Careening carefully,
I take the plunge,
Dropping
dropped,
Out of sight,
Out of my mind,
And then it's time
To be real -but here's where it gets tricky.

I was a virgin once
And learned to sacrifice for others,
Drawing lines and circles
in the dirt,
with just a few
common notions to guide me,
the earth was certainly
the center of my universe.
I studied Latin and Greek,
was enthralled
by kings, queens and castles,
Everything was black and white,
And then it was time
to mate -but here's where it gets tricky.

My voice changed
and a new mathematics took over:
Simple addition became multiplication
Complicated addition became division
Limits weren't finite
People who had co-signed
went off on tangents.
Seven became twelve
Two was against three
Three against four
Things tempered and just became
arbitrary and maybe not really
the way you or I would have put it.

But here we are,
Trying not to fall,
And doing a pretty good job
just sticking around,
Waiting for the next big story.
Maybe it'll make us say, "Wow!"
and really mean it,
Maybe we'll be in it,
Or itíll be about somebody we know,
or knew once at least,
Maybe it'll be about something important,
Maybe it won't make the news after all,
but we'll know about it anyway,
That'll make us feel a little proud
and insignificant at the same time.

Our pride is our own concern,
But God knows I heard some musicians
Who sounded like they cared.
I listened.

Delft Blues

Sometimes we wonder as we wander
Dedicated to a Dutch town known for its ceramics of a certain color
and to a musical tour that revealed some European soul...

We bring the music but they do supply the setting

Saxophone strokes
notes
hand-painted blue
with the breath he blew
    and he blew

Music fired by the sun in places like
Africa, Alabama
Glazed in the heat of Chicago nights

Some call us dancers
We call ourselves foot soldiers

Meanwhile, beneath my window,
clomping, stumbling and bellowing his way home
this townsman needed no one special to cry the news:
Even in Delft sometimes
    they get the blues

I Am with You, or The Fantasy's All Mine
    -for Lester Bowie

For some folks
the doctor was never in
But for me
whenever I went
he was right on time
and I left feeling better

He took my pulse
and when he thumped my chest
I heard pulmonary porters
from Armstrong to Ayler
I said Ah

The doctor was out

Sometimes
sitting down rocking
from side to side on his chair
you might wonder
if his research
had been a little too intense

Maybe it wasn't easy
claiming to heal
with those old tools
out of his black bag

The man could burn

He was a chef
who wasn't afraid
to use ingredients he knew
you'd always have a taste for
down home cooking
with just enough spices
you'd never expect
would play together

He'd take an old recipe and
doctor it up just so