Saxophone

I.

Safely ensconced in the case
Of the saxophone
The separation comes
As the Big Man breaks
Out the reeds
We little people flee
Like Jonah did
At the first signs
Of dissonance
Tryin’ to kill the blues
With our tiny harpoons;
Not Petrucciani though;
Whose body was used
As an instrument;
Headbuttin’ the keys
In a small moshpit
Of a church in Brooklyn.
And who’s afraid of Coltrane
Who forged in sheets of sound
That came down like rain-
dissolving matter--
A love supreme.

Oh, but I can’t hear it, no
Not even 40 years later;
I’m not ready to acknowledge.
I don’t even know what a psalm is.

II.

Come with me love
Let us paddle away
In our beautiful red-lined case
Far away from these
Dissonant sounds that blow
Like so many microbes.
Tryin’ to make us sick.

Oh they are worse
Than any Siren’s song
And I’m no Odysseus
And you no Penelope.
We’ve got our harpoons.
And dramamine to protect us
From the aboriginal drums of Africa
And the lonely strings of the bass
Tryin’ to stand upright in the face
Of the saxophone that glows.

Paddle!
Paddle!
Paddle!

We shall escape!

III.

My arms are tired from
Paddlin’ and though
We’ve lost the sounds
It’s only darkness
We’ve found.
And a creepin’ current
Murmurin’ oh so clearly
That we are oh so lost.
And now you want to mutiny.
‘Cause I didn’t ask another pigmy
For directions.
And in the distance
Something softly glows.
And faint sounds do beat.
Have we gone in a circle?
Was all that paddlin’ for naught?

IV.

The drums are beatin’ louder
Our little case swirlin’in the whirl
Of the mad saxophone that blows
Lover, don’t leave me now
Is it a tornado?
Our little case is bein’
Lifted out of the water
I can see the silhouette
Of the Big Man.
I aim my harpoon.
But it’s useless
Stay with me, lover
Let us see it through.
But she’s clingin’ to
The shadow of his leg
And worshippin’ there.
And I’m sucked into
The saxophone itself.
Suspended like a diver
In a spaceless womb

V.

How long these waves of dissonance?
What is time, Jonah asks?
It seems so real, doesn’t it?
It hurts like hell.
Do you hear the breathin’
Beyond the sound?
Ah.
Is that what it is?
Will the melody return?
Is there return in the melody?
Surely.
Yeah, surely.

The Spider and Me

The spider and me
We got a thing goin’ on
He put his web in the doorway
And I walked right in.
Givin’ me the beard of Yahweh;
Startled and angry at his willfulness,
I destroyed his handiwork;
For he was in my way.

He recoiled in a fetal position
By the nightlamp;
Was it fear?
Did he pray for mercy in some
spider language that I could not understand.
How could he know I was
a benevolent god?

On the second day,
I walked out to have a smoke
And it was there again
In the doorway
And on my chin;
His handiwork;
I had to laugh at his persistence
And idiocy;
For I’m a humorous god;
And he again was in my way.
Once again, I destroyed his web
And he recoiled.

What revelation was in his web?
Was it some great spider
code to all the spiders of the world
tellin’ them to tremble at my sight?

Every day we do this little dance;
The spider and me.

Does he have dignity?
Does Sisyphus?
Does he recognize our
common fragility?

And I have to laugh at our own
feeble attempts at rationalizing
the grief of this world.
For I am a detached god.

And I wonder what hierarchies of gods
wait to crush the webs we weave;
While the nameless remains.

And when I lay me down to sleep
I dream of flowin' beards
And a thousand spiders crawlin’
And recoil into a fetal position;
As they crawl up me.

I want to scream!
I want to awaken!
I want to rise!

Ah, but the joke’s on me
Now, the spider is god
His web the world.
And when it comes down
the spider and I are One.

I wake to the itch
Of a bite on my leg.
And weave on.