Jazz Study in Time: Migraine
How the body expends its pain,
receptors enunciating their message,
all of one pulse: outward then in,
ice pushing through glass,
metal’s red glow searing flesh,
and the moments between
the piercing and acceptance, the
dull and incomprehensible whirl
of lights flashing from midnight
to snowflake, returning, always there.
“Jazz Study in Time” first appeared on the blog in December 2015.
“The Resonance of No,” was published in December 2016 in Gravel, and is included in my forthcoming chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for prepublication order at Finishing Line Press.
Music Credit: Cool Vibes Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
“The Resonance of No,” was published in December 2016 in Gravel, and is included in my forthcoming chapbook, From Every Moment a Second, available for prepublication order at Finishing Line Press.
Music Credit: Cool Vibes Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Scarecrow Listens
These silences I hear, are they not
music? Interspersed with sunlight and
air flowing through fragrant grasses,
insects ticking in the leaves or burrowing
towards moist darkness, and my friends
cawing from their perches, if I arrange
their presence in sequence, perhaps
around the day’s bones, will you
know my spirit? And when I interweave
these tunes, independent and unrelated,
shaping them into one separate melody,
will you recognize its heart and shiver
to the beat? Ornette Coleman freed
his playing, celebrating the territories
of the unmeasurable, the unnamed. The
real is, no matter what you call it. Take
this leaf and place it atop three others.
What have you? And what am I if not
a gathering of the unwanted, scraps
melded to serve a thought-free purpose,
another’s need. Fleshless, boneless,
breathless, bloodless, I know only
that I am; having no ears, still I listen.
“Scarecrow Listens” first appeared with two companion pieces in Eclectica in summer 2016.
My poem, “The Resonance of No,” is up at Gravel.
Jazz Study in Time: Migraine
How the body expends its pain,
receptors enunciating their message,
all of one pulse: outward then in,
ice pushing through glass,
metal’s red glow searing flesh,
and the moments between
the piercing and acceptance, the
dull and incomprehensible whirl
of lights flashing from midnight
to snowflake, returning, always there.
O at the Edges 