Gregory Luce
MUSIC TO IT
If I could just put music to it
this feeling that drives me
through the Metro station
wanting to dance and glide
like a disembodied spirit
seen and not seen
between all these other bodies.
Or this other feeling of enclosure
in a transparent cocoon,
coiled tight, my camera eye grasping
and drawing in every image. Every
song that jumps through my earphones
from Counting Crows to Sparklehorse
to Badly Drawn Boy perfectly frames
its moment but then dissolves into the next,
and I can’t sit still, fingers and toes
tapping, shoulders swaying, I feel
my body hurtling through space
at the speed of the train, until
it shudders to a stop. I take
a deep breath as I exit the car,
walk quivering toward the exit,
one last song pulsing against
the inside of my head.
* * *
from ROUGE ET NOIR: WEDNESDAY
Five hours sleep,
I crawl out of bed, aching all over,
one cup of coffee and I’m ready to blast off:
Red shirt, red socks, red shoes;
red food all day: grapes, kidney
beans, pulled pork swimming
in red sauce and sriracha. Bike all day,
sensation of flying a few inches
off the ground, listen to Eric Dolphy–
"Out There"–every time I stop
for more coffee, write until the pen
is locked into my hand, speed back
home, type it all up and hope it’s coherent,
eat chili red with Tabasco, fall
into bed and read until my eyes feel like
they’ve dried out, turn out the light.
Lie for an hour awake
between each hour of sleep.
Gregory Luce, author of Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications),
Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press), Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe
Publications), and Tile (Finishing Line Press), has published widely in print and online. He is the 2014 Larry
Neal Award winner for adult poetry, given by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He is retired from
National Geographic, works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC, and lives in Arlington, VA.
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