Fingers on keys
Fingers on strings
Fingers pressing, pulling, pushing, a one-a-two-and-a-three-ing
Lips on golden mouthpieces
Blowing, blazing
Trumpets crooning, trombones singing, saxophones humming
Vocal chords rattling, shouting
The drums driving, the bass thumping, the violin responding
Jazz
Less a description and more an experience
Less words and more a feeling
Less an art form and more a state of being
Jazz
You taste like jazz
You taste like rhythm, the rat-a-tat-tatting of an adventure that we can dance to
You taste like the percussion, a force that I can't ignore
You taste like the brass, a vaulting explosion of energy that makes it hard to come down from
You are less a description and more an experience
You are less words and more a feeling
You are less an art form and more a state of being
You are Jazz
my darling
With
Fingers on stomach
Fingers on thighs
Fingers pressing, pulling, kneading
Needing
Lips on cool skin
Tasting, lamenting
Your body crooning, your knees singing, your skin humming
Vocal chords vibrating, words getting caught
Hips driving
Hearts thumping
Hips responding
You and I
Entwined
Just like Jazz and the Dancer
Unknowing of where one starts and the other stops
The call and response, starting this wondrous conversation
Orchestrating something beautiful together
Drawing a tapestry of the physical and the beyond physical
And just like the Dancer
I don't want this song to ever end
So let us Swing, Swing, Swing, Swing
In bedrooms and streetcorners and ballrooms
On top of mattresses and tables and patches of grass and hardwood floors
Let us shimmy and make music
The only thing that laughs loudest in the face of Death
Is the three minutes
Of a song
Where you're dancing too fast
For him to catch you
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 2, 2017.