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Category: New York City

POEM: the streets

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.

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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POEM: in spite of clouds

in spite of clouds

you can either kiss me
or give me a consolation prize
I’m hoping you’ll choose the former
because my spare room is full
of trinkets from the could-have-beens

there may not be sunshine
but we can dance like we had
long shadows to join us
spinning on the street corner
while the dogwalkers give us space

do you remember all the times
I didn’t tell you anything?
chose not to say what I thought
and hid my true feelings
in a cloud of jokes?

does reading Shakespeare
in this coffee shop
make me a hipster?
does writing this poem
make it worse?

my friends don’t believe me
when I tell them I ride trains
with famous people
or ascend in elevators
with TV comedians

but I like to think
I’d make up better lies
if my goal were to impress
I know for certain I’d be
kissing more people in my stories

that’s what I miss most
the kisses
real ones you can feel
through your whole body
like the roller coaster dropping

these clouds can’t last forever
the sun will be all the more brilliant
for our missing it
my shadow and I are waiting
to dance with you

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POEM: barrio music

Yesterday I saw Chris Washburne and SYOTOS at El Museo del Barrio. I wrote this during the gig. Some of the poem is based on the performance and things that were played and said during it, and other lines are paraphrased from the brilliant book The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. The last two lines are instructions given to me back when I played latin jazz for a living.

barrio music

this is sacred ground
church on Saturday
we should be dancing
led down the aisle by El Rey
like a victory parade
hips swaying, laughing
we are praying to the holy trinity
the mambo, the rumba
and the cha cha cha
James Brown, Machito and Schoenberg
this isn’t music for sitting down
when you play the clave, play the clave
and clap like your mama’s making tortillas

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POEM: pashal

A friend taught me the Filipino word “pashal,” which, as I understand it, means to stroll or walk around without a particular plan and with the hope of discovering something. I think that’s a beautiful idea.

pashal

that the chain wouldn’t come unstuck
was a little gift, forcing us
to slow down in Grand Army Plaza
where we otherwise wouldn’t have been

a breakdancer offered to marry you
but I don’t think you accepted
and we were stuck on the one street corner
in all of New York without a Starbucks

it’s easy to forget how gorgeous it is here
then the sunshine repaints the city
and everyone smiles, remembering childhood
or their first love or a walk last summer

another friend tells me to slow down
but this isn’t a city of leisure
and everyone knows springtime
is for falling in love

even with a broken wheel
a bicycle is a beautiful thing
and sometimes what’s implied by the painting
is even better than the painting itself

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POEM: Friday night at the Vanguard

Hard as it is to believe, I went to my first show at the Village Vanguard in New York tonight. The band was Terrell Stafford, Bruce Barth, Tim Warfield, Peter Washington and Dana Hall. I wrote this in the dark during the set. I wanted it to seem a bit noirish, thus “the blond.” I’m not sure if that’s OK.

Friday night at the Vanguard

there’s something about the way the blond
is tilting her head, laying it back
against the cushions like she’s dreaming

— stop —

now we’re in church and a “go ‘head”
comes from stage left
where the trumpeter sits snapping his fingers
in what would be a cliche in other circumstances

the blond leans forward
she has a cleft in her chin like an action hero
on her it’s intriguing

— can I get an “amen”? —

it’s a ballad again
she leans over so far you’d think
she had a stomach ache, but she’s smiling

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9=3+3+3, or, A Night At Small’s

I went to Small’s in the Village tonight to see Bruce Barth. I ran into several people I knew and some I’d never met in person. The whole experience felt like a poem, so it seemed only fitting to make it one.

One of my favorite movies is An American In Paris. At the beginning of the film, Gene Kelly does some narration and mentions that he went to Paris because the great artists before him had gone there. I feel that way about New York and poetry, and also New York and jazz. I didn’t change any names in this poem to protect the innocent, either.

9=3+3+3, or, A Night At Small’s

on the train, this:
if you don’t change direction,
you may end up where you’re headed

huh

the sage is sleeping soundly
slumped over against the pole
if this were Japan, someone
would wake him at his stop

or more likely he would awaken
as if by magic
some shared ethnic telepathy
connecting all Japanese to their destination

but this is New York
no such enlightenment
is forthcoming

Louis Armstrong is smiling
in argyle socks
a black Buddha before bebop

Rebecca has blood-red nails
that look jet-dark in this dim light
her double-jointed pinky bent on the bar
her name is alliterative, as is the artist’s
who guesses it

and, for that matter, the piano player’s
(and his title)

the Japanese photographer says
he is ready to go home
twenty-four years is long enough

meanwhile the boy from Pasadena gets the seal
of approval from the boy from Brooklyn
it’s official: he’s a New Yorker now

the mirror next to the piano is reflected in another mirror
looked at from the right angle
there are an infinite number of piano players
(writing Hamlet?)
and an unending row of archers

people clap when they’re supposed to
like a ritual prayer that’s lost its meaning
in the observance

even the photographers look like musicians
and the temperamental cat is not a euphemism

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stone #20

Listen using the player above.

Manhattan photo by Jason Crane (2011)

Fred Astaire is dancing
beneath the haunted building
while the make-believe Irishman
plays reels down below

/ / /

part of a river of stones

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