Blue light dipping in foot rhythms;
ice melting in cocktails
turned slippery in condensation
and summer’s oil-like, lithesome limbs.
Open this throat like a yawning tunnel
and slug the sound of saxophone
flooding light
that gaping darkness
in the fire of jazz and whiskey
where releasing the weight of aching minds
in inky heads with ears sloshing full,
we curve exposed and arching
to collapse the demure decorum of posture and silence.
How else could we know this poetry on the ceiling,
mark the faces emotive on heavily swishing heads
bobbing and swaying like boats
on an atmospheric sea
that spans the coasts of seat and stage,
where stolen winds of conversation swept us to shore together
on an island of familiar sands and rhythmic tides;
a common ground below swooping seagull glares,
who circle back to cast their echoed caws of offence.
But loftily trapped above the warmth of feet in sand
how could they know that all this music is not for silent listening?
It is proximity.
To hear the grit of sand between your grinding teeth
or to part expression’s maw
and suffocate silence with drunken grains of warmth,
compacting and settled in every unknown space – which is closer?
It’s the water carrying the boats
and in the wind it’s fire on a darkened cold
it limbers and pumps each human inch to action;
it touches everything.
It is flood,
irresistible synchronicity of movement:
life and time are coiled here
to spring into a common pace with strangers and their leap is like
a breath lost at the lurch of sensory plunge:
spots of colour over vision locking eyes with the sun,
ribs throbbing in the slow after sprinting to catch up,
breaking the surface of the deep,
that gasp for air,
here now our footfalls dip
as one blue rhythm,
joint with breath in-taken.
In unison,
shouting out,
unending melody,
identity:
the riff just keeps on going.
We move in step.