When Joe Pass Plays Guitar

I was thirteen 
when she laughed at my voice,
the choir teacher, that
sexy broad who gave me
my first hard-on.

I sang a scale
I wouldn't learn for seven years.

She laughed at me.

Fuck music
is what I learned from her.

I wanted to blast bass
for Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
or bust drums for DNA.

I quoted Rimbaud for the goats
I milked every morning
before the school bus arrived.
When I squeezed those tits at night,
I quoted Walt Whitman.

The barn cats
moved like Miles Davis.

Oh, when Crockery Creek
topped its banks in April,
I ran naked through a third-
growth forest,
swum like Adam in that
muddy water.

I jacked-off on spring lilies
and slept on new moss.

No shit.

Herbie Hancock taught me to sing.

I purged my soul
on the clay banks of a little creek.

I tossed the ultimate question
to a suicidal Santa Claus,
spitting soliloquies at Mars
before I knew where the music ended.

I saw the fiberglass arteries of Orion,
the pinstripe suit of Ezekiel.

When I was nineteen,
I heard the horn of Miles Davis
before he took a chariot to the other side.
I saw him on the stage,
and he refused to look at me.

Where is Joe Pass on guitar,
my girlfriend said to me.
Where is black-angel music
when God says
make a joyful noise,
she said.

Fuck music,
is what I said.