i was not meant for this
world so i become his
after Thelonious S. Monk
a man i only love round midnight puts on some coffee shop tunes ♯ he says he wants to get into jazz and I nod ♯ but the truth is that you can’t get into jazz ♯ it gets into you instead ♯ pervades you until the world makes less sense and the hair of your arms takes ♯ a stand takes a bow and you yourself become ♯ indistinguishable from the jazz ♯ you’re the same key ♯ same song ♯ the difference is only ♯ syncopation ♯ it’s just you learning to live ♯ in the pocket and so I play him the answer ♯ the sole salve for my pleas ♯ I give him a shove in the direction of those brilliant corners ♯ he does not make the turn ♯ the song is just getting started ♯ he turns it off ♯ tells me it’s just random noise ♯ and I want to tell him that the ‘S.’ stands for Sphere ♯ and that the notes are not random but they’re so close to the truth ♯ the near brashness ♯ this adjacency to chance ♯ it’s not natural selection ♯ these clashing chords only its grand imitation ♯ too much wonder too much madness in this ♯ sphere at the center of your eardrum’s coil ♯ it just keeps swelling until ♯ it’s roughly the size of a world or two ♯ and the people like me are dissolving ♯ in this sphere that is not our earth ♯ in the sphere that I engulf because it never will be
In our dream band, on bajo sexto:
Ren Koppel Torres is a Jewish Chicano artist living in Austin, Texas. He serves as the editor-in-chief of the Latino literary & arts magazine Alebrijes Review and the managing editor for the music-poetry project INKSOUNDS. His work is published/forthcoming in Diode, Apogee, TIMBER Journal, Lumiere Review, and elsewhere.
Ran Off With the Star Bassoon 