The language of a lone whistle breaks into dark, as the train puffs like a worm on fire coursing through town, swirling and forcing its sound into corners like a mad overflowing river. Dogs take no notice. Shadows remain under bridges. Small fires burn, warming hands of the empty and lost. The earth rumbles, pulling … More NIGHT PASSAGE
In him that thing voiced a noise, circling, surfacing, beating his insides until busting out with the jazz then rising, filling the air with his lightening, pushing brass into highs and making the lows cry tears of songs deep from wells where he sleeps, thinking strong with busy fingers, counting clouds in darkness as he … More THAT BRASSY THING
Morning went quiet like angel hands touching the depths of unreleased grief. Outward clouds receded, revealing an Egyptian blue sky. An envelope of breezes slipped with small notice over warm faces. Blond uncombed hairs twist like holiday flags under boughs of summer. Words opened with birthday surprise, fulfilling desires while holding dreams yet released. Sunday … More TAKE ME THERE
The edge of me rounds out, Running with jazz, pulling on paper words and twisting of hair in a crowd where sunglasses hide searching souls and feet eager for a place to call home like buttons spilled rolling and slapping round on a floor without mercy in a smoky room where last names don’t … More LETTING IT OUT
Late clouds sighed deeply under a the hands of a yellow sun, as day pressed forward to dusk, clearing the table for night and its curtains of dark to silently descend. Breezes dance without concern between arms of crooked branches. A silver moon opens on meadows, shedding release to paths now open. A … More QUIET FOLDS
There’s no washing off the jazz sticking to my skin floating down like feathers beaten from a pillow. Around corners from under cars through windows or down the up stairway the jazz trips me up to listen long. Under half or full moons I wander and stumble finding my way to the soul of music, … More LONG PAST MIDNIGHT
A first breath builds within; a crying life births a soul into notes for the living. Music pulled from years of hard blues sets firmness into a laboring of sounds darkly moaning lost names. Jazz stirred from the pain of absent arms and lips without smiles scratches wounds into bleeding; paths of scars have no … More LISTENING EYES
Late night breezes drift over cooling sidewalks, circling vendors with hands of profit and eyes labored with sleep. Paper lanterns, the skin of butterflies twist lazily, casting light fragments onto storefronts and strangers. Voices, parts of sentences and half words pass under weathered awnings; the air is thick like legs running underwater. Lime Street breathes … More LIME STREET
Labored wipers edge the smooth curved surface with vengeance as the final reach snaps a forceful wet slapping, shoving aside the enemy of night……water. Headlights course heavily through the drops as the beams stretch toward the next curve like a child reaching for candy. Creatures of night absorb the car, hovering over as if waiting … More NIGHT DRIVE
That black 33 1/3 circled the life of song spinning it out in round of rounds dark shiny onyx like Alabama nights pushed a sound of scratch and horns and bass with drums forming a jumpy beat as the man on ivories jams the air choking out a new sound … More CLEOPATRA’S OIL
Roger Singer 