Listen to Sonny Rollins:
specifically,
to a recording he made in Boston
four days after
the World Trade Center fell;

listen,
and try to tell me
you’ll ever want
to eat your gun
ever again.

Through the door of the Ship Room comes
one snapped mental carrot,
one steamrolled nose,
a duffel full of puppets,
and the echo of his scratchy greeting
piercing the room:
with a hearty “yee-yee” and a “ham-ham-ham,” 
the Captain
has arrived.

I’m one of only a few in the club
who know his real name.
I’m not telling.
Here he’s the Captain and
he runs things
by presence
and enthusisam
and chaos, perfect
sweaty chaos.

A band on stage
grinds out bluespunk
and here come the shark
and the pig
out of the bag.  The Captain
slugs and pops
at the front of the crowd
and thrusts them at the singer,
who hasn’t played here before
and has no clue how to react,
but we sure do.  We’re pointing
and moshing like pirates
behind him, the rock and roll
unleashed, now the bassist gets it
and starts to grin, steps up the bottom
as we charge and yell for louder
and more, while the Captain
leads us puppet-handed into
the heart of Saturday night.

Half these kids don’t know what they’re seeing:
the act I’ve known for all these years
still in progress, this stocky little block of a lunatic
for the release of every tense energy ball
in our chests and our feet knows us,
isn’t afraid to lead us to crazy and abandon.

No one would believe me if I told them
anything of what I know of him: how I’ve seen him
tear a computer down and rebuild it
in less time than it takes to power one up;
that in rare moments he quotes Shakespeare;
that under the weed and the acid scars
there’s a guy who once knew more about more things
than most of us could imagine forgetting —
but he’s managed it, for the most part.

Somebody outside the club calls him a retard
and I want to flatten his nose,
tear out his hair, tell him that now
he’s ready to judge him.  The Captain
wouldn’t care, of course, and that holds me back.
A rock and roll army needs its leaders.
Needs the lifers who live it.  Needs the guys
who could care less how they’re seen
by people with healthy metal carrots
and nothing alive in their hands.

the full snazztone
of a well-banged guitar
chugging over racing heartbeat bass
and silver charge of cymbals.

my morning soundtrack:
mission of burma.
fit it in before working.
make it loud as a factory.
this is the sound of working.
bare bones virtuosity
manacled to a deadline and an end result
and never taking over
just because it can.

folks make this music.
it’s folk music.

get to work.
there’s still so much to do.

Sing them blank blues,

let ’em
freshen, spring up.
Bubble smoke along
the edges of your mouth.

Trill it.

Stink up the air fat
and lovely, bone-in
gristle and rib-sticky.

Chart uncharted,
croon siren chin up in the shallows,
trace the deep in rogue wave,
take the foolish sailor
overboard.

Step out and light up
in a parking lot
full of compensation
and small fights, laughter
of night time forgotten battles.

Back inside,
blank blue beckons again…

spitting demon,
choral angel, something beyond you.
It’s wet, sweat flinging war up here.

Go for it…
on a good night,
God sits in.  All that smoke,
incense to the altar.  Ticket
written, punched, cloud full of
fixing to be done.  PLAY —

get us out of our way.

Sure, that guitar
can sing, but
she ought to sting.
Put a bottle on that thing —

let her ring, bring that
tingle between
navel and
nether

whenever,
in sweetness or sorrow,
no matter the weather.
Hand steady on, then shaky, snaking,

limber till it flexes up to
the right note, or maybe just short —
you catch your breath thinking
it’s gonna bring you

home — but then
full stop,  back down
low, lower,  back up the neck
from thick to high and it keens

like they say the wind does
somewhere, like a train going by.
Sings like
I do when you play me right,

at midnight or high noon, blue
or wild, there’s some kind of story there,
names and places, spirits and flesh
too slick to put a breath on, and still

you go on, tremble your hand
like you’re throwing dice in a barroom
with the whole place gathered round calling
for the lucky bones, and it moans and sighs

that glass-tongued tale of a mourning
gone on too long or a longing going
straight into morning — put a bottle on it,
honey: shake loose that song.

The band that sings the Big
breaks open more often than not
spilling hope and ambition
into smaller buckets

but the band that sings The Big
is always the band I want to hear

No matter the way they sing
be it simple guitar or sample bombast
if there’s Big in the reach
I will watch as they stretch

Even if the subject matter
tends to the small
if the band sees the Big
encompassed in the detail they seize

(like a universe in a pinhead
or the history of desire in one lover’s pining
sharply defined)

I’ll gladly pray for their strength and grasp
to hold out long enough
for them to bring the Big to me

for I know the Big in me
and the band that sings the Big
that serenades me large
is my minstrel pal
The band that sings the Big
gets my voice on the chorus

The band that sings the Big
has me from the first

Pretentious or humbled before the scope
of what they tackle
I will honor any who desire
to snatch up a cosmos
to corral it in three minutes
to be overwhelmed by the struggle
to fail
to fail repeatedly
to fail utterly
and still never stop singing

A rework and combination of two earlier pieces…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Violet energy
of  a packed nightclub. Far
corners dim and busy.
Startled remainders of dinner crowd.
Slick aficionados,
novice
joy chasers,
mages in watchful attendance.

Then, the horns –

saxophone
asters, trumpet
roses.

The essence of horn is in blowing and blocking.

Ivory bones
of keys and
starflung bass,
the fertile underlying soil
of swift sifting drums.

The essence of string is in striking, permitting, and stopping;
this is the essence of piano as well.

Do you know the essence of the drum?
Of objects in action,
rush of shaken skin, thrumming in ear canals,
the memory of the tree blown down in the storm,
striking the ledge?

Oh, the shocked eyes
and the odd remastered ears…

Melody is a pirate rejecting unjust law.
One rebel line cabled
among many,
carrying the current.

It is a crime against the essence of sound
to call music into confinement.
There is a trial going on
and jeopardy attaches
so it goes free,
or rather there is no crime and
it is a possibility inherently alive.
Essence snapped to a bent grid, evanescent.
A moment.
Memory transferring itself from past to now-being.

Play what is needed, in thrall to essence,
the nature of the reed, the harmonic.

Under it all, the idea:

white noise does as it wishes;
all control is relinquished in the moment
of white noise,
underlying the point of struggle.

Beating shape out of raw time,
examining the sound of its bones
falling onto the hearth.

The essential call of a summary command
to call up
the only voice that is under all.

The tree crashing
to the ledge unseen crying
I exist,
I existed,
respond.

The stop at the bottom of the tumble
allows for beginning…

outside the doors
an altered few find
an opened world

His angular hand
coaxed these tones
unheard of till then:

sweet nasal chirps
and lucid pourings
swift as sugar water.

I sit with my own
instrument
and ponder

how I can do anything
worthy of being heard
in the wake of hearing this.

I’d have not braved
the world after the fire
if it had been me.

It isn’t my place
to imagine
that loss as a necessary urge

to this music.
It isn’t anyone’s place
to ascribe

art’s impulse to pain.
It comes as it comes,
out of the source

wherever there’s room.
A hand crabbed and fused,
melted and charred,

offered an open door
for it to bubble up.
I unclench my own, stare

at the perfect fingers
dry as dust, wondering
at the torrent burbling

around me.  I pronounce
his name carefully,
inviting rain and spring snow.