The High 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 the brushes and the furious heart, beating it out while the room leans in from the shadows — hungry, eyes like wet coins.

“Hello Mr Jackson, your table’s ready,” the waitress floats through blue smoke. I glide past the bar, past the sad drunk weeping in his beer, the couple loving with their 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 the gutters, saxophone ripping long cries that tear my head open, bass walking deep in my gut like a second heartbeat, blood going bop, bop, bop in 4/4, and I’m alive in the great night.

on the back wall, the dead are blowing louder than us living bastards: Miles cool as God on a sour day, Chuck Berry splitting like he birthed the whole thing, Chet Baker angelic and piercing my ruined soul — all framed, all gone, all immortals.

and the crowd roars for more, more — because for one minute, we’re not crawling toward the grave, we’re up on jazz’s wild screaming wings.

the last cymbal dies,
table for one, coat, cold street—
still humming the bop