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Jogging with the Great Ray Charles
By Kenneth Sherman ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Kenneth Sherman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77090-941-0
CHAPTER 1
CLARINET
Ebony body that flared to a bell.
Tone holes and cool reflecting keys.
The reed of Ishtar
resonating in the humid chamber.
Sobs of klezmer on the banks
of the Vistula, or swelling symphonic
in the court of some Frederick.
O little Claire —
my splayed fingers manoeuvred.
Months of wrenching squeaks
until that first clear note
opened a smile on the face of Mr. Hargreaves,
our school conductor
(embouchure, timbre, slurs),
and I ran home to uncover
my father's stack of 78s:
the silky cadence of Artie Shaw,
the mongrel tremolo of Sidney Bechet.
Orphic stick, moody tube, please forgive me:
in 1966 I put you to rest in your plush
velvet case, took up the electric guitar
to be one of the rockers.
Now you're down in the basement
with all things left off, not carried through,
though I imagine a second life
where the promise of your higher register
is kept and your whole note lingers.
TRANSISTOR RADIO
Cool blue, rectangular,
held to the ear
it gave off the doo-wop,
the backup, the echo and soul,
the hip-grind and throb
of the Monkey, Mashed Potato.
An infinitesimal
turn of the dial
poured out the forecasts, traffic,
Jungle Jay's shtick,
talk show dementia,
requests out to Sue and to Rick.
Giveaways, getaways,
flux of the age.
The jangle, the jingles —
our right to blare.
Those crackling voices
dissolved into air.
JOGGING WITH THE GREAT RAY CHARLES
What I feel is old jogger's happiness
running along the salt-stained boardwalk
within earshot of surf.
Warmed tendons, loosened limbs,
the blessed rhythm of my steady breathing.
And I'm helped along by the iPod clarity of Ray.
Now there's a voice to stand time's test.
Some blues grind harsh,
the soul strung out along six stark strings
or straining hard through the reeds
of a keening harp, but Ray's — complete
with backup brass and chorus — can uplift.
I too have drowned in my own tears,
but not today. Today gulls drift,
cacti shine, tropical fronds fan out
like fishes' vertebrae. All around
sand is common though precious,
glinting along morning's diamond-crusted edge.
I pad beneath sun's benediction,
hit now and then by a fine salt spray
that keeps me focused in the present tense.
I'm in sync with Ray's upbeat
and don't even mind the younger and quicker
who pass me in their latest gear
then speed out of reach. Notes last
while these bodies flashing by —
the bright, the ecstatic —
sooner or later vanish.
We sing, man. Then we're gone.
CONTRA LANGUAGE
Language, unlike music, is condemned to have meaning.
It carries the reproachable human need to explain,
to justify, to convince, and, ultimately, to plead.
To ask forgiveness. It can never know
the simple joy of a clarinet, the self-delighting
ripple of a trumpet, the surge of a keyboard,
or the unpretentious rhythm of a drum.
Words, no matter what their tempo,
are slowed to a hobble by thought.
They must drag the weight of their double lives
through the mental gate
before entering the body.
Music goes directly, while words
are our unique and devious invention
providing a fair approximation of our dust-bound being
that wishes nothing more than to dance. To sing.
BERLIOZ
Alack! my child is dead;
And with my child my joys are buried.
— Capulet
It was quite a concert, our city's youth orchestra
performing Hector Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet.
Between the crescendos
I could hear Tybalt curse and Juliet sigh.
I could hear Friar Laurence
recommend the vial of magic potion.
I could hear Romeo's footsteps
as he rushed toward the crypt
and I knew that no matter how furiously
the young violinists sawed away at their instruments
nothing would save the doomed lovers.
What inspired such music?
The first time young Berlioz saw Shakespeare's tragedy
he fell head over heels for the actress playing Juliet.
Her name was Harriet Smithson
and Berlioz's parents despised her,
called her "a penniless Protestant."
Berlioz persisted with love letters, flowers,
chocolates. The marriage didn't last.
Harriet began to drink, forgot her lines,
stumbled onstage, blamed her failing acting career
on her husband's success.
And that was not the end of their sadness.
They had one child, Louis,
who became a merchant sea captain.
At thirty-three he contracted yellow fever
and died aboard his ship, headed for the tropics.
When Berlioz heard the news,
he said he could feel the insufferable heat,
the nauseating sway of the boat.
He grew inconsolable,
burned all his correspondence,
sold everything he possessed, everything
except a baton given to him by Mendelssohn,
one dark suit in which he could continue to conduct
and in which he could be decently buried,
and a doleful guitar —
a gift from Paganini.
HEART
So there you are at last,
on the diagnostician's screen,
fluctuating between clinical grey
and amber, chambers
opening and closing:
a mollusc
kneading its vital fluid.
You look so primitive.
Who would suspect you to inhabit
a human chest, to fasten
with such tenacity
onto memories, lyrics,
frames of an old black-
and-white film?
Hoarder, I lie awake at night
hearing you thump thump
as if you were banging on the door
of my life, pleading
for one more chance
to wipe the slate clean
and begin again.
AWAITING BIOPSY RESULTS
"Suffering," says Simone Weil,
"is time without direction."
Light cuts through the blinds
razor thin. In your state
of suspended animation
you listen for your heart
to beat
for the phone
to ring
for a voice
to call you back
to the living.
A DREAM OF LEAVING THE TORONTO GENERAL
I arose from my hospital bed
dressed and walked out of my room
and down the corridor
the nurses did not recognize me
I knew I was the colour of a cadaver
in the elevator I stared straight ahead
avoiding the eyes of the orderlies
I walked into the street
and joined the press of people
going their determined ways
it was a comfort to have a direction
my illness had made me desultory
I had been riding death's wave
and now I was once again like
everyone
like everyone I strode with the swell
of human traffic
anxious over things
that needed doing
I reached the corner
and fixed eyes with a street singer
I knew no one in life has eyes
that intense that focused
his mouth moved soundless
he strummed silence on his guitar
his plush-lined case
swung open like a coffin
and for a moment I panicked
believing I'd been walking
through the land
of the living dead
I tossed him a coin and kept walking
blending with the crowd
hoping that he could not see
the mark upon me
VENUS OCCLUDED
I awoke one morning to discover one eye
weird, blurry, as if opened underwater.
At first I thought I was imagining the effect,
denial my reaction to any physical mishap.
But two days later I found myself sitting
in the darkened chamber, the ophthalmologist
hunched over me, his miner's light probing
the flooded landscape of my retina. "There it is."
Then the ominous pause. "A venous occlusion ...
some damage ..." I understood occlusion as blockage,
but not being from the scientific side of things
or wanting, perhaps, to accept responsibility for failed vision,
I heard him speak the name of the goddess
and wondered if those images were fading
because they'd not been loved enough.
PREDICTABLE
They say things are never worse than one
imagines, but that is not true.
For instance, history, general or personal,
is not predictable.
Who could have foretold the stupidity
of the Somme, or the orderliness
of Auschwitz? Who could have forecast
the dissolution of your marriage,
the suddenness of your disease? What's true
is that there is an end to even the worst
suffering. It comes to rest in that place
where there is no more expectation.
There, dark reflects dark
on night's moonless horizon.
You lie perfectly still. The only
business at hand is your decomposition
carried out by laws of the mineral world
that are slow and fairly predictable.
UMBRELLA
It smells of the molten metropolis,
of asphalt and tar,
and folds into the palm of my hand
compact as a bat, silent, aware,
ready to open like a judicial robe
against the rage of unexpected weather.
Thin as my skin and like my skin
it remembers downpour, drizzle,
drops that build slowly as tears (words
grow stale but tears are always fresh).
Dark canopy
to shield against sky's darkness.
CHAPTER 2
YOU
It's your birthday.
Make some sacrifice
to the god of possible
fireworks
so that when you die
your spirit does not
go soggy.
Stay bright and crisp
in the waiting ear
listening
for your door to open
onto a sky
that permits you
to fly
in dreams.
Do not abandon yourself
to the larvae
of the unfulfilled.
Do not rummage among
old leaves
of your personal history
unless you have found
a way
to set them ablaze.
The genius of any house
walks in a direction
other than what
is given.
WESTERN
I went up to take a nap.
Once I closed my eyes
horses were running out of Texas,
big-eyed schizoid gallopers
and their riders: wild, unshaven men,
the broad brims of their hats blown back.
They were riding through a storm
and I was riding with them. I tell you
I hardly ever dream, I seldom travel, and there I was
past Devils Elbow and Dry Gulch, following a lead.
What were we chasing — Gold? A thief?
I asked but no one heard my voice above the thunder.
I thought the galloping would never end, but
then, in a flash, I was back on my avenue,
its measured lampposts and tight curbs.
Someone was digging. I could hear
the solitary scrape of a shovel,
but when I asked whose funeral,
no one would answer. They motioned me
to take off my hat and we sang a hymn.
I can't recall the words, though I do remember
the gaping hole flooded with late-day light,
and how I turned suddenly to see my horse stomping,
impatient for me to ride.
NORTH
What if I had been born elsewhere,
far from these wasted barns and barren fields,
far from these leafless, white-boned birches
that persist under a shrouded sun?
What if I had been born
where neighbours share balconies,
and down in the street everyone flows with the drums,
the masks, the fireworks of some crazed politics?
Then I wouldn't need you to scrutinize
my tracks in snow or decipher my icy silences.
I'd strum a vulnerable guitar
and open my heart so that you'd think of me
as your hombre dulce, a red gardenia pinned
to my white lapel. Charms, spells, the scent
of eucalyptus. Not these spaces between us.
Not these glazed roads that say treacherous.
TO MY BROTHER
Go ahead, dear brother, and carry on the
family tradition that I have sadly broken
by dabbling in words. Speak to me of
interest rates, percentages, and second mortgages.
Tell me the details of your latest real estate
deal so I can envisage that disused factory
in a dead part of our city swept clean
and refashioned by you into a hive of lofts —
lights burning into the night —
its tenants coming and going
rich with possibilities. I, whose
mind goes numb once numbers are spoken,
whose head gets dizzy staring at a bank
statement, regard you in utter amazement.
In my world two plus two rarely equals
four and risk involves groping toward
what only seems, while you embrace
the irrefutable solidity of money.
I wish my pockets jangled like yours.
I wish my wallet closed and opened
like a mouth that knew what fed it.
HOW TO PREVENT YOUR OWN CONCEPTION
Start by turning off the radio.
No point in having the two of them
listening to Peggy Lee's "Fever."
Next, substitute a plate of plain pasta
for the raw, provocative oysters
they are about to swallow
then perform a reverse miracle
by turning their glasses of wine
into water. If at all possible,
push the red hands of the kitchen clock
ahead to midnight
so that they feel too tired to dance.
How sweet it will be to watch them
yawn and nod off
without so much as a whisper.
Now if he happens to get hard as a gun
it will safely go off
in his dreams.
Let the two of them grope and pant
on another night, spinning out
a different set of chromosomes
so that you may spend eternity
in this graceful state of pre-existence,
watching from a distance
the weird antics of those two
and silently commiserating
with their slightly deranged offspring.
THE COLLECTOR
I began at seven
with stones I stored in a plastic container:
some were smooth and dark grey,
others dazzled with splinters
of quartz. Then it was marbles
that bulged in a bag of blue velvet
soft as my grandmother's skin.
Swirls and cat's eyes. Some too precious
to roll along the rough schoolyard pavement.
And baseball cards I loved for the smell
of the gum and the comical sketch on the back
that showed balls flying pell-mell
off a slugger's bat. What envy I felt
when some kid flashed his Topps Mickey Mantle
as if my owning that would — what? —
make me immortal.
Though I wouldn't have thought that
back then. No. Then it was matchboxes
from restaurants where my parents dined.
I glued them to bristol board like little flags:
Barberian's Steak House (red letters on black),
Rossini (swirls of Florentine script).
And stamps picturing kings with pointy beards,
physicists, gymnasts, and poets
from countries I found on an outdated map,
place names that long ago vanished.
And books most of all. I'd search the shelves
and surge with excitement
spotting a Canetti or Levi (Carlo
or Primo), then sink disappointed, recalling
I already owned it. It couldn't be added
to that world I'd been building
since first bending down
to pick up one stone, then another.
That world
where there is no end to desire.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jogging with the Great Ray Charles by Kenneth Sherman. Copyright © 2016 Kenneth Sherman. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
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