black and white keys are bullets from a piano
loaded in your eyes then fired by trigger fingers
curled around the doorknob where you lived
at 63rd and West End someone calling out "who's there?"
when I would stand outside listening for the ricochet
of silences as if there would still be echoes 50 years on
instead of shots from the projects across the street
and tasting the gunsmoke of heroin-grey sky
smelling jazz salts revives me from
touching the numbers on your door,
the rooms now empty of music, no piano in the kitchen
fact: our apartment was a block from your house
Thelonious Sphere Monk Circle of 5ths
where the rhinoceros statue was cemented head first
by its horn in the ground as if a fat-man trumpet player
made a swan-dive of scales from the balcony above
the rooms now full of music the color of money,
tickle the ivories tickles your teeth with diamonds
until the piano player calls it quits and closes the shades
each note recluse as the door bangs open
the new tenants brush past me coming down the steps
in overstuffed coats as if whatever music was left in the walls
they've hidden in pockets or packed for extra warmth
and smuggle down to the subway take the A train to Harlem
where the notes escape like a flock of birds
riffing into the sky
The Sunday Muse
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qbit 
You lived a block away from the Monk? I loved the whole thing and especially the second last stanza.
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Thanks! Yes, I lived a block from where he spent most of his life, but not while he was alive. I would walk by all the time and stop and try to imagine the music that must have been coming out.
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Lovely!
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a potent mix of then and now – you yanked Monk from his apartment in 3-D and faded out the Circle of 5ths at the end with the underwhelmed incumbents – genius!
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Thank you!!!
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“I came here to blow, now, stay cool while I blow.
You all dug him once, because you were hipped that he was solid:
How can you now come on so square, now that he’s tapped out of this world?” (Lord Buckley)
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Oh man, so good.
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Of course music lives in those walls .. I wouldn’t hesitate to stuff a few notes into deep pockets, save them for a rainy day ~ or a ride on the A train. Great write!!
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Oh for sure!
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I am sure round about midnight those walls have songs to sing! Love so many lines in this Qbit!!! Absolutely wonderful!
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Thanks!!
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Expert wordsmithing, Q, about your unique perspective of how you imagined Monk based on your experiences.
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