from Tone Poem: Starlight and Stardust, by Robert Sheppard

  

                                                                        for Jazz Ian Perry

Melissa Aldana, 12 Stars

ears
raised to the stars the
fastidious lead with its
jagged edges quick- 

            leaps its
            roiling arpeggio
            clutters 

and travels toward the ceiling –

Aldana’s stretching on her toe-tips
even as she dips
as low as
she can go side-stepping 

            the lure
            of Sonny Rollins
            by sliding into nervous flutters – 

                        signing off

she’s out, listening
to the piano rollicking in its not-quite-jazz
fracturedness: 

12 stars in tonal constellation
swimming above a turquoise eye

 

 

                                                                        Donny McCaslin, I Want More 

thrashing amid changes
not scared off the riff
skiddy bass stabby bass 

            the echoed sax
            belches and squeals
in total recognition as near to all
sounds at once as possible 

            now
            ‘Fly My Space Ship’
            totters off course on take off
synthethecised robotic drownings
caught across the drum’s slashed necessities – 

            extraterrestrial Bowie anthem rising into
            orbit – 

sky-high reverb trembles over the faces of the water
to summon mermen to
fishy annunciations 

                        before they dive
                        into the thickest
                        swell of noisome 

                        soundlessness

                       

                                                                        Miho Hazama’s m_unit, Beyond Orbit

light swirls at her fingertips
as she curls intervals
into elliptical orbit around her theme

but she releases capsules of spacewalking
            solo energy
            into fluidic sonic wave 

where we rest restlessly –

                                    pro-pulsed –

stellar patterning in the DNA
of Christian McBride’s bass 

            the building blocks
            of new musical life: 

a string section quivering –

soft-landing canons –

                                                multiple starlight –

 

 

Robert Sheppard lives in Liverpool, UK, and is the author of many books, including History or Sleep: Selected Poems (Shearsman), Elle - a verse novel (Broken Sleep), and Holme Fell: A Sample of Landscapes (Knives Forks and Spoons), with photographs by Trev Eales. The Robert Sheppard Companion is a book of essays on his work, from Shearsman, and The Meaning of Form is one of his critical works, from Palgrave. He blogs at  www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com