Boston-based poet Gordon Marshall has published 12 collections of his works, and is currently blogging on The Flash: jazz, noise, psych from the house scene in Boston. There he writes prose. All his poetry is musical, whether directly about music or not. See also my report about Boston doubling down on jazz.
Different Colors
The silence of the streets
In the outdoor night
Remembered to Miles Davis’
Pangaea, the bopping beat
Electric, going nowhere
And everywhere, Sonny Fortune
Sax loping a loop around
The city street I remember,
Under the eye of the clock
Switching and sorting
My strides, heavy to slow
To rapid and light,
Seeing what is comfortable
Under city light, now green
Now lavender pink,
It makes me think of the jazz
I’m hearing, now as I switch gear,
And Miles Davis the mechanic
Mulching the chords,
Mutating, altering the step
Of unfolding harmonies
Like the panoply of lights
Flashing at odd intervals
In different colors, like the music
Yoko’s Piano
Suck on a wet fruit, a grapefruit,
Say, pink and succulent and sour
Yoko’s piano the sweetness of
The hour, the lilt, the wilt,
The fadeless flower
Bringing its pollen to my nose
I’m in a close place
Perspiring sweat with her
Holding my hand like her song
The phrases I say
Filled with her music
Jolty, jaunty fingering
Filling up my mind
The grapefruit rind so delectable
I have to eat it, too
Way Out West (Sonny Rollins)
A space between two notes
Circulated, extended
Rush of scales
Pouring out between
Brash, elated joy
Funky as chili chocolate
Brass bell a mermaid tail
In a seaman’s tale
Sonny at the go
Gardening with his hoe
A crop of brown potatoes
Deep in the salty soil
Jerk back like a fisher
Reeling in a round
Fire fugue in a circle
Igniting the Western town