Poems for ThomasSteve Dalachinsky, downtown poet, NYC, and friend of Thomas Chapin

(for Thomas Chapin)

A Letter to Thomas
(February, 1998)

you’re dead one week
oh what an awfully stupid thing to say
dead one week
tonight
another quartet in a different place
& i don’t feel the same
myself

the flowers laid out for you
are blue & ochre birdwing things
on the drummer’s shirt
with red flame
& dust exploding in my right eye
like a revolting soul
oh & the yellow daffodils that opened
over night
are mumbling something like smell us
no you should have smelled us
yesterday
today we only look good
but there’s really nothing left

oh & how about that photo of you i received in the mail today
come all the way from scotland from a friend who thought he’d
send it ‘cause he thought i felt “close” to your music
blowing the way you blow
oh & before i forget
me & this death of mine
that sits so noisy and sequestered
in all my aching bones – tomorrow is your memorial
well the first one anyway
& you can bet i won’t be going – too far
or something like that

& a week’s already passed
& a winter without snow
& the only flowers beside the flowers
on the drummer’s shirt
& the daffodils that my wife put in the kitchen
are the acanthus engraved on the tenor saxophone
& the roses given to the cellist in the film i saw this morning
& the bouquet left behind by the poet & then retrieved
after her reading tonight
& those two delightful little crocus buds
getting ready for spring
near n.y.u.

oh & next week this time will be two weeks
& more flowers will bubble like geysers
from beneath the earth
as if some shortcut had been taken
fueled by your newly gathered ashes
& your newly planted heart

& another week will pass
& then another
& another
& another
& other fictions will be written
that will be laced with
fact.

I. unmetered music

1. edit

Thomas
tonight the music
speaks for itself
it doesn’t know you’re gone
it doesn’t know anything
it is only an instrument of itself
& the 4 men up there are its channels
i weep for an instance
& am out like flame to a
japanese lantern
gone up & out
my thin frame remains
as reminder of sentient
world

the pain has evaporated
like lantern’s skin
& only those who loved you best
& knew you best
will have to endure the ashes

but tonite the music
speaks for itself
not a healing force
but a body of air pushed
thru the mouthes & fingers
of 4 men who didn’t know you
& don’t yet know you’re gone

the music speaks to itself
in long & lazy soliloquies
fast abrupt choruses
& brokenhearted heart busting breaths
& the night expires with applause
& i keep your secret a little longer
inside me
tho i want to tell everyone
but the music speaks for itself
speaks for itself
& speaks for me
as if it already knows you
are gone.

2. cry me a river

i spill onto the floor
like a drink drying spent & drying
looking clear tho dark
i spill like the range of so many wet evenings
in an el nino year
of refusals & full moons

the night is a table
& i am a plain speaker
when it comes right down to it
& i announce with a vengeance
the sincerity & serenity
of an overanxious drink
damp & delivered
in one pathetic & poetic pour
onto the scuffed & faded plywood floor

& the music speaks
as if it knows you’re gone
in a hot room
full of bodies & ribbons
some notes too numerous to consume

this is death’s dark hour
oh dare i say it
even say such stupid things

the oblong lantern
has no light to give off
it just sits there in suspension
waiting for the sad soft ballad to end
as the drummer blows another bubble
& the bubble in my wife’s dreaming mind
has not yet comprehended that you’re gone
& therefore has not yet comprehended it must burst.

II. music

i could if i
could play
music could
if i could say
music would this way that way
the way the fingers dance
the way the singer takes a chance &
i should
if i could & i would
if i could
play music
say music
be
music

III. the ears of music

the ears of music
when the husks are stripped
away

the voice that resonates
when the duet
is in disjunctive harmony

brash sweet kernels

i speak to you as you
speak to me

this sound we hear
that is one in us all

&

all the silence

&

all the taste

& touch

& scent & sight
that is all
this very
big/small
WORLD.

IV. ajar & all that

we in the piano music
we play this impending dance
the dumb doom
they’re putting you thru

movement reversed & inversion of marrow

dear sweet sax o phonist
present in rumi’s open heart
the rumors spread
the sad & sorry plaintalk of recovery
the tool called miserable ego
& eager performance
petty anarchism
the powertrip of betrayals

(look at them up there where you should be)

to give you back your bones
your FULL life
to walk peaceful thru the tropics
you so love
topic of conversion & conversation
quickened & running the gauntlet
back backwards
in disjunctive harmony
where music’s ears
buzz
like headswelling fever mosquitoes

(look at them up there where you should be)

Thomas my thought
with you tonight
in golgotham
CITY of Cities
shitty down pat
we all sitting pretty
with our blurred images
& fading jokes

look at them up there – LOOK AT THEM

this is the vision of Sodomizers & doctors
provisional gov’ts
this is our alternative to paradise
a goodnight kiss
& the curtains slowly closing
the curtains quickly pulled shut –

look at them up there look at ‘em.