- Anabatic Jukebox
—”mu” seventy-third part—
Skin, bone, meat, blood suspect, we were again on our way somewhere else. Body suspect, gone what soul was, Ohlone games dropping painted sticks lay behind us, Lone Coast receded, we moved on . . . Sentient wind we’d be one with again, lost what soul once was. Lone Coast, honed edge we hurt our feet on, again we were beginning to be gone . . . As though there’d long since been only one sun, blank sun, the one sun sun’s eventual end . . . Blank blacked in, thick indelible ink, bird- beak stylus, again we’d soon be gone . . .
For now it was only a window I stood at, a boat-bodied harp on the box as I looked out. Mamane looked over my shoulder, “Reverend King” the next cut came up . . . Laughter broke out, we’d all been weeping. Sob held at bay by giggle, we burst out laughing, happy to hear time turn back . . . Trane’s bass reed made us laugh, keep crying, Dolphy’s clarinet’s high carouse . . . Ribcage theater. Tease. Tickle. Long fingers working what [End Page 10] was down deeper, laugh though we did although we wept. We slapped hands and were laughing, happy to be young again, glad not knowing better, knew better
Not one death but many we’d heard and of breath now said the same, the other box the box we were stuck in, sound our one release. Bent pitch gave rise, we insisted, to what words gave reason to be, each the eventual ghost we sometimes were, each that all would end up there . . . An announcement, notes posted as we made our way out. One felt a friend’s gaze cross one’s right shoulder, what one looked at also looked at from in back . . .
Husk it was one heard, its unsteadiness. Reed’s unwieldiness the boon it now was, captious, we heard it crack. Thus the birdboy’s dreamt kin came to include us, cracked husks’ fissures whispering, droll whistle we fell back from . . . A Sahelian furtherance it was we heard, Salif Keita, another new cut on the box. We pursed our lips, bit seeds albeit the box fell apart, the utopic box it continued to be . . . Pursed our lips, bit seeds, gap all that was left, bit seeds broke our teeth. Air sucked in thru the all the emptiness was, bodiless, we all stood as one [End Page 11]
Sprung polity’s pneumatic jukebox it was my friend and I surmised, each of them the ghost he or she would eventually be, crevice and protuberance moot . . . What would be there . . . What would not . . . Friend whispering into one’s ear maybe not, polity we stood as though we were . . . The window showed a shoe-box garden, green’s wild edge turned in on green itself, blade rolled into each leaf, blood each leaf’s reglet [End Page 12]
We stood transfixed by the box’s pull upward, a balloon or a kite it might’ve been. A new cut sang the singer’s beloved, recalled her dressed in only a scarf and on the scarf the smell of neck sweat, late night’s agitant perfume . . . It was the glass’s way of speaking we saw, windowpane bell jar thick . . . Worried would we get there, what we saw be what we’d get, belled horns bellow again . . . “Reverend King” came back to us, neck sweat notwithstanding, belled horns’ bellow, bray . . . We stood reminded we’d been there before, caught in the walls’ rumble, saltbox dismay we swayed inside [End Page 13]
Rumble was back, rubble, wall all window again . . . Atlantis. East St. Louis. Either. Might’ve been both . . . It was a march we were caught up in, commencement, a march we consoled ourselves. Marched albeit we stood unmoving, stood hoisted high we’d have said . . . Jericho we’d have said, wall falling, wall all rung even so. Hoisted, albeit we stood our legs dangled, feet came off the floor . . . The horns played hurt it sounded like. We ascended the wall that wasn’t there. Where were we we were gone so soon we demanded they tell us, see-thru brink an abeyance, my friend...