© 2023 j.g. lewis
April is Poetry Month
j.g.lewis
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like jazz
Rhythm and pattern easily obscured, it’s what you feel,
not what is heard. Polyphonic syncopation, bass line
holds the inspiration well before anticipation, a rush of melody pushes
to the fore you hear it again, but never have before.
Rim shot crack
cymbals crash,
the beat is burning, and falls
like ash. It marches and it swings,
like laughter, it is tears.
Emotionally charged, by no means irreverent, it suddenly switches gears.
History more than the future, a time though, never passed.
As definite as prayer,
cool as a sweaty glass. Full moon rising
heroin highs
the music lives on
the player only dies.
Straight up from the psyche, deep down in the core, no matter the decade,
more than less though less is more. Solo piano
full of vigor the notes interpret all you have known.
Time signature changes, on a dime, or rolled up bill, the rhythm method,
it comes from the gut
no matter how it is played or how it is cut. Free form.
It is life, it is living, it is solid, it is forgiving. As simple or as complex as a saxophone riff,
no four-chord progressions. Never boring. Never stiff.
Wholly original, as much as it is copied, and studied, sweated over, with notes cast asunder, improvisation, muddied by emotion
perpetual motion, realization, over and under.
Though practiced it is free, it is glossy, and messed up, so dirty it is clean.
Quietly you dream, completely obsessed. A blue note cries out
to lovers
and all the others,
calmer, smoother sounds, longer linear melodic lines, you don’t listen as much
as you go for a ride. Off the charts,
it’s art and it’s plastered with culture,
a contradiction not comprehensible, it is not responsible
should you dream a life totally possessed.
More about attitude than instrument of choice, the minor keys and major chords create it’s own noise. Structured silence played oh-so-slow in parts of deep reflection, blood rushing through the vein, it steps back then it rises up, triumphantly, again. Again
and again, and again.
Only a genre is to say night is just darkness, or a day is but a year,
it goes down easy with dinner, or a six pack of beer, seedy downtown club
or a scratchy vinyl disc
it comes with a purpose, arrives full of risk. It nourishes the soul from a rhythm, whatever it has, whatever it be
we should all live like jazz.© 2016 j.g. lewis
April is Poetry Month
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differently
We have faith.
We have doubts,
commensurate
with
unknown fears and
undetermined factors.That which you feel
I see as well,
differently.We pretend
we belong.In many ways
we share the same grief.We are afraid of
all the wrong things.
We doubt
our faith.Everything is temporary,
even our fears.© 2018 j.g. lewis
April is Poetry Month
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Lives forged by experience, altered
by those who encounter
the same things at the same time.
Friendships mark our years, hold us
accountable to our humanity.
We discover most friends
mainly by accident. Circumstance
or circumspect, intimacy implied by
mere presence, accepted as we walk,
as we talk, as we see
the same things at the same time.
We come to trust,
offer what little we know, barter
our wisdom with that which may be
only an illusion of understanding.
An exchange in kind, shared
timidly at first. We are vulnerable,
to the same things, at the same time.
Kindred, courageous souls;
they too must confide, you try
to be worthy. With neither pride,
nor modesty, we place value on that
which lies before us.
Lives shift, locations change, yet
displaced by age, distance, or devotion,
a certain mercy keeps close
those whom exchange,
without further thought,
the same things at the same time.
We rediscover, even much later,
how friendship marks our time.© 2019 j.g. lewis
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at seventeen
It was never for the night, but only
for the summer. My seventeenth
summer. Never would I say it shouldn’t
have happened, because it did.
You with a past
I would certainly become a part of,
and I collecting stories. An identity.
At seventeen. You took a part of that;
of all, or whatever, went forward.
What I have become.
Bones are formed through experience,
shaping us emotionally, physically, and
psychologically. Down to the soul.
You were there. There I was,
not knowing what to expect, and you
expecting nothing but honesty.
I didn’t question your motives, nor did I
question mine. Age was not important,
you said, nor was intent.
There was a difference.
Seventeen years. but only one summer.
July heat, the scent of patchouli,
sandalwood and #5. Intoxicating.
I tasted the moon on your breath,
and witnessed the clouds in your eyes.
A sullen anger, a hurt from before, and
your impatient need to get over
the emotions. You talked about it.
I could only listen, or try, to understand.
At seventeen I could not know.
Yet. I would learn. Eventually.
In times of give and of take, we took
consciously. Each of us. Never a moment
of mixing the beginning up with the end.
We knew. I wouldn’t ask;
at seventeen you don’t. Of course,
I remember fireflies, the music, touch,
and the sense and secrets we rarely
acknowledged. Not enough time. Only
one summer. It was close, something
I had never had before, but it was not
friendship. A friend you would see again.
Not only for a summer.© 2018 j.g. lewis
