words

jazz in the day’s wake,
it is the songs that i will forget
that are understood the most.

in the quantum etching
a part of me expires
at a constant rate
and the west goes burning on
and the cars and trucks
pass me by like pulses on the wire,
electrons skipping town
and we are waves of a similar sine
and the notes go on beepbopping
in to the evening.

is this not but symmetry,
an aching in the smallest of particles
to float anxiously together.

or but the truth of things like jazz,
the notes not played are felt
as in the passing of a peer,
a moment of silence suspended there
for everyone to hear.

-S.C. Martinez