Writing is jazz with words,

Painting with sound.

If Jackson Pollack,

With his horizontal canvas,

Dripping paints,

Added sound,

An echo would be heard

Through the lonely courtyard

Like a saxophone

Writing a poem.

 

While darkness settles on the uneasy air

Dense fog offers a species of change.

Boarded up storefronts

Soaped windows opaquely curled

Banksy inspired graffiti swirls

To Pollack’s blood-dawn

Saxophone screams

Sharing light with the directionless

Inhibited moon

Sifting through the city

 

Arc lamps amplify color

As the protective grates

Over puddles of glass

Steam art’s soft shelter.

Inside the canvas tilts

Paint runs like insects

Dragging streaks across expanse,

Segments of code, patch of heliotrope,

Serpentine yellow slivers scald white,

Military-tan becomes industrial honeycomb.

 

A distracted man wades in paint

Arched like a feral cat

Barely visible in his lattice of armored black.

Discordant rhythms form sheets of lead-gray

Taming the insects into their thread-bare lacunae

While these cocoons breathe new DNA

Into incendiary misfires of scooped-sky.

Saxophone’s aperture opens,

Rebellious yells and painted wings

Hopscotching the cymbals of new expression.