Jason Crane

POEM: skreeks & skronks

skreeks & skronks

plectrum scraping against metal wire
string theory: indeterminate length
you take two bodies & mash their atoms
collisions yielding energy / heat / light
what if I gave you this & you kept it?
one note in the bass arpeggio above
we assimilate Italian terms because we
have no adequate words to describe this
aural multiverse through which we’re flying
add drums bring to boil reduce heat simmer
there are saved onions in the fridge
they’ve accepted Jesus into their cores
peeled away the layers of freewill
acknowledged their eventual dicing in service
of the Lord & his supper table
bring me the head of Robert Fripp &
five white people who can clap on two & four
then lay me down in sheets of sound
John Coltrane has my blood on his hands
from when he slipped & I caught him
he hovers above the bed in judgment
waiting for his ascension when he’ll be
seated at the right hand of Earl “Fatha” Hines
“if all you can play are squeaks & honks
then you’re not really free”

10 April 2012
Brooklyn NY

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It’s National Poetry Writing Month! A poem a day, each day in April. This poem is a piece of free writing, written while listening to Brooklyn EP by Terrence McManus and Below The Surface Of by Terrence McManus and Gerry Hemingway.