Lay down thick the notes soft like cotton covering wide with sweet movable jazzy air rolling like engines full of steam boiling hot down long tracks soaking the land with notes catching people from behind and all over with the blend too strong to ignore like coffee breaking open the morning as clouds slide smooth … More ROLL ON THE JAZZ
From the open door I pass daily on the Rue des Lombards lined with lilac bushes, I lean to the sound of a piano; I pause with curious ears. Athletic fingers prompt the song to spill unwrapped to me, circling like a scarf, holding my thoughts, catching me out of … More RUE des LOMBARDS
Sleep is an explorer of anxious pathways where corridors of hidden thoughts collide recklessly at untested crossroads releasing pathways without fences. Sleep is the invisible black where eyes and fingers twitch as the visual curtains of life rise and then fall. There are mumblings of half sentences, warnings, forgotten names and prayers for forgiveness. Sleep … More INVISABLE BLACK
Midnight has a voice. A calling for those searching, unable to rest with anxious feet crossing streets trying to but not finding that second chance. Midnight is the thin slice of between yesterday and today. It’s half of this and the start of that. Some fear the straight up … More HALF OF THIS AND THAT
Celestial curtains cover him with a design of plenty. He breathes alive the bass, jazzing the room with engine pulsing sounds. . His hair is black and thick, like obsidian crystals crushed from stars. The beauty of his face and voice release like midnight bats carving the sky. Highways of angels step up, securing a … More JAZZING UP
He knows trouble. and the songs and loss. The nights past mornings where the jazz patiently waits for him like a faithful dog with good eyes waiting for a chance to release. He knows about black moons and shadows whispering and back doors of places he called home for … More FAITHFUL WITH TROUBLE
The notes rattled the chains in his head; souls marching, singing the pain of long days lost to labor for another man’s dream. Tears jaggedly cut his dusted cheeks, coursing rivers equal with oceans once crossed, added up and stacked onto the forever of years lost. Dust and sand kick up from under the shoes … More WITH SONG
The molasses of sound dripped slow flavoring him since youth when jazz got onto his ear like a propeller wash of beats making a whirr and buzz like coffee all night and golden arms with trumpets slivering the truth out of him surfacing with a suddenness like food slipping from the fingers of angels into … More YOU GOT ME RIGHT
I sit pleasantly under misshapen clouds where cool linen sweet breezes fan me while pretending I am young running the beach with sandpiper legs king of the day carrying candy and french fries; there is ketchup on my cheek as the waves flush noisily onto a soft sand shoreline where … More SANDPIPER LEGS
What right is of this? The passage from strength, the wall of stone held between paper fingers. What faith is within the ashes of belief? Altars of gold images dance proudly on heads. What calling speaks a name to step through fire? To a place of new winds … More WHAT
Roger Singer 