Day 35 | Having My Cards Read by W. S. Di Piero

Day 61 | Having My Cards Read by W. S. Di Piero

Day 97 | Having My Cards Read by W. S. Di Piero

Day 61 | Having My Cards Read by W. S. Di Piero.

Day 84 | Having My Cards Read by W. S. Di Piero

Day 61 | Having My Cards Read by W. S. Di Piero.

Day 134 | Johnny One Note by W. S. Di Piero

Johnny One Note
W. S. Di Piero

Bobby Hutcherson in Oakland

The mallet strikes but something’s off,

and so he hits again, curling that lower lip,

purses his brow, as if this sign, this minor woe,

were speech the vibes might understand,

so when he lifts bluish lids as if wakened

to the desired tone that rings now, it seems,

it sounds, under wraps, a water-ly quaver,

through the club crowd’s silence,

as it floats above us like an aerosol

trying to find a new way to escape,

passes through the wall’s mortared pores

to reverb in the cool night air of an

unpeopled sidewalk, droning toward tracks

where a passing peopled train sucks up

and winds his finally found, wowed tone

around its wheels, held there by steel heat

one hundred miles, until it reaches the sea,

where wheels and whistle overreach

surging surf the good vibration feels such

desire for, and leaves its tedium

of the round and round, lofting to a sea

that comes and goes but finally simply goes,

as one night, this night, the cool vibes’ air

(struck finally in the changed groove of sax

and ecstatic kit) is free, finally free,

to go where we won’t hear from it again.

Day 61 | Having My Cards Read by W. S. Di Piero

Having My Cards Read
W. S. Di Piero

Hobos wail a garbage can against

the cyclone links. The monkey puzzle tree

droops its scaly tails above our heads

as she sets up near the zoo’s bonobos,

humping happy in their cages close

to chimps ripping off each other’s ears.

And in the cloud reposing on the sky,

cut by an F22’s long hookah puffs,

the cyan atmospherics rupture into

solarized platelets: her Ray-Bans foil

my own face back at me:

                                  A time of renewals

            though somewhere

                         dark cold woe

                                   You won’t know what’s what

Comes a taste of sea to make her pause,

and marine gusts slice and spook her cards, my cards,

that flurry to the sidewalk, near the barred gate,

breaking fortune down faster as she speaks.