If I Were Made of Jazz…

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If I Were Made of Jazz

If I were made of jazz, would you
find me dreamy or sad? Would you
slow dance toward me, maybe sashay
into the shape of a poem? Would you
carry me home and hold me up

like the last, long note blown into a trumpet? I can’t
let you go until the moment says.
It’s ok to the diminuendo come, cheeks swell up
Dizzy Gillespie, you lend me
your sound, your soul. Be my

sweet saxophone, my sad trombone,
jitterbug us the whole way home.
Two silhouettes surrendering to the chaos of their pulses,
Pulitzer Prize fiction written
when the Stars Fall on Alabama, and I’ll be Seeing You Again.

A cafe in Venice, where a woman sits smoking. Imagine
this body as pure jazz. Her body, the cafe
where stale smoke and the slow drone of music consulate
above conversations clanging together.
So many great works of art staring across the room at one another.

Secretly, wishing they too could move through Billie Holliday’s lips.
Between them smoke cuts in and dances with the jazz
to the sounds of Moonlight in Vermont and Summertime.
You and I with all our sweet, sad sounds.

If I were made of jazz, would you
sway me back and forth like the most perfect grass? Would you
freestyle with my sound? Would you
be a summer night and hold me tight until
the blue moon sinks in the sky, playing me all night
until the soft, summer orange sun rises?
If only I were made of jazz…..