D.C. and Jazz – jon
Color my TV screen because I’d rather not think of when this city was just fields and trees.Color it so I can still stare out my window at thesharp cityscape half asleep in the early morning. Look on while iced bums lay their heads down on lunch boxes by the Potomac .That dirty river run by crew boats and all drunk up by progress. Crash into the grass kept longby its senators, just sliding out of bed,out of velvet sheets and pearled doorknobs,clipping on cufflinks in a studio mirror. Play jazz on the side walkjazz away into the morning because peopledon’t mind and that double bass shakes thedrinks on their tables in a rhythm they can’t keep.Like some saddle shoes clappingdown a gum covered sidewalk.Down to the Potomac, where they’re dancingin the fountains with ice cubes and umbrellas.Just as dry as the bums patrolling the memorials. I can see the lights change downtownacross the river, no one’s there except for the few arid members left squatting in pool halls, baking in the yellow lonely light, betting on billiards like dogs around a card table. “Whats happenin chief, nothin absolutely nothin a’tall.”“Just spitting out teeth trying to play a harmonica, under my streetlight”Flickering on and off in some kind of electric seizure “nothins happening chief” So we climbed up on that bridge and spat down into thewater, watched it disappear like the crowds at thewar memorials. Disappear like sleeping in the grassor yesterday’s newspaper. Or the ice cubes in some fountain-dancer’s glass. “There’s mason signs everywhere you know”presiding over memorials like Arians like striped shirted men dragging balls and chains across the park grass It can hurt to speak Arabiceven watching someone dance and waveprayer flags in a savvy DC basementcoffee house, brick oven, alleyway, intellectual speakeasy just rattle their cup against that fence.“Keeping the rest of the world fenced in and us lookin in like it’s some kind of promised landpromised land all full of sod and symmetric trees,white suits and royal blue rooms.” Sometimes I see the tides change in the rivernot particularly fast, but enough to see the oysters and trashrear up in the exposed mud while the water dances around the bridgeappearing to go nowhere
It was wordpress’ artistic choice to change this piece into a prose poem
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