I wrote this poem while listening to Ben Allison, Mark Guiliana and Steve Cardenas at Kush. In defense of the trio’s reputation, I was not actually an “audience of one” as it says in the poem.
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| From Ben Allison at Kush – March 22, 2011 |
the streets
are my private space
where I go to get away
to be alone with all the others
who are alone together
walking the Bowery
is a moving meditation
a reminder that ill fortune is
as fleeting as anything else
I’m an audience of one
in a darkened club
talking to my faraway sons
on the phone before the band starts
really, it’s getting a bit ridiculous
I go from coffee shop to art house
to sushi bar to jazz club
no bongos, no beret, no one beside me
I waited a couple days
then gave up on this Zen bullshit
and sent the message anyway
broke a rule known only to me
let’s be honest:
no amount of playing it cool
matters at all
and who has the time?
pull up a pillow
let’s huddle around this candle
as the snare drum echoes
off these fake-middle-eastern walls
let’s all play guitars
or take photographs of dogs in sweaters
or paint ambitious murals
with no thought of tomorrow
let’s learn to hula-hoop
or juggle points of view
ride unicycles past
the unworthy gazes of businessmen
tonight I spoke with the one man
in all of New York who knows
how to use “vonce†in a sentence
and can play Al Green backwards
I’d like to dance in tiny circles
like they used to do in San Juan Hill
before the boxes
replaced the real people
I’d like to live in a tiny studio
eat rice and play records
with no space for anything
but room enough for everything
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