Welcome to Gregory Luce!

This evening I'm pleased to be posting Gregory Luce's poems. The poems that he sent me truly fit the original intent of The Song Is...: to celebrate music, especially jazz but also other forms. By the way, each of tonight's poems will appear in Greg's chapbook, Riffs and Improvisations, which Kelsay Books will publish next year.


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.


Originally published in Wordgathering, Volume 11,
Issue 4, December 2017

     photo by Filipe Dilly

Double Bass

(for H.S.)

The plucked notes of the bass
mimic my heartbeats and then
the bow draws out a long
low moan the way your hand did
drawn across my back.

The portrait of Erik Satie is by Ramon Casas, a Catalan artist.

Mystère

The ghost of Erik Satie
hovers over the keyboard
where Monk’s huge hands
reach for the infinite,
grasping at chords that seem
humanly impossible. A breeze
from Paris 1920 wafts
over the piano. Monk mops
his forehead. Somewhere
Satie is smiling.

Lush Life

It has to be Johnny Hartman
with Trane framing that
voice that flows smooth
and rich like a river
of barrel proof bourbon
rippling with McCoy’s chords,
Jimmy and Elvin’s beats
popping like ice in a glass,
and the wheel of life starts
rolling you back through
the gay places, the low
dives, finally the side porch,
sitting alone late at night,
that pint bottle at your feet
almost exhaling whiskey breath,
you running your finger
around the rim of the glass,
tracing each bead of sweat
sliding down the sides,
pressing it to your forehead
to cool the sudden flush
that starts just at the hairline,
hands trembling a little now,
so another small splash into
the glass, slivers of ice tinkling
as your hand shakes,
the lush life in this small
circle of light.

Originally published in Maryland Literary Review.






Greg has given me a lot to work with. I can even include a song from the 1990s, Counting Crows' "Mr. Jones." Don't know if it's the song on the speaker's playlist, but I'm including it anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oqAU5VxFWs


Ron Carter plays the song "Double Bass" from his 1997 album The Bass and I: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMVSfHkbSls


Let's switch to Erik Satie's Gymnopedies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9WKC5sT9Z4


I've posted a lot of Monk here, but I don't think I've posted his "Japanese Folk Song": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD1p95nyeEc&list=PLrR6QlNIqj5nsVyr8fuMYq6tTFffx12q9


I'll finish with Johnny Hartman's "Lush Life." This is the version with John Coltrane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0izjSUqCcSQ


Enjoy!