A sad baritone blowing big round Jello-tremulous Os of the blues.
That’s what started this ramble into a pleasant melancholia a fizzing afternoon beer buzz of sadness not quite cheerless, simply there like a color in the air, a sky so blue and clear you can hear it, a faint hum beneath your feet, a Fall afternoon so perfectly empty you just want to lay down in the arms of some big oak and root, thinking: well, if the world is going to caterwaul in a crashing train wreck, I guess I’m not busy today. Go ahead. I voted early.
And then you remember the Indians, stuffed into the lobby of the museum. So you go and the colors aren’t quite right, all that expanse of white marble flattening the chromatic costumes into something cartoonish, stealing the scene's perspective like some VCR on endless loop, alone in a neutral cream room of neatly labeled artifacts under glass...instead of the slow approach up a street lined with low, sameish houses, long rows of shotguns and maybe a catercorner store.
First just a spyboy peering around the colored chalkboard brightly proclaiming Hot Breakfast and Cold Beer, then a hollering of tambourines in the distance and then you spot them, turning a corner, bright-beaded bird creatures from a dream, singing in a language they have made themselves.
That’s when you decide: No, thank you I want to slap the snooze button on that doom clock your time doesn’t apply to us down here we’re on Central River Time and things, things are just a bit slower and we’re not quite ready for all your rapturous end times of votes and riots. We’re all in pawn up to the brim of our sharp fur felt hats so here’s a dime: call in all your tall Wall Street stories to someone else.
If you’re going to destroy your world try to keep it down to a manageable rumble in the distance, please, perhaps a smudge of smoke on the horizon like a marsh fire and leave us to ourselves, to the scat-o-logical chantings of Fi-Yi-Yi to mad tambourine time, the bright side of the poverty and sadness you turn into columns and hours of politics and we turn into a sad baritone sax blowing big round Jello-tremulous Os, measuring the girth of the blues just about city sized and right for us, thanks.
3-2-09: Last revision, abandoning stanzas for the original stream of prose with a few edits to make it more breathable to read aloud.
Sad Baritone Saturday
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Here is the last stanza version. I decided to revert to the prose formatted original. It works for me.
A sad baritone blowing big round Jello-tremulous Os of the blues.
That’s what started this ramble into a pleasant melancholia
a fizzing afternoon beer buzz of sadness not quite cheerless,
simply there like a color in the air, a sky so blue and clear you can hear it
like a faint hum beneath your feet, a Fall afternoon so perfectly empty
you just want to lay down in the arms of some big oak and root, thinking:
well, if the world is going to caterwaul in a crashing train wreck,
I guess I’m not busy today. Go ahead. I voted early.
And then you remember the Indians, stuffed into the lobby of the museum
so you go and the colors aren’t quite right, all that expanse of white marble
flattening the chromatic costumes into something cartoonish, stealing the scene's
perspective like some VCR on endless loop alone in a neutral cream room of
neatly labeled artifacts under glass instead of
the slow approach up a street lined with low, sameish houses,
long rows of shotguns and maybe a catacorner store.
First just a spyboy peering around the colored chalkboard
brightly proclaiming Hot Breakfast and Cold Beer, then
a hollering of tambourines in the distance and then you spot them,
turning a corner, bright-beaded bird creatures from a dream,
singing in a language they have made themselves.
That’s when you decide: No, thank you I want to slap the snooze button on
that doom clock your time doesn’t apply to us down here we’re on
Central River Time and things, things are just a bit slower and
we’re not quite ready for all your rapturous end times of votes and riots.
We’re all in pawn up to the brim of our sharp fur felt hats so here’s a dime,
call in all your tall Wall Street stories to someone else.
If you’re going to destroy your world try to keep it down to a manageable
rumble in the distance, please, perhaps a smudge of smoke on the horizon
like a marsh fire and leave us to ourselves, to the scat-o-logical chantings of Fi-Yi-Yi to mad tamborine time, the bright side of the poverty and sadness you turn into columns and hours of politics and we turn into a sad baritone sax blowing big round Jello-tremulous Os, measuring the girth of the blues just about city sized and right for us, thanks.
2-13-09: Damn, I just don't like a single stanza structure I've tried to shoehorn this into. It was written as a long prose piece without regard to stanza structure. It sounds right to me read from the page like this, so the hell with it. I'm putting it back into paragraph form (with a few articial line breaks added where they make sense and add readability). So shoot me.
Earlier: Another longish prose piece originally published on the flagship of my little bathtub fleet, Toulouse Street--Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans. Here I have broken it into a free verse stanza form. I remain conflicted on whether these pieces are better as prose or free verse
Killer first line! Love that you repeat the "blowing big round Jello-tremulous Os" phrase at the end cuz it just ties everything up in a nice little bow at the end. Loved reading this, Mark..:)
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