from “BIRD/DIZ [an erased history of bebop]”

Excerpt
Written By Warren C. Longmire

Warren C. Longmire | BIRD/DIZ [an erased history of bebop] | Bunny Presse | 2022 | 84 Pages

Thelonious Monk (1966)

Today, you will pass a Monk in rags downtown in each American city. Today, I want you to walk slow for second and take him in. I'm gonna say allow for a drunk you don't know to stumble into your viewfinder and hold the scene long enough to breathe and notice the sense in every fearful thing. In the thumbnail of this youtube, Monk slumped forward angel gazing. 5m12s: he almost forgot to jump back to his piano again.

Today, I'm going to call the second when we allow ourselves to sway inside the music inside your head being five and I'm gonna say when you're five you can't sin.

Today I'm gonna escape my body in public. I'm gonna ask you to luxuriate in a sound that feels like a fabric and drool and baby, tell me that's not home? Talk wrong and call that praise. Monk's mouth as a warm baby's gaze into this strange benevolent giant I am suckling. Loosen the noose you have to wear and wander off while they are watching. That's a Monk, that's a holy vibration. That's a prayer.

This recording, originally in greyscale, is the result of when you pass a youtube through a colorizer. A colorizer causes a halo of whatever the algorithm believes the base grey to be, whatever doesn't correlate to a modern example inside a google's database.

The algorithm picked stone blue for the walls of Copenhagen, a spasming sapphire around the suit of Monk backing blurry into frame in front of the drum solo, coughing slightly into his dominate hand. Pulsing like a mushroom high. 

Today, close your eyes in-front of a thing you don't know how to play. Put your left hand on the right side and slide on a heavy gold pinkie ring. Decide to hit the black key a fifth down from perfection. It looks like your fall was a dance move after all, bold and homeless searcher. Today, a memory mouthed through your lopsided grin is an art piece. Read the silent awkward spaces you cause like a rainbow puddle of oil. Enjoy at least this sunlight on your face and a time when a laugh this strange couldn't be diagnosed. I'm in love. An old dirty bastard twinkling Lulu's back in town.

"improved band suddenly hit jackpot!" & "Thelonious Monk (1966)" from BIRD/DIZ [an erased history of bebop].
Copyright © 2022 by Warren C. Longmire.
Reprinted with the permission of Bunny Presse.

Warren C. Longmire

Warren Longmire is a poet, technologist and an educator from the bad part of North Philadelphia. He is a former co-editor of Apiary Magazine, a board member for Blue Stoop and has taught at University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He’s been published in journals including Prolit, American Poetry Review and The Painted Bride Quarterly and is featured in the Best American Poetry 2021 anthology. His first full length publication, Open Source, was released in 2021 through Radiator Press.

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