There was nothing I could do that day
Other than roll my mind around in my head
My head around inside my hat
And the small black, whistling wireless
Was summoning the spirits of the long dead
Jazz magicians whining bulb-cheeked
At flannel-tapped white folk
How you always said I Looked
Like Stan Getz in my dark
Brown suit
But when I was eighteen and I blew
Into a saxophone on a late night rug
You laughed and said I sounded
Like I was blowing into a pancreas
I thought I was impressing
Everyone
But all I was doing was
Befriending the cat.

There was nothing I could do that day
Other than let my eyes roll around their sockets
My feet rattle around inside their shoes
And there was that cold felt touched film
Of wasted tears on my Dizzy Gillespie cheeks
And how you told me that I
Fought you in my sleep
How I spat great shrouds of history in my drowse
I tried to write you a poem
And you nodded
And your teeth applauded
And your lashes lazily
Whipped at each other as I vomited
My way on to the sixty-fourth stanza
The wind blew wild that day
And I thought you would have
Been improved in lace and long hair.

There was nothing I could do that day
Other than knock my knees together
Like an infant in an armchair
Wander around lost in the predator
Lamp-lit
Like the mad halves of Poe and Whitman
In a stale-air battle hospital
It took me days to understand
Your question
And I never had the heart to tell you the answer
But my questions were
Snapped at
Barked at
Dark-eyed at.

There was nothing I could do that day
Other than allow the old grinning
Jazz magicians to sell me short.

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