THE SAXOPHONE HERESIES
T
MILES TOTEMS UP THE
HOMING PAINS
THE SOLAR MYTH APPROACH
- for SUN RA
DEAD LETTER BLUES -
for VINCENT
CRANE
1
Anxious suburban teenager, 1962, eyeing up West End
shopfronts, head aches with deepheat beat that won't
be put down, his shaky fingers pop as his new breath
is smoothly mechanised by immaculate brass riffing,
analogue-coded as curving space-wagons hurtle with
glitter and wet perspex off the assembly line into glare,
all horny blaring in sexplay of these streets...
...these streets scripted with showbiz neon cliche, display
the horns, in clusters of gold andd false silver, plated,
sculpted, with flowering gravure, in all the right names-
Selmer, Buescher, Conn, Berg Larsen, and the white
plastic Grafton, "as played by Ornette Coleman " perhaps
in the orchestras of sinking ships. .. as played in the
mysteries....
....as played in the mysteries of addiction, his addiction
to secret names - who played tenor on Buddy Guy `s "First
Time I Met the Blues " And this sacrament of power,
the soul that burns beyond the weary algebra of notation,
as read by all those light-fingered piano tricksters,
faster workers with cool girls,with their orthodoxies of technique,
while in the wanderings of his eyes, across the untouchable contours of
some distant cheekbone, he knows that this music knows
that he knows. .
...he knows the dark presence inside the statues of the
great jasz dead, the self-destructing immortals. . .
...he will enter, has entered their darkening infinity, focussed by
rays, head-aching searchlights of interrogation/prowl
car/night-train in the night~rain, which reflects, in swirls of
pain, on these Soho pavements. . .
he wants to breathe these night airs, to expel fires,
in total voluptuous solid instants of power,
a flighting of blackened throat-cries
down the hollowing cathedrals of city streets, emptied
as the dream of God is interrupted -
2
the horn, uncoiled, tastes dank
useless
dark frayed reed
old verdigris spores
spot the scrollwork
" needs work"
work is scrabbling up a clutter
staled pearl keys
breathwork is not
pure prana
it becomes him not
these saurian fartz
up the ladder of Pythagoras we go'
slow and quack
this little pinko stumbles
up and up
go leaky fingers
trying to try to change old fat-finger
changing brass tube into horn.
"rancid gas maelstrom!"'
JABBERWORK ! THE SHAM SHAMAN DRIBBLES!
IT'S THE ID OF THE ME, SHAMFOLKS! RAMBLE,
YoU RABBLE-ROUSER! DESPERADO PHLEGM IS
MORE LIKE IT! RUMBLE THIS TIN BELLY-MAN!
FUMBLES OF PRIMAL WONDER! WHAT KEY
WHAT KEY! QUITE LOST IN GROPES AND (DRIP-
INC! BREATHLESS! BLUBBERING! SQUALLING!
AIR! BLURT! GOB! ME! ME! ME!
"try to read the music."
3
Try to escape myth. Try to actualise it. Try to outrun
zoot-suit idols. Try to do the Hucklebuck. Try to control
squeaky reed. Try not to nibble mouthpiece, boy.
Try to get it off, try to get it on. Try to measure duration.
Try to attack precisely, on the dot, liquidly unslur, to
full fluency in flight across the semi-tones, and no dirty
scrabbling in the cracks, to hear Pythagorean geometries
of sound, the clean line
~ a tune a day--
and he can't. Must clumsily grope. Backwards. To his
root, his false rooting. A half~deaf blabber, this shagged-
out, sleep-drenched compulsion to blow. A fuzzy-
cheeked pidgin over-blow, to blow, to be blown, right
on out!
4.
Years later
this customised narration
still replays itself badly
Years later
at the shrine of the blue flame
he mimes his inner riffs
soundlessly
Years later
having hocked all the hooters
when other, more Gothick pasts
spoke right through him,
the dud doubletongued,
0 God, 0 Baudelaire, 0 bombed-out Europe!
Years later years
of distraction in his secret
secretions of inner ear
the phantom fanzine fancy:
to be a foot note in those sleev~notes
(BirdTrane/King Curtis/Ayler)
and those midnight mysteriosos
dying like punks
his years of addiction to ghost-tones
must burn off into the night
listen here, now
5
SAX = FLUTTERING GRIT
ON BATTERED VOWELS BEF0ULED
`BY INSECT CORES JUICING HOT METALS
IN CUT FEEL BURN OUT
KEEP THE HARDMOUTH GRIP
ON TONE CHAMBER VIBRATION PATTERN
TO BLEND ALL BRASS AIRS
TUBE DABBED IN BLOOD THAT OLD SPITTOON
TUNED
BURST IN A WRIGGLE OF SEQUINS
IN METAL VOICE HOLARCHY
FLESH!
6
in a splay of fingering
breaking a wave/waver/wavering
breath
narrowing
to widen throughout the mouth-
piece of starred
bitten metal
through (mucus) into a cone
forced through re-
entrant curves
to the power
of power
take deep-breathing/care
ride the habit of motoring nerves
tickling into click
an heraldic platter of keywork
displayed
-for structure veers back
down to the foundations
above (is below) that level of Malkuth
the titillation of atoms a fiery bodymist
there is numerate spirit?
at last/first binary?
sound isn't/is
sono nis
play makes the player
the cuffed elemental of his sighs smoked groans
grows tatty wingbats buffets
(boxedinchords)vibrant lines vectored/
into pulse beat/flight/beat
fleeing/trilling duration
in the split of time
MILES TOTEMS UP THE HOMING PAINS
(Festival Hall, London, July 1987)
To do the strut around
in peacock lights
green purple
Miles probes
lost touch
flashing twinge of mute
the collective of eros lost
under her breath
at the end of parties
on the beach when she smiles and turns away
from the whole of darkness
its tender gravity of the flesh
in novocaine
THE SOLAR MYTH APPROACH
SPECTRUM (I.l)
out of local dotted time
through/across
acoustic space
voices of the voidlux
star chamber, star chamber
echo through all colours
the old Pyramidologist, of blackness
REALM 0F LIGHTNING (I .2)
a long line scooped from blood red earth jags across baked
ground; but the jungle is walking all its swarm towards
the song, the serene howl, an animal who is rattled and
thundered into fur-throated being, brushing through the
rustling drums
the tatter, the hammer, the pressure, the patter, the fissure
the finger, the batter, the beater, the hitter, the howler,
the scraper, the bleeder, the rustler, the thunder, the
1finger, the singer, the thunder, the flasher, the stinger,
the rattler...
,
the drums tickle, spreading a glint of rainwater across
my favourite bits of you, the drums tickle/a beast/into
glottal yodelling, and light moves in amiable stripes.
THE SATELLITES ARE SINGING (I .3)
the satellites are singing
in hep tones bop tones
across the growl of Harlem tarmac
the galaxies are calling
and we sing this song-pulse
for their great procession
and the syllables are spinning
through solar lofts, aloft and
the steady tread of our joy
trembles in solar cells
LEGEND (2.1)
the rocksichord teetered, telegraphed
some cry from the forest of reeds
a nesting of lost planet reedbirds
who have plaited the nerves of their hives
with stains from brain dance
their story of the chimed rocks
was coming into a speckled light
blazing hole of rock mouths
pray silence for earth's story line
the crystal men and women
just flamed into life
their whole leaping pointillism
was a paint~dance~energytrace
sound smears for the sun
YHA! through slides of brass
through reddening shifts loops brackets
they drove the verbs chattering at infinite recursions
into the fused-glass columns/doors of star traps
networked, clustered, undecoded/
all creatures glowing up a storm
so many oral transmissions
too much NO radio silence PRAY
this is the story of the living rays
SEEN 3 T00K 4(2.2)
THE GREAT CHAIN 0F BEING
swings from the sleeping robot
all this is secretly filmed
its great flame of being
sings: the sleeting plateau
all mists; hidden thunder
the crackling Solemnities of some great Silver beast
framed on slowburning celluloid/to curl smoke
have left us to flutter small new wings
through fluffy rubble
of his great amphitheatre of night
THEY'LL COME BACK (2.3)
their cylinder along the word line world lines
will curve along the centrifuge of light lines
future Cabaret along the wiry barbed lines
spinal nova along thinnest scratched red lines
eternal returns please
the stoppage must be unclogged
flow your milk through temporal membranes to melt our habits
please feedback thou hatchowl of the mysterious meat
which is vegetation of unborn egg states~
next word is de ja vu
all sticks back like flies
will be a great ball called experience
will come like the ecstatic grease of automatic transmission
be a soul train head light around the mountain
out of the laughing red rock mouths
all sackcloth
beat the roaring blades
contracted but undiseased clocks
come back come back come back.............
DEAD LETTER BLUES
His perfect spelling on the best vellum, the last letter.
In that drab flat with the gravel garden.
In the evening, the rainy evening.
In Cathy's quilt, all dusty, perhaps, wrapped around him, hopefully.
"Vincent, you bastard, you've really gone and done it this time," and then she, Jeanie, slim
and husky, desperate with fags and sick with a clenched stomach, for the furies roaring for
real in the wet wind , maybe she howled and kissed his brow.
And I am making patterns with her pain.
And he always played a bit with her pain.
Like he stood up the girls at seventeen.
And he in his satanic pomps gave them points, teeny points for their maidenform tits and
having docile personal falsities.
And the dark dark bleak ache on the bald street is really going onwards and upwards.
He used to drone in his madness but he at least he went on famously, furiously. "After the
Beatles, after the Stones, who else is left? Me..."
I've sat for years on unmade beds listening to all that.
Did I kill him with my righteous summer letter/ Did I kill him with the flying aroma, the
flying arrow of my tulpa, the cacking Raven, moulded from his auric excrement
I wept for the best minds of my generation
on well well too late all
the old beat is in the pattern of sunlight across the cold wind, rhythm of clouds across the
February sky. They huddle around a greenish grave on the straight and narrow of cypresses
while Father John in his biretta with quiet high anglican powers and principalities sprinkles
the earth.
To drive out the cockney devils.
O bury the flowers.
Renee peers forward: Ashes to ashes. .
The day before, poor shaking olive-dark Mizarolli mumbles before the coffin, sprinkles his
holy orthodox water with muttered prayers for Vincent's soul.
Vincent is sleeping in his glossy coffin . The candle hisses.. He is
plasticine in the hands of iron, hands of teak, hands of brass, but he hides his lean feminine
gambler's hands
- that played Bad Penny Blues
- that drove the broken english of our
word engines on his screaming Hammond
- that played tricks with spinning dots, and juggled, and carved a chaise longue -
those hands that I broke the spirit out of with my spectral wrath, the ugly syntax of my
warped hunchy soul, I must have done, those hands bound away into invisibility underneath
the veneers.
He wore a silver-blue smock. A celestial kaftan. With his vampire-proof crosses, he looked
very '69, , my old hero of sixth form dances, betrayed by my bland repressions?
I was angry with my friend , sayeth the etheric body of William Blake.
I with my foe sayeth my bestial husk.
He is husk now, smooth polished husk, his hair in cavalier disarray, his skin lightened by
poor brave Jeannie with her emergency pancake make-up and he displays the sardonicus
hammerfilm of a smile, smug within he cosy casket, but he isn't here, it has been emptied of
brain, and the brain of Crane is drained, but in the snicker snicker cranium his sideways
mercurial eyeflicker is going on and on.
He is still going on. He won't stop, the fucker. He walks with his long dog along the high
white streets, past the porticos and architraves...maybe the last time..."silly old Vince" ,he was
crying, the stupidest man in the world, as he tried to rail us on to the train at Maida Vale. .
On the day of the funeral his dog shat on my shoes, I call that a psychic phenomenon.
He was in the box. I'm certain now. When Michael and I arrived at the undertakers with a last
minute floral tribute there was a screwdriver lying on top of the coffin.
Old Tom had just wandered in hands behind his back, clicking his dentures, to inspect the
brass plate. As if VC was setting up a small business, a new profession. "Very nice, my dear."
His agony will take years.
And in 1962 VC played his wonderful thundergod boogies down the phone, the music turned
me into a jabbering shaman who embarrassed girls everywhere, but the lightfingered trickster
at the piano he got them all...
He wore a suit on the summer beaches.
He wore a wild west outfit to my school.
Take it from the top! we yelled.
Thanks to: the editors of :
Ostinato; Kudos; Open Township; Mar
©Paul A. Green
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