Hunting

Slung pose at the piano, but who’s filming?

Looking for tonight’s lick, something to outpace memory, become more like a smell,

hard to think about but familiar - a fluent instinct, like the caveman’s.  
So like him I pound and play, open-mouthed and thirsty.  
And I think, isn’t every musician a predator? 

Every saxophone blowing lungfuls of death?  Every imagination

the cradle of dark kingdoms, which language wasn’t built for? 

How about this?  Maybe we made verbal language to try to kick ourselves out - 

shrank our universe to what toneless thoughts could put in words; it is the unsayable which haunts.
So tonight I’m hunting - every note chasing a ghost, a scabbed over emotion, a victory that only shades into lonesomeness.  

I’m coming out on the count of one! two! one! two! three! four!

and every brittle cliché I’m not living up to better duck for cover because I can play all night.