811. SATURDAY'S MUSICOLOGY

SATURDAY'S MUSICOLOGY
(a nation of glowing pigs)
'Always put a covering on anything good' -
that selfsame motto, hanging around trailers
and cars, never made any sense to me.
-
Frank O'Hara Lady Day Died - the poem
about that day, I mean to say - 'oh how I
tried, leaning on the john-door in the 5-Spot
while she whispered a song along the
keyboard to Mal Waldron and everyone
everyone and I stopped breathing.'
-
A coal-car was parked at the 1959 tracks -
cars filled with sodium chloride and coal
and flour and foodstuffs and more. The
Bonneville Salt Flats and the ocean itself
could hold no more than these rail cars held.
Two men were smoking alongside number 521.
One suddenly fell to his knees, right there in
the west-side rail yard, and - as far as I could
tell - died quietly and quick, expired, passed on,
passed away, like Lady Day too perhaps,
though far more certain than
her uncertain way.
-
We are calling it mass confusion, here,
in this nation of glowing pigs - and
I am so tired of being me.