious wishbone
snapped between us,
& I think I know why
a pretty woman always
lingered at the bass
clef end of the piano.
Tricky Sam coaxed
an accented wa-wa
from his trombone, coupled
with Cootie & Bubber,
& Duke said, Rufus,
give me some ching-chang
& sticks on the wood.
I tell myself the drum
can never be a woman,
even if her name’s whispered
across skin. Because
nights at the Cotton Club
shook on the bone,
because Paul Whiteman
sat waiting for a riff
he could walk away with
as feathers twirled
among palm trees, because
Duke created something good
& strong out of thirty pieces
of silver like a spotlight
on conked hair,
because so much flesh
is left in each song,
because women touch
themselves to know
where music comes from,
my fingers trace
your lips to open up
the sky & let in
the night.
WOMAN, I GOT THE BLUES
I’m sporting a floppy existential sky-blue hat
when we meet in the Museum of Modern Art.
Later, we hold each other
with a gentleness that would break open
ripe fruit. Then we slow-drag
to Little Willie John, we bebop
to Bird LPs, bloodfunk, lungs paraphrased
’til we break each other’s fall.
For us there’s no reason the scorpion
has to become our faith healer.
Sweet Mercy, I worship
the curvature of your ass.
I build an altar