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
Monk
Notice, the docent said, the absence
where the leaves of bamboo cross,
how the artist did not paint
one over the other but left a gap
between the two background halves.
This technique the Asian painters called a moon shadow.
Thelonious stood in the back
silent, bobbing his head
in an odd rhythm only he heard,
a tempo conducted by the baton
of distant wind-blown bamboo.
His musical chop was a signature all his own.
His hands on the keys zigged and zagged,
men climbing the crooked mountain who
passing the waving bamboo
stopped, silent, paused a beat or two
to relish the quiet around them.
One strikes discordantly at his qin, and they resume.
Pharaoh
First the bass, small waves
slapping slapping slapping
at the edge of a melody.
Next men's voices enter
chanting chanting chanting
soft as women walking.
Then the melody comes
dancing dancing dancing
in from the right hand,
and coolness comes
tinkling tinkling tinkling
in a shower of bells.
Then he enters, kofia-crowned
name sake of the ancient god kings,
up from the sacred heart of the Nile
and a talking wind down from heaven,
plucks a river reed and blows
AfricaAfricaAfricaAfricaAfrica,
wailing first man shaman
from darkest Jim Crow Arkansas
mounted by the Creator.
Sounds leap and bound from his horn.
Lions roar and elephants shriek.
Savannah heat rolls over you.
He stands like Kilimanjaro,
snow capped, making his own weather.
He lifts his brass ax and blows
black storms, bright with thunder,
clouds of startled birds wheeling
and calling as the rain turns gentle.
The band is a rolling ocean,
calm or wild as the weather blows
but never still, always rolling,
a rocking lullaby for wanderers.
Reed boats carry Pharaoh’s people
to the land of new pyramids.
This one I'm still working on at the margins, but I thought I'd toss it out here for any reader comments. Remember, this is my working journal.
Revision 3. Thanks for the writers at Splashhall Poetry for their suggestions.
