Showing posts with label blurry pictures of sax players. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blurry pictures of sax players. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

After searching fruitlessly (saxophone poem)


AFTER SEARCHING FRUITLESSLY FOR A POEM BY BILLY COLLINS CALLED THE INVENTION OF THE SAXOPHONE, THE AUTHOR TAKES IT UPON HERSELF TO WRITE ONE OF HER OWN




i don’t know who invented this
reflexive question mark of an instrument

but i think it was a good thing





for it’s great to look at,
with fat keys like frog eyes
and a big bell like royal jelly
you could keep flowers in there if you wanted to,
extra socks
or even a clock


















Snakes kink too
and this sound is snakey
purply mauve as the deepest bruise
and raunchy
as a man in love





smoked as some cat of the night
disappearing over a fence
it makes leaps
(but only because it has to)







There is no
morning saxophone

this is a sound that
pulls the shades down




a hangover
howl

fading to twilight

or the blackmost
belly button
of the night




Few can wrap their lips around
this gooseneck
without some harm coming to them
for this is an instrument
with a long history of
hollowing out
all but the most hardy




Bird flew into a pane
of glass and was
smashed

we don’t know why it does this to people
(maybe it was mad at him
for taking it all to such extremes)




but how could you blow this thing
halfway

i ask you

how could you rear back
in some great pained whiplash of the spine
without a sense of
terrible commitment




i never much cared for
saxophones myself

until i heard one blown correctly at last
jazz is a genre i will never understand
but perhaps that’s good
for like the priesthood, one must enter into it

without question
reservation
or doubt