125th Street —
Musical lick a de Split

Lips of music trail dem horns,
keyboards out of town to last
places science can predict for burial
ark of musical sambas’ where hell
and heaven coalesce as beautiful
shadow notes overtones break down
scientific notation, musical retorts.

Gillespie chilled under A train at 125th
descending from Westside Highway
with Riverside above, and the least
summer damp of cobble street clipping
as if the Cotton Club doesn’t exist at all
when the music folds apart with easy trips.

We passed from NJ out of Great River
schemes into the clubs without
frames, doors set back heard
that half tone of music with natural
branch scratched against arbitrary glass.

It rustles complete barriers of staccato
strings of musical quarks borrowed
by Police Sergeants with broken teeth.

He stopped the cab for passing under
streetlights too silent and long while
Dizzy waited meeting with God.

Let’s discuss the unfolding of the century.
How shall we twist the stalk of your trumpet--
My holy agents own all rights and privileges
to the switch when keys break skies
leaping as parachutes from mock warplanes

Music has that excuse. It blends its armor
as perfume stretched behind the ear to know
the smell of what I am when you are alive
underneath the slope of the carousel.

You cry fire. I set to whirl and bake my heart
underneath the cold moon where I lifted my body
out of its own casket and twirl around the sun
as that “Lucky Old Sun with nothing to do”
Frankie Laine’s despair -- the end stopped early.

You think I am pessimistic. No, I long for relief
and retire into the old deep race back where dark
pulls the blessed stands off midnight out of tune.



first draft 3/5/06