Four Poems Listening to Music
Blues in the Night
I close my eyes to listen but last night’s
dream turns up to distract me: with a big
kitchen knife I’m preparing a fish for
our dinner when it moves I’m terrified
what should I do: kill it quick to avoid
causing more pain but the blade won’t go in
deep enough I can’t tell if the music
is making me less afraid or more now
I recall that old Gestalt therapy
trick where everything in the dream turns out
in fact to be you—so am I the fish
the knife am I this music hauling up
the dream from where it would rather stay?
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Piece of My Heart
in another dream—closer to morning
when I can’t distinguish the dark from the
light—I am being guided by Lor Gill
through a difficult passage in a wood
with a firm hand on my arm as if he
is the older even though when I first
saw him he was an infant in Elaine’s
arms yet here he grins like a big brother
and though when I wake I know that he’s dead—
motorcycle crash at thirty-three—in
the dream all I noticed was the beauty
of his youth and how I trusted him
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Gymnopedies
Denise in class always told us that dream
is our channel to the unconscious: to
be respected for its wisdom and so
I used to write down every dream quickly
afraid I’d forget it sometimes now I
turn up the radio make breakfast read
the paper afraid I’ll remember it:
like this morning but now even late in
the day my mind is too clear so this dream—
familiar—coolly presents itself:
I just can’t get on the bus with all these
shopping bags takeout coffees instrument
cases and no one will tell me what to
do not Denise dead now twenty years and
not Satie—though I can hear that he’s trying
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Night Train
no wonder it’s been said music is the
perfect art: here when it’s here sufficient
then gone record it if you must listen
again but you’ll never see or touch it
the others try hard but always seem to
leave things lying around: stone words paint splash
blade crash hand on your arm nagging smell of
someone’s mortality who might that be?
no wonder I took up the sax how else
could I even approach perfection—at
night in the bar like the best kind of dream
I strap it on and by dawn forget everything
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February 1981: The Systematic Murder of Black Children
This is not a political poem:
giving out your “views” as they say in that
sense of democratic debate kicking
it around in discussion and argument
would be in this case a distraction so
I went with a title that’s plain fact you
could quickly verify: just discovered
in Atlanta the body of the 17th
(seventeenth) Black child murdered within the past
year such a fact laid out so simply hard
to forget might stick in your head awhile
reminding you—maybe—whenever you
see a Black child that they are miraculous
what do I mean? we need to behave of
course with love and respect toward all
children but as for Black children you have
to remember that someone is out to
kill them why? because they are Black children
and so let them command your loyalty
your most clear and fierce attention they are
rare they are in peril fewer of them
will survive those who do are yes miracles
you must treat them like the bearers of your
only hope for an end to the murders of Black children
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Dick Lourie’s poems come from his new book Jam Session And Other Poems (Hanging Loose Press, 2021). Lourie is a poet and musician, a founder member of that seamless union of word and music. He is also a legendary editor, shaper of visions. Like all his books this is unique, indivisible, rare, to be read and treasured. Look for it at SPD Books or at www.amazon.com