Manuscript Contents

from unpublished manuscript
MEMORIES OF A JAZZ SINGER

Attendre

Gradually, the darkness is closing around me.
layer by thin layer, moment by thin moment,
a stampede of vapor, re-christened,
a piece of darkness where light cannot enter
the ravaged spaces of my heart, airless.
I am an ocean filled with all positions of grief,
but so silent! There are impossible spaces
between me and anything efficient, between
all those layers of lightness and darkness
I cannot decipher or penetrate;
acres and acres of nothing, lift over
from traumatized nothings
caught in the gauze of salient trees.

There are others dying in similar patterns
somewhere else on this earth,
for the same stupid reasons.
We convince ourselves that this
is a worthy way to bow out,
silently and privately, with no witnesses
we take to our beds, sanctified and singular.
The meadows don't speak our names,
nor the ocean's, nor birds riding wind currents,
nor hummingbirds
carrying on shamelessly with the flowers,
nor does any blade of grass speak our names
or curse our living existence.

Sound is a lonely word, alone. It needs silence
to compliment its obscurity.
one left sided compliment
of silence, ordered up at a funereal bar
to make my plate of sound bearable
in a world of distant disasters.

My reasons for this dying are obstinate –
kisses that forgot, friends who went away,
circus tents that never arrived, freedom that
refused to be free, waves that never returned,
cities that refused to be gardens,
having to be a salesperson
for laser-light billboards on the moon,
a winter of blood in the middle of summer,
televised –
all perfectly reasonable reasons
for a dying maniac,
while others are dying of plague.
Where are the gypsies when you need them?

My silence won't be invaded.
Pathetic screams in this autumn depression
cannot penetrate night in my garden,
where roses glow softly in the darkness,
alive in the breadth of the evening.