Saturday, February 24, 2024

Little song for big John

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

AS A SONNET IN A CONVEX MIRROR

(a found portrait of late Ashbery)


“But what is this [apophany] the porch of 

As it veers in and out, back and forth, 

Refusing to surround us and still the only

Thing we can see? [Intention] once 

Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,

Though mysteriously present, around somewhere.

But we know it cannot be sandwiched 

Between two adjacent moments, that its windings 

Lead nowhere except to further tributaries 

And that these empty themselves into a vague 

Sense of something that can never be known 

Even though it seems likely that each of us 

Knows what it is and is capable of 

Communicating it to the other.”

Monday, February 12, 2024

You Already Know

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS MUCH ADU ABOUT NOTHING

“Didn’t I tell you what I believe,

didn’t I say that . . .”

Sade


Ifemi, how many REM cycles 

since your love leaped 

the ravine of No Return

to open me as a sommelier

would a wine bottle,

since the bright crescents

of my nails waxed across

the black sky of your back,

since the saxophone

signaled tomorrow?

Learnèd astrologer

I found your love

amidst a constellation

of mercurial lips

glossy enough

to lapse all logic,

& unlike logic

you bid me crave

the crow-colored tresses

of what many pray

to be saved from.

Freckled cheeks of Jesus,

who can tell how many

calligraphic kisses

could be needed to spell 

or dispel what butterflies

write in rooms filled

with strawberry irises. 

It’s been written

—sense the saxophone

signal’s sorrow,

a fool for roses

is a fool for rain—

but how to uproot

the twin legends

of your legs

blooming into heels

stiletto enough

to fell a forest entire?

Ifemi, I found your love

both freed and fried 

as the symbols inside

a theorem derived 

from four types of feral.

Yet not symbols & not derived. 

Scents the saxophone

signals borrowed—

let’s not wrestle

with how you left me

or the difference between

a half wound and what

wound up happening.

Or what it could mean

to remain untethered

by an ankle tattoo’s

brassy passion 

for adinkra charms

and police bracelets.

Perhaps I hummed

the wrong songs

with the right lyrics

or the right songs

with the wrong lyrics,

but how many dawns

found your love

hung over the railing

of Old Crow moans

or sizzling unstrung

between a first flame of bud

& one last good buy?

And how many more

need spot me flitting

like a Leopard moth

around a porch light,

turning to unlock

a mystery like magnetism

with keys hidden under

the tea rose carpet

of another woman’s tongue?

Thursday, February 01, 2024

NaHaiWriMo album

 It’s National Haiku Writing Month (and Black History Month too) so this page is going to be the one I use to collect all the haiku I write this month. As usual I will try to write at least 30. 


this low buzz

after a quick smoke

hornet’s nest


wind chimes

the rising melody

of light rain


w w w

in the left of the field

goose tracks


filled mostly

with moonshine

ghost apples


Spring balloon

a line from Sylvia Plath

trails behind


luz di kel lua

riba ponta di anda

tubaron azul


moonlight

at the point of a wave

a blue shark


dripping faucet not just water slipping down the drain


[This is probably the blackest haiku I will ever write—]


May breeze  Frankie & Comet & Lysol & Maze



spreading frost

an old man combs his beard

in a store window


bay waters

a black woman brushes

a boy’s hair


stiff breeze

the skateboarder’s back

gets gnarly


old newspaper

moves down the street

kick kick glide


Black History Month

we admire 28 ways

to eat peanuts 


February breeze

outside the break room

night time stars


February first

the librarian’s red lips

black liner green eyes


train ride

the grin of the small boy

inside


moving 

from rider to rider

the conductor’s smile


mid-February

only the pine barrens

pine


deep winter

a white blanket

is everything


swept up

in a woman’s hairstyle

gold leaf


across the room

filling a woman’s glass

bartender’s smile 


cloud moving

across the church roof

a black cat


navel orange

the sea beneath

peeling


geese honking

at the intersection

of sky and pond


still water

where the treetops

meet the sky


National Zoo

under the afternoon sun

a lion’s mane






Wednesday, January 31, 2024

New Poem

 A NOTE AFTER EQUINOX


In the crescent moonlight 

perhaps some of this 

could form a chorus.


But have we derived this far, 

come this close to a calculus, 

just to make song?





 


Wednesday, January 24, 2024

I might have finally gotten this poem right.

 

THREE WRONG NOTES


Note the diameter of an invisible ink tattoo 

as if their love could hide a crossword hint 

like “Clueless dope for dopamine”

But not because your inner twin 

sold all your Rap albums for 

a white powder that made you feel 

touched the Father or tailed like Comet

or because a certain name trails off 

with the number e as if to signify 

the compound interest of their love

in a continuously looming silence. 

Does an infinite series of silences about

their love imply addition or addiction? 

In one language you understand, 

pegadu means touching and begins 

with the letter P.  Meaning Pi is filled 

with touches of fruitful irrationality, 

and may hide a circle’s Private Key. 


Note how rumors of you crossing the street 

to sneak rides on fire trucks are irrational, 

but not because you’re vain or became 

a pyromaniac. The circumference 

of urinal cakes may be solved with Pi 

or dissolved with pee. Is it irrational 

that you looped like an extension cord 

while trying to find the value of P, 

but got beat like a bowl of egg yolks 

for wetting the bed? During the beating 

was the shape of their lips agĂ¡pÄ“ or agape? 

Has it not been noted that the trauma 

of the son only feels transcendental 

due to the ratio of the diameter which 

severs him to the circumference of that

which makes him appear whole?


I don’t know how the Sign of the Asp could be key, 

but note how any Volta can turn as currents 

of a Ghanaian river or as currents alternating 

as a weathervane until any cryptic tattoo might 

simply signify how being touched haunted you 

because their love was like the Holy Ghost.