Wednesday August 16th 7:53pm

The sound of piano. (Bill Evans, delicate, cool; Ahmad Jamal subtle and spacious; Art Tatum multilayered, multidirectional; Duke, beautiful melody and colour; Dave Brubeck, blocky chords and classical affinity). Sound of a tinny piano in the parlour downstairs. Downstairs, divergent space. Locale, approximation, nearness, the nearness of ye. The sound of the piano. Sound. The sound congregating in the body, wire and wood, reverberating in the body, echoing from out of the body, sending out into the larger body, blood and bone. The piano. Sound. A machine of bold conversions, of strict calculation into a mode of sympathy, of tune, of tone, warm bend of colours, cool comfort in blue, the shoosh and spat of drums. Keyboard, white, blank palace to be filled, stirring, never stirring, sleeping, never waking. Tapping at keys with letters and failing to see the comparison, words deficient, notes on a page without result, challenging no immediate consequence. Can I wake the sun of an age? Can I open and close old compartments at will? Who is walking down the halls, silently, dressed in costume, or instead let me dress you in more pastoral garb, joie de vive, dancing to the pipes of Pan. I slip on a glove, I tie on a bracelet, I button a sleeve, zipper, put on coat, words words words all to be undone when the erotic urges them forward in a gush.
The pomme of the mouth, the leaf of the cheek, vine curve of the eyebrow, pastoral portrait, image of something. Something hidden in the bunching trees. Shape, name, metaphor, the robust sounds of words applied to an appropiate agent. The juice of sex. Une pomme, profound, sweet, a simple delicacy, hanging on the vine, awaiting pleasures.
**
What is the status of a line? Can someone shout it from the balcony? Let me know, let the street know. Do they know? Sound it out, moisten your jaw:
"Against innumerable salient modalities and phonetics, some dubious and many outright profidious, the line rotates, turning upon this basis: falsity metamorphizing into truth, doubt disintegrating into surety." I said that. Just now, just saying it. Aloud, filling space with voice and thought, leaving the page to hover, without decoration. Instead, Sound.
Roar. To extend an area or volume. Production. Output.
Building fortifications in the library. Yow. Mouth the sound: yow. ye. you. Say.
Raw words. Say the words.
The figure in the street, the dark figure in the street, pointing up to my window, disappearing. The aloof posture of the streets there, the aged echoes, the foreign voices of neighbours. A river with a name I cannot know, it objects to me, it deviates from its course when it hears my name, swallows the vowels, shallows the bowels, follows the howls and cowls. Finds solace in another strait, hugs a stranger and tells him her troubles. Drunk all night together.
Or another:
With a voice as big as a saw, cuts and ers, taws and ahs. Sea. Ha.
A radiation of articulation, echoing outward. A poised contaminant, injecting itself into the old city, the underground city, the city of daylight, the city of intoxication (knows the city's secret name), city that lights up below the eyes, preventing sleep and awakening profound thinking, city that grows in the weeds, city of the kidneys; shuffling the deck of cities, grabbing "city" in a big fist. Grrr. And wakes up with a pillow wet with sweat; outside there is only city, making its terms clear, marking its territory like a dog. Looks outside, no dark figure in the street. Turning away from the window, the dark figure, standing now at the foot of his bed, pointing, silent.
**
Keep. Going. Keep the grinding hand moving, keep pushing down on the bulk. Coltrane now, opening up the valves, blowing out a mystic smoke. Inhale the fume. Engage the strides, power the wake, pioneer the drive, tin, tin, bang the pot with the handle of a gun, swing at the air in wild strokes beckoning something fierce in you, searching for it on the map, trying to find its location in strange flats that do not welcome you. How unexplored is this path, in time will it close in, surround and suffocate ye? Dead, only breathing in bark and leaf in the dark terminus.
How sour does it get? What colours can be mixed with Time to produce Future and imitate Past? Stark as the scream can get.
Now--graduating into something that trims its sails flawlessly into the wind. The white sails on the horizon, day after day, seeking something. On the radio, everyone hears the details and debates abandonment. If everyone empties out of a town, does the town lose its name? At night, it rains, and it is mostly dark, except for the rare brown light of a dying lamp. Who will hold out through this catastrophe? The roads become useless except as conduits for waters that seem to belong there. Was water always present on the lands that I walked upon? Talking incessantly about the madness are waves. When the rain finally stops, there is a circling light on at the tower, and the radio repeats the message of ghosts; only the water hears. Outward, on the horizon: a sail. There is no one to recognize it and defend themselves against its menacing solitude. It slices through the dark water with a pointed efficiency.
**
The notes suddenly turn downward. Static comes in for a moment then is gone. Punctuation cuts it in two. Asleep, I shout into the telephone or, awake, type out these words.