Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Vague Legacy

for Nick King


As is the way with history,
I have heard about you from someone else
and have since surely augmented those words
with my imagining. So, forgive me
if you don't recognize yourself
in this poem. Your son
Steve placed these seeds of you in my mind
in a past before we were friends,
but the scene remains unfaded.

As I recall the story, Alex had come for a holiday dinner
and you told him he must first play
a song on the piano,
as though this was a challenge you used
for entering the space of hospitality,
regardless of the fact that Alex couldn't play piano.
The implication being
that any being that could feed itself
could deal with enough of the 88 keys
to win entry to the feast. In my imagining,
you sat in a comfortable chair
well dressed but casual
working the rhythm of a martini
as you studied the guest absorb your request--
watching Alex hear, comprehend, puzzle, weigh
and then accept.

And this, perhaps, was the Song of Self-Examination
you genuinely desired to witness: the dramatic event
of an individual meeting something unexpected
and deciding to play it.

While I hate golf, I love this aspect of the game.

And, Alex did accept,
and proceeded to play
using a pair of oranges he plucked from a bowl of holiday fruit.
And in my mind,
it was a marvelous piece of percussive angularity
in a Thelonious Monk mode.
Building from a toying game
into a genuine vehicle of emotion,
Alex and the room listened as intently as Glenn Gould
at each incoming sound,
at each unexpected turn of form,
at each question of legitimacy and contempt.
He hunched over the black and white buttons
as the oranges bounced from tone to tone
just off the ends of his charcoal tweed sleeves.

And, when Steve told me this story--
probably to prove some point regarding ontology--
I dreamed myself into it as a future, halfway
hoping to one day be given the same challenge.
And, here, some decade-and-a-half after,
I must say that what's become my love for improvised music
began with that spark. Honestly. Looking back, I recall
beginning to play in earnest
(if such a thing is even possible)
because there seemed to be some need
to nurture a skill in embracing possibilities,
to be ready for a welcome that could require
an improvised offering of sound.

And, thus, in tribute in a future in a house I imagine,
there will always be a bowl of oranges atop the piano.



by jerry gordon
december, 2008

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Each Hinge is So Delicate

The train is not early
and so I am not crying.

I sit here and want
to sit at the edge of our famous river,
dropping the petal of each word
into its currents
as the promises I am yet to fulfill
and thus yet to break.

Each hinge is so delicate.

Do I confuse flexibility for fragility?

This, too, I may not know
until beyond never,
or simply never
know.

A black bug walks out from between my feet
and as is possible when I am this
fluent in listing
to sense all elements at play,
I imagine it is you
appearing and departing
my care and quarantine, risking
the journey accross the width
of the train car
to vanish behind some stranger's belongings.
And at such moments of ease,
I nod into existence.

Ontology needs this and that
in its indexes.



by jerry gordon

Before a Show

My hands are very cold.
Like clocks, they count my patience
with concrete and rectilineal shadow.
They place me inside my skin
looking in, seeing that
I put so much hope into this dark room,
that from the lands beyond its darkness
dreams and terrors will appear.

I fold and unfold my imaginings
to find what I have surely hidden,
to let them leap up from the page
and pull my hair down over my eyes
like all the other lies I breath my life from.

Come, sweet crazinesses.
Come from someone else's minds and lead me off
inside of your evaporations,
lure me beyond these paper cages I crowd with my howling muses.
Give me a single match that I can play with back at home.
Give me something to steal or something to break,
something to commit another crime of beauty for.
Come, and leave your fragrance on my skin
like a tattoo tapped of inspiration's vague ink.




by jerry gordon
dance box: B1 Art Space
12.6.08