Thanks for that ignorance
which led me to pick up the cuatro
that first time in the music store, to put it back on its rack
still knowing nothing of it.

Thanks for that luck which soon led me
to a concert where I saw it played
by its master Yomo Toro, for that stroke
of light and awe that laid me down.

Thanks for the day in Lowell
where I met a luthier who made such things,
who cut them from living trees in the old style
and who played one of his own for me.

Thanks for the surprise of Yomo Toro,
again, appearing before me at a free concert
at the local Latin Festival, once again 
allowing me to bathe in not-knowing’s joy.

Thanks, then, for what happened 
when I heard he was ill, was dying.
Thanks, then, for what drove me
to the local music store that day

to find one, to play one, to know
nothing and play one, to find a song
upon it had gotten stuck to my fingers
and was demanding I take it home

so the song could come forth and breathe.
Thanks for the payday that made it happen.
Thanks for the heat of the day
that made me rush home to play.

So good to be a beginner again.  Good to lay my pen and poems aside,
to leave the guitar in the rut we’ve made for each other,
to stretch and wiggle out the agony in my fretting hand,
to have no clue where I’m going from here with this.

Thanks for how my hands now hurt.  Thanks
for this ignorance and this unclear path
to mastery, again.  Thanks for the untutored
music I have made today — and

thanks above all for Yomo Toro, a fat man in a straw hat
dying somewhere in the Bronx, two hundred miles
from here, who does not and will never know me
and my clumsy songs, but who brought them surely into the world.

Big Joe Turner
could palm a jump blues
like an egg,

handle it rough
but always
without breaking it. 

Listening right now 
to the opening piano ripple
of “Shake Rattle And Roll”

and Big Joe Long Dead
still smites with the soft club
of his voice.

Big Joe I Wish To Have Seen You
Just Once, this is how it must have been
back then:

discovery followed by imitation.
I think I sound good, as good
as you.

The shell fragments on my hands
and the sticky yolk say no.
The heart of me says no too.

Big Joe Turner,
they are starting to forget you
and all your kiss curled imitators too

but Big Joe Turner,
thanks for the musical ache in my bones
that won’t heal no matter what they do or do not do.

To see and believe
in the jazz animal, the cat born
of good darkness and true tone,
is to understand that what we know
is not always explicable.  

To see it crouched
in music on a Saturday night
is not scary, not exactly —
but in the moment of its spring toward target
there may be an apprehension

or concern as to how
the moment after it lands a solid blow
will reflect a complete change in the nature
of our world.  To accept the jazz animal’s
silence in the midst of skeins of sound —

to see in the jazz animal
the bed and backstory of what possibility
music is and holds dear — 
you have to suspend for a moment
your urbanized scoffing at such an explanation

for how you might sit transfixed
after a fill or a run by any or all
of these few instruments on stage —
you have to agree that in that moment,
you’re under the paw of something 

that is older than human, cleaner
than simple entertainment, more surefooted
than you are, certainly.  Have you never seen
a cat make an impossible leap of pure faith?
How can you not acknowledge the jazz animal?

Brand new to the charts
Number 15 with a bullet
Nice beat, you can dance to it
I give it an 85
It’s the perfect length for the radio
The perfect summer single
Perfect prom song
Perfect driving anthem
Perfect club banger
Perfect navel gazer
Perfect for throwing the horns
Soundtrack for dorm room philosophizing
Soundtrack to fall in love by
Soundtrack for your next party
Soundtrack for a breakup
A song to get crazy with
Song to rage with
Song to slit your wrists by
Song to beg for one more chance by
Song to conjure memories with
Song to conceive a baby by
Music for boning
Music for running
Music for revolution
Music for a wedding
Something to day dream on
Something to set your toes tapping
A little something to brighten your day
Something you might remember
Here’s a blast from the past
Here’s one from the “where are they now” file
Here’s one from the vaults
Here’s one to get you thinking
What were you doing when this was all over the airwaves
What were you doing the first time you heard this
This was their biggest hit
Rising to Number 3 on the charts
Here’s a remake of their biggest hit
Here’s a remix of their biggest hit
Here’s a sample of their biggest hit
They just don’t make them like that anymore

Bones
of a possibly popular song
are bleaching in my hand.
I can’t do anything
with this now.
It was alive once,
a tale of a perfect moment: 
surely it might have been
as perfect a moment
for someone else
as it was for me
but I did nothing with it
and after a while it died
though I kept it close.
I sing what it was a little
now and then,
though it’s not right.
I never thought it was right
and so I never let it go,
and now it cracks
in my impotent fist
like old crackers
no one could dream
of choking down.

the point
as far as I can tell
that it rolls
as it rocks

comes in
off center
from what I
thought I knew

except it somehow
centers me
and I don’t
understand

how that’s possible
but I feel it
so it’s real
and understanding

seems less critical
than what I feel
(or perhaps
it’s a different kind of understanding)

so please
continue my schooling
as I crack the books
on the one

Thank God there’s a subwoofer
in the new car
to help me
study