The Hi-Hat Solo

blow by blow, the drummer’s foot stomps that pedal like she’s kicking the world in the ribs, cymbals crashing silver in the dim, hi-hat chick-chick-chick in a wild solo to nowhere and everywhere.

there she plays under the hot spotlight, the girl with brushes or sticks or her furious heart, beating it out, while the room leans in from shadows—hungry, eyes like wet coins.

“Hello Mr. Jackson, your table’s ready,” the waitress floats through blue smoke. I glide past the bar, the sad drunk weeping in his beer, the couple loving with knees under the table, to my booth, reserved on a matchbook with a number I never dialled.

the place jumps and bops at the end of a torn downtown boulevard, neon bleeding into gutters, saxophone ripping long cries that tear my head open, bass walking deep in my gut like another heartbeat, blood rushing bop, bop, bop in 4/4, and I’m alive in the great night.

on the back wall, the saints: Jolson grinning devilish in blackface, Miles cool as God on a sour day, Chuck Berry splitting like he birthed sex, Chet Baker angelic, piercing my ruined soul—all framed, dead, immortal, blowing louder than us living bastards.

the crowd roars like a freight train of angels and demons barrelling through night, roaring for more, more—because for one minute, we’re not crawling to graves; we’re flying on jazz’s wild screaming wings.

five or six cognacs,
excessive, heavy drinking,
turmoil and decline.