I Jazz

I Jazz

 

I

jazz

 

I sing

I do

 

Just what

Feels good

 

I play

the notes

of it

I swing

and talk back

sound that’s right

 

I take the breath

through throat

and hold it

in the stomach

hit the fingers

on the horn

 

blow the jazz

that’s where it goes

 

 

next spring

 

I’ll go out to the garden

 

and with a stick

 

plant myself

 

and eat me in the fall

 

(in: Breathin’ My Name with a Sigh, Vancouver: Talonbooks: 1981)

 

 

JUST DROPPED OFF FUNK

 

After I turned

the corner

the rule was cod

and broccoli on rice.

 

I call this

Dedora’s Moment,

it’s that abstract.

 

We never take soot

into the backyard

unless we’re on the way

to work.

 

Where was that,

Carbonate?

Central asphalt’s new

100-year premium.

 

But that’s just

the thumbnail.

And it’s scrubable.

 

Books open

which is what keeps

things hopping.

For hope.

 

Set the draft

in the chimney

to “I fold.”

 

 

Music at the Heart of Thinking 140

 

Having tried trumpet

stutter up front

as a slip

of the tongue

 

as the length of meaning fades

adjust the lips

on every second note

 

you learn the fingering

in the stomach

much like the taste

of metal

 

these are the keys

to this grave

C, G, A flat

B, F, F sharp

– major

 

each valve is designed

to extend

the moment of language

 

if she plants

in the spring

they eat

in the fall.

 

 

Music at the Heart of Thinking 143

 

i’s pitch pipe the necessary deictic to the speaking event’s absolute moment or epidemic index of the idea is to be perfect genitive also known as the infamous “Patient Zero” a designation whose tense has become a rolling St One just to remind us that “They’re still here!!” this icon is as old as a racehorse just another temporal succession called “A Singer’s Hell” but we hums same old same old in F minor just witness the Stars and Stripes identical to the founding colonies arrows, errors, eros of St. Valentine flying this severed portion of contagious magic alive alive O every so often repeating the absolute pitch of the self meditating on its own second chanceness if only she would play the 2×4 and hammer as the fragment surfaces into the mouth trap to decide and tumble counter-clockwise between tumbling and directed swimming no geometric chance because the cell evokes memories how the hell could they get home to the tomb he says the one I found but she does too shocked to learn of the flag as an emotionally surcharged problem ok cuz here and now only lasts three seconds that’s why this text has proper pauses to emphasize that the three-second time window appears to be fully used up though he intuitively keeps trying the holy road not the now mistaken inchoate road so they needs the Indicator indicator to cymbalize the way to the honey crotch of dying while the chorus marches to the drum of we’s snare.

 

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