[APPLAUSE]
Thank you for that very kind introduction, Charles,
and for the invitation to return to Tucson,
which is a great pleasure.
I think it was about 20 years that I was here before, very
long, long time.
So it's good to be back and especially so on the same stage
with Marilyn Crispell, whose music I've enjoyed and admired
for years.
And we haven't seen each other in a long time
either, so reunion in a number of ways
that's very resonant for me.
I'm going to begin with a poem, maybe two, from the chapbook
that Charles and Jack's press published called "Four
for Glenn."
The poems were eventually included in "Splay Anthem,"
but they first appeared in that chapbook,
a group of four poems dedicated to tenor saxophone player Glenn
Spearman, who was active in the Bay Area and was a person
that I got to know in the early '90s.
And he died in 1998.
Actually, five years to the day after he performed,
his band, his double trio performed compositions
for "Bedouin Hornbook," which was music
that he had written in response to my first novel
in that Broken Bottle series, "Bedouin Hornbook."
And we had gotten to know each other and talked on the phone
and ran into each other in concerts and stuff,
and he was an enormously talented musician
with a very unique voice that kind of
took up Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Frank Wright
and took it another direction and made it into something
that was completely his own.
Anyway, I wrote this set of four poems.
The first came to me, and then there
were three more that came to me.
And they made a nice little set, which I called "Four for Glenn"
to echo the title of "Four for Trane," which
was the title of my first chapbook,
which itself echoed the title of an album
by Archie Shepp dedicated to John Coltrane,
"Four for Trane."
And this first one is from that series
that Charles mentioned, "Song of the Andoumboulou."
This is number 42, in memory of Glenn Spearman.
When the double trio did the performance of the compositions
for "Bedouin Hornbook."
It ended with Glenn taking a copy of "Bedouin Hornbook"
and tossing it in the air, and when
it came down and hit the stage floor,
at the moment it hit the stage floor, the band stopped.
So that image of the book aloft in the air
is the image that this set of four poems begins with.
What we rode was a book.
We fell out of it, scattered.
The book fell out of my hand while I slept.
Page upon page upon page, nodded out on.
Fell from the hero's hand on the page I
gripped, never to be read again or, if ever,
only were I to awake.
Walked each with an arm around the other's waist,
weathered hell, heaven's andoumboulouous remit.
Me the hero, we the dream come true, I'd leave off dreaming.
Thin line between the dead and the living
dead no longer there.
Fanfare remanding the day, dawn's burst
anticlimactic one or two hours in.
So as to return, we stowed a part of ourselves away.
Felt we fell, found it sleep we fell into.
A low moan altered endlessly braced us, broke our sleep.
Nazakat and Salamat were there.
I put a part of myself aside, sought light, loosely, shone
like a halo, hupped, marched up Unreal Street unstrung,
strode across Atet street.
Remembered Glenn, remembering Frank, remembering John,
heard voices, Nazakat and Salamat again.
Stra strut it was, we called it, crawled unbeknown to us.
Having long bid ourselves goodbye, we begged off leaving.
Better said or sung than done it seemed we reasoned.
Leaflike the trembling skin we strode inside.
Torn cloth, we the would-be thread lay in wait
with whatsay, more than could be seen we saw, said we saw,
more than could be said we saw.
One made-up step made it seem like dancing,
anomie's make-believe ball, scratch of sand
and of intimate stubble, whatever of late went
for love on Lone Coast.
It was an island we were on, anabatic sand we strode across,
come to where, if at all, we'd live again.
So that B'Head called hard rock pillow, pillow
book the scribbling we saw.
We lay on our backs, rocks cradling
the backs of our heads, lay looking up at the sky.
Starlight hit us with headshine.
"Sky, be the writing we saw," we begged incessantly, breathless,
all but out loud.
We lay on our backs, arms out at our sides, putative wings,
hands palms up, catching light.
It was Arrival we were in, suddenly so with a capital A,
all we'd always wanted it to be, been told it would be.
Falling from the sky, an immaculate dust attending
sleep.
Statuesque, beautifully unbent as we looked on,
arched, insatiate bodies in the shape of trees
bent by wind on Lone Coast.
Shook.
We stood on stilts.
Mountain wind put parts in our hair.
We heard singing, backed by an armadillo-back mandolin.
It was a tavern we were in.
We were in Peru.
Some sung-about vamp grinding corn on a Cusco jukebox,
some vamp-till-ready we sat suspended in.
Lumbering harps had their way with the backs of our heads.
We held on, wincing.
Sat with eyes averted, scattered ashes coated our throats.
Cough seemed all we could do, we could hardly speak,
not so much Peru now as Paris it seemed.
A train what it was we were on, wherever
it was, a train whatever it was we were on.
In the city's insides albeit we were in Egypt,
high-breasted Sekhmet statuesque at the metro stop.
Beautifully bent all ears to inside an inch
of hearing, said nothing, muse meant lost in thought.
As we were, who were otherwise also made of stone,
Sekhmet's Memphite rock.
Premature rebirth, fake book of the dead,
burned or embalmed cosmic body by default,
screen outside a screen inside a screen, dreamt immunity.
Said goodbye, having hardly begun,
saying with the catch in our throats,
cough caught in our throats.
Saying to have been done with singing, song not enough.