when you can't apologize for who you love.....

jazzy harlem blues

if I could create a
picture of perfection;
it would encompass
only her smile.
or perhaps the way
she looks into me
to see right through me,
past my hurt and shame.
or the way she loving
hangs courage on my fears,
and rests her head comfortably
against nightmares
that won’t sit still,
even in my waking hours.
she is infinite beauty
sound fantastic tripping
a long the horizon,
gliding across the
night time sky;
attaching herself
to the moisture of
heaven’s passion,
manifesting itself as humidity
clinging lifelessly
against my shallow breaths.
the rise in her cheeks,
rests somewhere between my
great grandmother’s Sunday hum,
and the absence of my mother’s voice.
when she blinks,
the bat of her eyelashes,
clash against regina carter’s
blazing jazz violin
and the brash arrogance
rushing from mile’s trumpet.
once a tear fell,
and I heard
billie, bird, coltrane, and dizzy,
moaning, wailing and nodding
in the shadows just
outside my mind.
she,
well she is simply,
my jazzy harlem blues.
bluer than
historic blue notes
drunken, tumbling out
of wooden doors
onto gritty stoops
of the grimy
manhattan streets.
her movements,
foot steps tapping
concrete and asphalt,
reminiscent to
fingers caressing piano keys.
she, mesmerizing.
when she walks,
she plays a beat
only I can hear.
whether it’s in the distance
or playing loudly against
the clatter in my head.
I can’t dance,
but I try.
moving,
only to the feeling
that encapsulates my senses,
arithmetically dictating
the skipping of my heart’s beat.
and like an animal
thrashing wildly for freedom,
I move desperately as not to be
captured,
alive.
she pounds music,
beneath the
weight of ancestral cries,
and late night calls
that are met with
unrelenting dial tones.
painfully
harmonious.
holding me down,
like a standing bass
base line rhythm.
her thoughts,
banging drums,
with the sting of cymbals,
drowning the mundane
simplicity of my life.
I want to pull songs from
her heart
while kissing the
sway of her hips
and listen to her sweet sultry moans
as a soloist’s soprano screams.
we battling saxes
under red stars in clay dirt.
tribal and on fire.
she is my bass line; chorus,
bridge and break.
breaking me,
breaking me down,
like trip hip hop,
hypnotic percussion, scratching,
against the black waxed
grove of a 45 or
acid jazz sampled over screwed show tunes.
she is simply my jazzy harlem blues
remixed and extended,
playing over and over and over again.
and if,
if I could paint a picture of beauty,
it would encompass only her smile,
because I have memorized her.
she is my favorite song...
and I hang from her notes,
no matter how low or high.
the rise in her cheeks rests somewhere
between my great grandmother’s Sunday hum,
and the absence of my mother’s voice.
a necessary pain.
because she,
well she is simply my
jazzy harlem blues.

kdtaylor, 2007
section 8 coffee publications
all rights reserved