dogtrax

Lethargic

Expended, to the point of exhaustion

Drowsy, near the edge of consciousness

Languid, on the border of liquid

Listless by the boundary of activity

Hopeful with the prospect of rejuvenation

#openwrite

I'll be the first to admit, my feet don't leap like they should; but they've marched when they could

my feet've paused, on pavement, when they rally against injustice paused at the brink but not one step beyond

they've stood, to shout, and broken rules, no doubt, caused us to wonder and worry at the progress not yet coming about

I wonder, at times, if my feet don't come equipped with my mind

for #openwrite

dry, like dust, like trust/ like the heat of these searchlights/ exposing the graft

for Algot

Think chords finger acrobatics on the fretboard strange unusual configurations calling for left hand dexterity as the right hand hits the down beat with the foot-stomp on the concrete yet the left struggles to remember that working together makes something close to music

for openwrite

I keep myself quiet on the stories I could tell

I just whisper them gentle to my own ears, the only ones in range of hearing - I avoid the hard sell of Self to the crowd

I'm more apt to run fingers over edges of jagged truths, instead of shouting, even at the risk of a slow disappearing

— for OpenWrite

Always its adjacencies noticing small trajectories hearing blue notes ghost notes lost notes wanderings the gaps of possibilities maybe the yes is a lost no hidden beneath stone, our fingers share the weight of lifting the unknown

— for Terry

Shopping List

Milk (remembering sneaking into the barn on my friend's family farm and the cows eyeing us with worry, as we scaled to the top to watch the lightning strike the hills beyond)

Bread (how lazy we were, on that first field trip ever to the factory where the Wonder Bread was made, the smell of dough and sweetness, and the sample bag of crust and inside devoured within minutes on the way home, each of us racing the other to the end)

Cheese (my great-grandmother, carefully and methodically slicing the block while her immigrant brogue danced in my ears of Ireland, of where we came from, the cheese lifted from plate to cracker, with tea cup, dancing, me listening but only later remembering)

Pasta (the lucky days of invitation to my friend's house on pasta night, such loud raucous passing of plates and bowls and silverware, the smell of the sauce from all-day cooking, a slow simmering and bread dipped into it, dripping red, absorbing time, barely whispering thanks before the meal is gone)

Gravel-voiced troubadour, my ears are ringing with your singing, the way you're always bringing characters into song;

A lyric is a poem is a story is a commentary, exposing shadowed light with a turn of phrase forgotten in the night

We're all still lifting multitudes, so many songs of self, sixty years of music sleeves, yet you belong to somewhere else

I'm listening, Kamasi, I'm listening

I'm here in this space of song with your horn, reveling in the something beyond echoes of Shepp, Shorter, Bird, Cannonball, Kirk, Sanders, Trane;

This exquisite, complicated melody brushing up against rhythm, heartbeat, rhythm as you're singing your history, with your saxophone,

and I'm listening, Kamasi, I'm listening

The bluesman growls of the train in the distance

chords; hum

time; resistant