Tourniquet unbound
			Breathe the Kansas City skyline
			-stone Jazz haiku

Jazz pierces the underground night
with its note of literate reason
At the Dakota Club
	where every conversation is a relationship
	where each drink is a hotel room

Come the quintet immaculate
	all grave to cradle
Sax
	scream scream to serene
		as willful tenor
			inciting
			inviting storm
The Cha-rip-tap drummer 
	breaking flesh
sitting not upon bandstand stool
but ragged peddler's suitcase
	closed up on one side by brass lock
	the other with tomb-gray duct tape
		that has hitched its way to Mexico,
		taught birth of Bop to an eager European theater,
		was stolen four times in Germany,
		and hit the road of America, spilling brandy
			bottles
				across highway 36
Caressing the keys as he would a mistress
this pianist
with teacup fingers
only there to entertain himself
	laughs like the noble Buddha
The bassman rides the string
hiding behind a blushed smile

	needles an opine trigger
Captain of the beat
	noble thinker
But the trumpeter is priest
His milky moon movements
				turned sermon
Prophetic riffs agile
	in the smoky mystique of his hidden wishes

These Bop angels
	burning crazy notes to a melody
	penned in a back alley Heaven
determined to celebrate those who have come before
	with a solid kick of courage
	and a knotting twist of enigma
rolling 
	tormented 
		    boiling
toppling
	  raged
galloping to the cooish purrs of disciple cats
How easy this is talkative chatter of the spine
Silence never to come again
				  never again
Gripped in exuberant harmony
from the faces of lore
to the hearts of ears
			   a feast
Last blow
				applause
				heartbeat
				release
				pulse
				tone
				open
				breathe


© 2006 by D. Garcia-Wahl. All rights reserved.