I post this here as a screenshot because I haven’t figured out how to get the footnotes to display correctly yet. But anyway this poem is a sonnet now. I’m counting the footnotes as part of the poem even though I have other sonnets with footnotes where I don’t count them as part of the sonnet itself. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself.
DJ Reneg8d (On the Ones and Twos)
From the verses of Shakespeare to the violence of Football, a soft hand on the nape of my neck to a rim's hard rattle after a dunk, the mute of Miles to the rhymes of Rakim, Hershey's chocolate to a garlic peppered, cedar-planked salmon, Joel Dias-Porter's thoughts scatter like grains of black sand across a wind-blown beach.
Wednesday, May 01, 2024
Friday, April 26, 2024
Once Again From The Top
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE—”Take X
towards a freer jazz with ashes buried under some trees by a ¿dead? cat in a different key
why do we hush to enter
what are not shrugs
or hugs but still mostly full
of sharp edged petals
shielding colorful fruit
which could perhaps function
—”beloved”—as chromatic points
in the pentatonics
of The Black Raspberries,
long known to evolve
into a longing to grasp
and risk a crimson pinch
while not knowing
if a light note later
the hidden position
of a thorn section
might tincture i
or for a time lapse into
some conjugation
of tidal desire dug by Kearney
from a Pointillist tone poem
of a pond which seems
tailored on the edges by Cécile
or Nate or Cecil pleating
secret theories of jazz
we once tried to retrofit
from “Le Front Cache”
or even the knees
of a more natural
man or woman, yet
keep modeling or yodeling
beyond the velocity
of wavy phrases
or Harriet sleepily mulling
over a syntax of velvet
deities which Apophenia—
our anthemic diva—
dreams to bray or splay
how bananas it is
that they’re berries
into elaborate diagrams
or collapsed reasons
for Drunken Gardens
but maybe just fell or felt
like a trio of Autumn Leaves
to shade in or abrade out
these parakeet feelings
seeking to query
what appears to change
or even changes to appear
as we aim to measure
some berried desire
with its green silence
bladed nearly to the point
of a sound science?
Friday, April 12, 2024
Another poem that’s not about my inner emotions
A POEM WITHOUT A PERIOD
might also be
without pain
or be read
in a different way
to about half
the population
what does it mean
to deal with this
only once
every blue moon?
Thursday, April 04, 2024
National Poetry Month 2024
Y’all already know what it is—30 poems in 30 days. Per usual it’s going to be mostly haiku & senryu.
drip by drip
through the saline bag
blare of sunrise
the trinity
a three body problem
rock paper scissors
sunrise
an offering of clementines
and rum
4’33”
a bottle of sunshine
on the sill
“The Dead Lilacs”
had just one decent album
Eliot (maybe)
WHY JAZZ ISN’T DEAD
(for Mary Ruefle)
most people (even Libras)
seem to be born
with 32 crayons
each bone white
they only call them teeth
most fish have teeth too
on the inside & out
with a molar of prism music
some call grey scales
and if G Dorian
grates like Earl Grey
one could resolve to call this
a gnash equilibrium
Saturday, February 24, 2024
Little song for big John
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS
A FOUND SONNET IN ‘A CONVEX MIRROR’
“But what is this universe the [portrait] of
As it veers in and out, back and forth,
Refusing to surround us and still the only
Thing we can see? [Epiphany] once
Tipped the scales but now is shadowed, invisible,
Though mysteriously present, around somewhere.
But we know it cannot be sandwiched
Between two adjacent moments, that its windings
Lead nowhere except to further tributaries
And that these empty themselves into a vague
Sense of something that can never be known
Even though it seems likely that each of us
Knows what it is and is capable of
Communicating it to the other.”
Monday, February 12, 2024
You Already Know
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION AS MUCH ADU ABOUT NOTHING
“Didn’t I tell you what I believe,
didn’t I say that . . .”
Sade
Ifemi, how many REM cycles
since your love leaped
the ravine of No Return
to open me as a sommelier
would a wine bottle,
since the bright crescents
of my nails waxed across
the black sky of your back,
since the saxophone
signaled tomorrow?
Learnèd astrologer
I found your love
amidst a constellation
of mercurial lips
glossy enough
to lapse all logic,
& unlike logic
you bid me crave
the crow-colored tresses
of what many pray
to be saved from.
Freckled cheeks of Jesus,
who can tell how many
calligraphic kisses
could be needed to spell
or dispel what butterflies
write in rooms filled
with strawberry irises.
It’s been written
—sense the saxophone
signal’s sorrow,
a fool for roses
is a fool for rain—
but how to uproot
the twin legends
of your legs
blooming into heels
stiletto enough
to fell a forest entire?
Ifemi, I found your love
both freed and fried
as the symbols inside
a theorem derived
from four types of feral.
Yet not symbols & not derived.
Scents the saxophone
signals borrowed—
let’s not wrestle
with how you left me
or the difference between
a half wound and what
wound up happening.
Or what it could mean
to remain untethered
by an ankle tattoo’s
brassy passion
for adinkra charms
and police bracelets.
Perhaps I hummed
the wrong songs
with the right lyrics
or the right songs
with the wrong lyrics,
but how many dawns
found your love
hung over the railing
of Old Crow moans
or sizzling unstrung
between a first flame of bud
& one last good buy?
And how many more
need spot me flitting
like a Leopard moth
around a porch light,
turning to unlock
a mystery like magnetism
with keys hidden under
the tea rose carpet
of another woman’s tongue?