Midnight Gospel in C minor

[_Land]

Curtain Rises on Smoke

The lights don’t come on.
They dim in reverse—
like the night is remembering itself.
Like God forgot to turn the stars back on.

A hush falls.
Not silence—
but thick quiet,
the kind that tastes like bourbon and backroom deals.

You don’t see the room.
You feel it.
Boards that creak like old knees under bad decisions.
Air thick enough to chew.
A single note, maybe a G,
hangs in the air,
not played
but promised.

Somewhere offstage,
a trumpet sighs in its sleep.
The piano,
half-tuned,
carries a low heartbeat—
not melody,
just memory in motion.

Smoke curls in from stage left.
Not fog.
Not dry ice.
Memory.
Burned slow.
Carried on the breath of ghosts
who still believe they have something to say.

A light flickers above the bar—
naked, swinging,
tired of witnessing sins
with no absolution.

The tables are set,
but no one eats here.
They drink.
They forget.
They remember too much,
and then drink again.

On the far wall:
a photo, yellowed at the corners.
A woman mid-laugh,
eyes closed,
mouth open like the beginning of a song
she never got to finish.

A record scratches.
Not to play—
just to warn:
“This is no place for purity.”

Footsteps.
Soft.
Confident.
Tired.

The Prophet enters,
keys jangling like regret.
He doesn’t speak.
Doesn’t need to.
The room bends toward him
like it’s known his weight forever.

He lights a match.
Cigarette, maybe.
Or a candle for the forgotten.
Either way,
it flares.
It flickers.
It listens.

Then the band begins to tune—
slow, unsure, like waking after bad dreams.
And the stage inhales.

Tonight, the dead will dance.
And jazz will lead them.

 

[_Land]

In the Key of C Minor

The Mouth of the Night Opens

There is no spotlight.
Just darkness
that hums in the key of regret.
Low.
Relentless.
C minor—
the chord you hear
right before the blade slips in.

The club doesn’t open.
It awakens.
Like a beast rolling over
in its own ash.

The air is thick,
cigarette smoke and ghost breath—
heavy with all the names
no one dares to say anymore.

You don’t walk in.
You descend.
Down crumbling stairs
lined with handprints of the damned,
into a womb of wood and velvet
and betrayal set to rhythm.


---

There’s a record spinning somewhere—
not music yet.
Just the hiss of dust
remembering its former body.

A single light swings from the ceiling—
naked bulb,
tired from watching so many men
trade their wives for whiskey
and women who already know
they won’t be remembered.

Glass clinks like teeth.
The bar breathes slow.
The piano creaks once
like it’s warning the keys
to keep their mouths shut tonight.

And still,
you come in.
Because something in you
wants to bleed beautifully.


---

On the wall,
a bullet hole
framed like art.
Below it,
an altar made of empties.
Bottles with lipstick rings.
Shot glasses that still smell
like final chances.

From the shadows,
the Prophet watches.
Not with eyes—
with silence.

He doesn’t welcome.
He allows.
Because this isn’t a sanctuary.
It’s a confession booth
with no absolution.

And jazz—
jazz is the sermon.
Rough.
Untranslated.
Too honest to be holy.


---

The band begins to tune—
but it sounds like mourning.
Like something sacred
being dug up
too soon.

The piano finds C minor—
not by choice,
but by compulsion.

It groans.
The kind of sound
that makes a grown man
clutch his chest
and swear he’s felt this pain before.

The horn joins in—
not to play,
but to accuse.
To name the ache
you’ve been hiding behind charm.

The room shifts.
Not forward.
Down.

And the dead?
They don’t dance.
They listen.

Because tonight—
in this room—
grief is music.
And you
are the instrument.

 

[_Land]

Setting the Stage

The Inhale

The door creaks open,
but no one rushes in.
This hour don’t belong to the crowd.
It belongs to the room.

The club yawns wide—
not tired,
just remembering how to breathe
before it fills again
with perfume, sweat, and lies.

The tables sit expectant,
ashtrays emptied like chalices
awaiting sin.
Chairs pulled back just enough
for memories to slip into them
first.


---

A single piano note drips
like water from a cracked ceiling.
Not a song—
just a sound testing the silence.

The pianist’s hands are slow.
Cigarette in one,
regret in the other.
He plays like he’s folding an old letter—
something never meant to be read
out loud.

The horn rests on its side.
Brass glint dulled
like it’s seen too much
and don’t want to talk about it.

One string hums loose on the bass.
It doesn’t tighten.
It trembles—
just enough
to say
“I’m still here.”


---

Trouble's voice trails in
before she does.
She’s humming—
not to remember,
but to keep the ghosts entertained
until she has the strength
to face them.

Behind the bar,
the Prophet polishes glasses
like he’s preparing altars.
Wipes one three times,
then puts it back.
Not clean enough.
Some sins don’t wash easy.


---

The floor creaks
without footsteps.
The air shimmers
like it’s already tired
of being touched.

Outside, the night waits—
heels clicking on cobblestone,
nervous laughter wrapped in mink and cigarettes,
wallets fat with reasons to forget.

But inside—
inside the stage exhales
its first breath of jazz.
Not loud.
Not proud.
Just inevitable.

The curtain doesn’t rise.
It shrugs.
As if to say:
They’ll come. They always do.
Pain’s a magnet.
And music—
music’s the bait.

 

[_Land]

The First Set
Where the Night Begins to Bite

The band doesn’t start with fire.
They start with heat.
Low.
Lingering.
The kind that makes your collar itch
and your conscience loosen.

The piano finds a rhythm—
not perfect,
but honest. limping into truth
after too many lies.

The bass follows,
slow and thick—
a heartbeat with nothing left to prove.
It doesn’t hurry.
It never does.
It just knows
you’ll follow eventually.

Then comes the horn.
Sweet Jesus, the horn.
It doesn’t enter,
it confesses.
Mouth to brass,
shame to air.

The first note bends so deep
it scrapes the bottom of your memories
and pulls something up
you didn’t know was still breathing.


---

The room shifts.
Not all at once—
just enough to notice.
The first couples drift in
like regrets dressed in silk and furs.
They don’t speak.
They listen.

A man lights a cigar
with hands that shook at war
and haven’t stilled since.
A woman crosses her legs
like she’s daring someone
to remember her wrong.

Trouble leans against the bar—
not on it.
She’s never needed support,
only the illusion of it.

The Prophet watches the door.
He always watches the door.
He knows who’s coming
by the taste in the air.


---

The first set is slow poison.
It doesn’t kill.
It summons.

By the second song,
everyone’s body has betrayed them—
a sway here,
a nod there.
Even the coldest soul
starts to melt
when the sax croons that one phrase
like it knows your mother’s name.

Eyes close.
Fingers tap.
And without consent,
you remember someone
you swore you forgot.

That’s the power of the first set.
It opens you—
not with force,
but finesse.
Like a thief
who returns your heart
after replacing it
with a record that knows how to hurt you better.


---

The song ends.
But the ache stays.
Because jazz never says goodbye.
It just pauses long enough
for you to wonder
what you just gave away.

And the crowd—
they clap.
Because they don’t know
what else to do
with what they’re feeling.

 

[_Land]

Speakeasy Hymns

---

Velvet smoke hangs
where sin makes her home—
in the curl of a saxophone sigh
and a hemline cut too high
for decency
but perfect for midnight mercy.

Gin tucked
in a teacup,
lipstick ghosts
on every rim.
Her laugh—
a flapper's gospel,
holy enough to raise
the deadbeat saints
from their bathtub graves.


---

Trumpets wail like grieving mothers
who once danced
in better light.
Clarinet confessions drift
through red-lit backrooms
where the law don’t knock
and men learn the religion
of rhythm and ruin.


---

She moves like bootleg bourbon—
smooth, illegal,
a danger you sip slowly
just to taste the fire
on your own tongue.
Her ankles, anarchists.
Her gaze, revolt.
Every step a scandal,
every turn a telegram
to men who forgot
how to breathe.


---

Downstairs,
beneath the prayerless pews
of a boarded-up church,
we drink to forget
that the world is thirsty.
That God may have turned away—
but Louis,
Ella,
Duke,
they stayed.


---

Jazz is rebellion with lipstick on,
a hymnal hummed in defiance
of dry mouths
and dead laws.
It is the sound
of Black joy surviving,
of smoke curling upward
like a middle finger
to every man
who ever tried
to silence soul.

 

[_Land]

The Door Without a Name

You knock once.
Then twice.
Then whisper the name
of a sin you’re proud of.

And the wall cracks like a grin—
he lets you in,
not because you belong,
but because you don’t.

Inside,
the rules don’t work.
Decency is a drunk uncle sleeping it off in the alley.
And God?
He checked his morals at the coat rack,
ordered rye with a twist,
and took up jazz like it was gospel.

 

[_Land]

Sanctuary

This is the chapel
for the damned and divine.

We drink in tongues,
we dance with devils,
we baptize each other
in sweat and gin.

Our communion?
A shared laugh
over the bones of prohibition,
a toast
to everything we weren’t supposed to become.

Here,
we are too loud.
Too black.
Too queer.
Too alive.

And thank God
we never learned
how to shut the hell up.

 

[_Land]

The Saxaphonist

He don’t talk much.
But his horn—
that thing’s fluent
in everything pain knows how to say.

He plays like the past owes him money.
Like every breath is a memory
he’d rather forget
but can’t afford to.

Each note he drags
out of brass and heartbreak
spills like a confession—
low and slow,
molasses from a wound.

He’s got war in his knuckles.
Bootprints in his chest.
France still in his lungs.
But nobody claps for a Black man
just for surviving
unless he’s playing
something white folks can dance to.

So he plays.

Mouth on metal
like he’s kissing a ghost.
Eyes closed—not for reverence,
but because looking at this world
too long
hurts more than blowing through it.

The room bends around his sound.
Couples pause mid-grind.
Even the bourbon breathes softer.

He don’t smile.
He don’t stand.
He just plays
like a man who found his way back
through a tunnel of smoke
and jazz
and rage
with nothing left but the truth
wrapped in brass.

And when it’s done,
there’s no applause.
Just silence,
thick as sin.
Because everyone in that joint
knows what it cost him
to come back
and bleed like that
in public.

 

[_Land]

Trumpet blows

I don’t whisper.
I wail.
I scream in key.
I turn breath into bullets
and grief into goddamn glitter.

They put me in the hands
of men who’ve buried too much
to be soft.
Men with lips cracked
by the lies they’ve had to swallow,
who kiss me like revenge
with valves for teeth.

I don’t do background.
I cut through the noise
like a blade through Sunday silence—
sharp, unholy,
and never asking permission.

They call me arrogant.
Too loud.
Too black.
Too brass.
But I was never made
for the polite.

I was born in brass
but raised in blood,
in juke joints where the law
didn’t dare knock,
where the air was thick
with sweat and sin
and the only god was groove.

I’ve seen men blow me
like it was their last prayer,
bending notes into memories—
fathers lost to war,
lovers stolen by time,
childhoods carved
by white men’s boots.

And when I rise—
oh, when I rise—
I make the ceiling sweat.
I make the preacher drink.
I make the dead remember
what dancing feels like.

You don’t play me.
You confess through me.
I am the altar,
and every solo
is a scream you were never allowed
to release.

So blow, baby.
Blow like your mama’s ghost
is watching.
Like every locked door
is just a dare.
Like you were never meant
to be background noise
in someone else’s story.

Blow until the world forgets
it ever tried
to silence you.

 

[_Land]

Good Girl Gone Jazz

Mama said keep your knees closed
and your voice lower.
But the beat got in my blood
before the Bible could drown it.

I was raised on "yes ma’am,"
but my hips said otherwise.
My spine refused obedience.
And my laughter—
it climbed out of my throat
like smoke escaping a house on fire.

They wanted me god-fearing,
man-pleasing,
Sunday-clean.
But I found my altar
in a dive bar
where the saints wear sequins
and the only sermon
is saxophone moaning
between gin and grind.

They called it rebellion.
I called it resurrection.

See, I was a good girl once—
stitched tight in modesty,
taught to serve
while smiling.

But jazz?
Jazz tore the stitches.
Jazz kissed me
where shame had grown roots.
Jazz taught me
that sin can be sacred
when you survive it.

Now I dance
with a cigarette smile
and thighs like gospel.
I don’t pray anymore.
I sway.
And my hallelujah
is a heel click
on a stage lit
by moonshine and moan.

I know the looks.
The whispers.
She’s fast.
She’s lost.
She’s loud.
Damn right I’m loud.
I had to be.
You ever try screaming
through a corset?

They say I fell.
But baby—
I flew.
I stripped off obedience
note by note,
until I was nothing
but melody
and holy sweat.

This ain't no downfall.
This is jazz, sugar.
This is me,
unfolded.

 

[_Land]

Where the Glitter Doesn’t Reach


The crowd leaves.
The claps echo like bones.
She peels off the sequins—
each one a lie she danced through.
Each one stitched
to cover what they didn’t want to see.

Behind the curtain,
the air sours into silence.
No music here.
Just the soft hiss
of hope going cold.

Her thighs ache with worship
she never asked for.
Tips still stuffed in her garter
like silent bribes—
“stay beautiful,”
“stay broken,”
“don’t speak.”

She wipes off the rouge,
uncorks the bottle,
and lights a cigarette
with a hand that used to tremble
before it learned
that trembling gets you nowhere.

There are bruises the lights don’t catch.
On her ribs.
Her voice.
The part of her that still hoped
he’d show up
after swearing
she was "different."

He didn’t.
But the trumpet did.
The drums did.
The sax did.
They stayed
when the men didn’t.

She talks to the mirror like a priest,
confessing things
she won’t even write down:

> That her smile is a weapon.
That her name’s not even Ruby.
That she once loved a man
who made her feel like gospel
then left her in pieces
at the foot of the stage.



She downs the rest of the gin,
lets it burn away
what the crowd left behind.
Outside,
someone’s already playing again.

Jazz never sleeps.
It just trades faces.
Another girl’s pulling fishnets up her legs
and painting on the same lie:
“I’m okay.”
“I chose this.”
“I’m free.”

But inside,
they all know—
freedom don’t glitter.
Freedom bleeds.
And jazz,
real jazz,
don’t play for the pretty parts.

It plays for the wreckage
you build altars out of.

 

[_Land]

Midnight Gospel

confession in four parts

I. Collar in His Pocket
He don’t wear the collar here.
Not under the red light.
Not where the piano bleeds.

He tucks it in his coat,
next to the flask
and the sermon
he didn’t finish writing.

On Sundays, he preaches redemption.
On Fridays,
he buys sins by the hour—
a booth, a bourbon,
a woman named Trouble
who remembers his real name
but never says it.

He tells himself
he comes for the music.
But the lie sits sour
on his tongue
like communion turned vinegar.


---

II. What He Can’t Say from the Pulpit
He knows every verse.
Can quote Leviticus
in his sleep.
But none of that saved his brother—
found swinging from gospel silence
with a belt and a secret
and not a damn soul
to hold the weight.

So the preacher drinks
to dull the echo of rope.
He listens to the horn scream
in the voice his brother never used.
And when the singer moans—
throat thick with velvet sin—
he wonders
what salvation ever meant
if it couldn’t make room
for that sound.


---

III. Jazz as Heresy
He used to call jazz the devil’s breath.
But now he knows:
it’s the breath of the broken
who still bother to breathe.

He listens with his eyes shut—
not in reverence,
but regret.
Each note pulls something
holy and hideous
from the gut of him.

Jazz don’t lie.
Jazz don’t kneel.
Jazz don’t promise
streets of gold.
Just survival
and sweat
and someone to sway with
until the ache softens.


---

IV. Benediction in Blue
He leaves just before the sunrise.
Always.
Because light is judgment
and the pews never forget.

But before he goes,
he lights a candle
at the edge of the stage.
Not for forgiveness.
For memory.

Because somewhere between
hymns and hi-hats,
he found a truth
his pulpit couldn’t hold—

> that salvation is too clean
for the kind of grief
we live with.
But jazz?
Jazz makes room
for even the dirtiest soul
to dance.

 

[_Land]

Trouble
the woman who remembers his name

They call her Trouble
like it’s a warning.
But really,
it’s a spell.

She wears red like a siren.
Not the myth,
the ambulance.
The aftermath.
The thing that comes
after something beautiful
is broken.

They don’t know her real name,
but he does.
The preacher.
The one who comes late
and leaves earlier
than he wants to.
She never says it out loud.
Names are power.
She’s learned not to give it away
for free.


---

She knows the language
of sweat on a backroom floor,
of hands that tremble
but never ask permission.
She learned long ago—
a man who can’t hold his truth
will try to bury it
in someone else’s body.
She just makes sure
he pays up front.

But him?
The preacher?
He don’t pay for the body.
He pays for the silence.
For the look she gives him
like she already knows
every dirty hallelujah
he’s ever tried to hush.


---

She’s got a voice
like gravel soaked in honey,
sweet enough to lure
mean men soft,
rough enough to remind them
she ain’t something to tame.
She’s been kissed
by men who mistake her for mercy
and slapped by women
who lost their men to her shadow.

She don’t cry anymore.
She learned to dance instead.
Cryin’ don’t pay the rent.
But dancing?
Dancing keeps the ghosts at bay,
and some nights
she can almost pretend
her body’s still hers.


---

She tells the preacher once,
after a second drink
and a silence too thick to swallow:

> “God’s a jealous man.
But Jazz—
Jazz lets you be dirty and still divine.”



He didn’t answer.
Didn’t have to.
She saw the confession
shaking in his glass.


---

She remembers his name
because someone ought to.
Because names are the last thing
this city takes from you
before it dumps you
in the alley with yesterday’s sins
and tomorrow’s promises.

She says it soft
when he’s half-asleep—
not to wake him,
just to remind the air
that even holy men
need someone
to hold their truth
and not flinch.

 

[_Land]

The Bouncer

A view from the threshold

He don’t talk much.
Doesn’t need to.
His presence says:
“You don’t belong until I say you do.”

Six foot six of silence,
jaw set like a closing door.
One eye on the crowd,
the other on the ghosts
they bring with them.

He’s the sermon
you don’t interrupt.
The last calm
before the chaos.


---

He’s seen it all.

Flappers with bruises
hidden under rouge.
Preachers tasting sin
like sacrament.
Men who come in married
and leave
with lipstick that don’t match
their wife’s name.

He don’t judge.
He remembers.
Remembers every name whispered
through whiskey teeth,
every secret bartered
at the cost of another lie.


---

He was a prizefighter once.
Till a crooked ref
and a heavier fist
left him half-blind
and full of stories
no one pays to hear.

Now, he guards the only place
that still plays his kind of music—
the kind with fight in it.
Jazz,
with its busted notes
and busted hearts.
A rhythm that never needed fixing.


---

He watches Trouble
slide past in feathers and sin.
Knows her real name too.
Never says it.
That’s the kind of man he is—
one who protects
without pretending to save.

He’s pulled more knives
out of men’s backs
than he can count.
Sent drunks home
with broken noses
and broken dreams.
But never raised a hand
to a woman.
Not even once.
Not even when she spat truth
like blood in his face.


---

He keeps a flask in his boot.
For the cold.
And for the memories
that claw at his ribs
on slow nights
when the music fades
and the laughter is just
echoes from better men
who didn’t make it out.


---

Some nights,
he stays after close.
Sits at the empty bar.
Listens to the piano man
play something low,
something meant for the ones
who survived
but don’t know what for.

And he’ll nod.
Just once.
Because he understands—
some of us ain’t looking
for heaven.
We just need
one place
that doesn’t ask us
to explain
why we’re still breathing.

 

[_Land]

The Anatomy of Jazz

a symphony of highs and lows

Jazz begins
with a breath.

Not the polite kind—
but a dragged, desperate inhale
like someone lighting a match
with their last gasp
before drowning.

The Highs:
She climbs.
Sharp.
Brazen.
Rising like a flapper’s laugh
above the noise of men
trying to legislate her ankles.

Trumpet first—
arrogant and golden,
slashing the air
like a freedom no law can cuff.

Piano fingers roll in next,
silver-laced mischief
breaking and building,
coaxing sinners from their shame
with just a few well-timed keys.

The saxophone moans—
not a sound,
a seduction.
A ritual.
A slow striptease of sorrow
turned sanctuary.

Cymbals crash like champagne sins,
and the whole room spins
with the dizzy heat
of too many wantings
happening all at once.

Jazz at her peak
is a woman unhinged—
laughing too loud,
loving too deep,
alive in a way
that makes the dead jealous.


---

The Drop:
But she always falls.
Always.

Jazz don’t stay high—
she plummets.
Slides down blue notes
like tears down Sunday cheeks.
Unforgiven.
Unapologetic.

Bass thumps like regret—
thick, repetitive,
a reminder that gravity always wins.

The piano, once playful,
now plays like it’s sorry.
Like each chord is an apology
no one will accept.

The trumpet weeps
where it once roared.
And the saxophone,
sweet liar,
pulls you in
with its grieving lullaby—
the sound of all the things
you should’ve said
before they left.


---

In Between:
Jazz lives in the sliver
between climax and collapse.
She thrives
in the off-beat,
the unfinished phrase,
the breath caught
just before the next drop.

She is rage
dressed in velvet.
Hope
with a hangover.
She is the echo
after the scream,
the kiss
after the goodbye.

And God help you
if you fall in love
with her mid-solo—
because she’ll leave you
where she found you:
shivering,
sweating,
begging for more.


---

And Still—She Rises.
Because jazz always rises.
Bent, not broken.
Scarred, not silenced.

She’ll find her way
back up the scale—
slick with sin,
shining with survival—
and she’ll scream again,
laugh again,
spin you dizzy
until you forget
you ever thought
this music was safe.

Because jazz isn’t safe.
Jazz is
truth with teeth.
It bites.
And it sings.
And if you let it,
it will turn every wound in your chest
into something
that sounds like
freedom.

 

[_Land]

Smoke, Haze, and Shadows

a meditation on what lingers

Smoke don’t ask questions.
It just stays—
coiling like a lover
you swore you’d forget
but still smell on your skin
years later.

It curls from the tip of a cigarette
balanced between lips
that know the taste of every mistake
they never got to finish.

This is the haze—
where jazz hangs after the last note.
A shimmer between endings.
The breath between betrayal
and the bottle that forgives it.


---

Shadows move here.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just enough to remind you
you’re never dancing alone.

They carry the weight of glances
never returned,
tips never earned,
kisses that bruised
and never healed right.

The saxophone is done.
But the echo still walks.
Drums gone quiet.
But your ribs remember
where they hit.


---

In this haze,
everything is softer
except the truth.

She hides in the corner booth,
legs crossed like a trap,
eyes rimmed in soot and sorrow.
She watches you.
She waits.

The music gave you wings.
But the smoke will measure
how long you can fly
before coughing up
what you’ve buried.


---

This is where the real show happens:
After the applause.
After the glitter is wiped
off the mirror.

This is the room
where secrets sweat.
Where ghosts light cigars
and nod along
to the rhythm of regret.

And if you breathe it in too deep,
don’t be surprised
when you find yourself
choking
on your own name.

 

[_Land]

Deep in the Shadows


He don’t wear the badge in here.
Not where it might stain.
He trades it
for a cheap fedora
and cheaper silence,
melts into the corner
like he was born in the dark.
Maybe he was.

He says he’s just
“keeping an eye on things.”
But everyone knows
he’s here to feel something
he can’t write into a report.

The band hits a note
he can’t name but knows—
a memory maybe,
of the man he wanted to be
before duty made a weapon
out of his quiet.

He sips rotgut like communion.
Tells himself he’s different
from the other boys in blue
who raid these joints
just for the thrill
of watching joy shatter.
He just takes the money.
Not the music.
Not the women.
Not the blood.

But there’s a girl on stage
in feathers and fire
who reminds him
what wanting felt like
before he handcuffed it
and tossed the key
into the mouth
of the badge.

She dances like defiance.
Like glittered revolution.
Like if you told her to stop,
she’d laugh in your face
and make you beg for it.

And goddamn if he doesn’t ache
to be the one she ruins.

He adjusts his hat.
Fades deeper into shadow.
He’s a man split down the middle—
one half paid to end this,
the other half
begging it never stops.

So he stays quiet.
Takes the hush money.
Watches the world he can’t enter
set itself on fire
just to feel warm
for a little while longer.

 

[_Land]

The Prophet (Profit) of Sorrow

The Proprietor’s Gospel

They think he runs a bar.
A speakeasy.
A joint.
But really,
he runs a confessional.
And his cash register rings
with the currency of confession—
shame, lust, grief,
and longing by the glass.

He counts souls
the way others count dollars.
And he’s rich
with wreckage.


---

No one knows his real name.
Not even the girls he saves
and sends back to ruin.
Not even the men
he’s bailed out,
bought off,
buried.

They call him Boss.
Sir.
Or just Prophet—
because somehow,
he knows things
before they happen.

He can smell divorce on a man
before the ring comes off.
Can hear death
in the voice of a woman
singing her last set.

He never writes it down.
But he always knows
when to have a bottle ready,
a back door unlocked,
or a lie rehearsed
to save someone’s dignity
for one more night.


---

They think he’s heartless.
But they mistake stillness
for absence.

Truth is,
he used to love.
Used to play.
Used to feel.

Until jazz
taught him that every high
has a cost.
And he’s been
collecting payments ever since.


---

He watches them from behind the bar,
polishing glasses like prayers.
He hears it all.

> The deals made in breathless corners.
The names moaned that don’t match the ones at home.
The silence of the preacher’s cup shaking.
The low hum of ghosts trying to remember
the shape of their own names.



And still,
he opens nightly.

Because someone has to bear witness
to the unraveling.

Someone has to own
the ruin.


---

He keeps one photo
in the back office—
tucked behind the bottles,
beside the old ledger.
A woman,
eyes closed,
mouth mid-laugh,
before the fire took her voice
and the whiskey took his.

He toasts her every night.
Never speaks her name.
But every act of mercy
he grants in this cursed place
is a tithe in her memory.


---

He is not priest.
Not savior.
Not villain.

He is the man
who profits from pain,
predicts every downfall
by the tremble in a man’s pour,
and blesses it all
with silence.

And maybe,
just maybe,
beneath the sorrow
and smoke and gold teeth,
he still believes
in the god
that lives inside the song.

 

[_Land]

Requiem in Jazz

for every note that outlived its player

The club is closed.
Chairs flipped like tired lovers.
The stage, still glowing—
a ghost light for the dead
who haven’t finished dancing.

Outside,
the city exhales.
But inside,
jazz lingers.
Not played—
just remembered.
Like the warmth of a body
after it’s gone cold.


---

There are no hymns here.
Only echoes.
Only ash.
Only the ghosts of horns
still dripping with sweat
and swallowed prayers.

The prophet locks the till.
Trouble wipes off the last of her face.
The bouncer leans against the wall
and listens to his own silence.
And upstairs,
the ghosts gather
like smoke returning to its flame.


---

This is the after.
The benediction.
The breath after the scream.
Where every laugh is a leftover,
and every memory
is off-key on purpose.

The saxophone,
silent now,
still hums in the bones
of the building.
A bruise you can’t see
but swear you still feel.


---

Jazz was never meant to live forever.
Just long enough
to hurt something sacred
into becoming free.

So this—
this isn’t an ending.
It’s a burial in rhythm.
A mourning in 12-bar blues.
A procession of offbeats
and broken hallelujahs.

> We don’t lay jazz to rest.
We let it rest inside us.




---

Let the floorboards keep the time.
Let the smoke write scripture in the air.
Let the last note fade
into a silence
so full of soul
you’d swear it was singing.

And when morning comes—
when the preacher finds his collar,
when the girl becomes a stranger again,
when the prophet counts the cost—
the music will still be here.

Not loud.
Not proud.
Just waiting.

For the next sinner.
The next saint.
The next scream
to turn into song.


---

 

[_Land]

“Snapped Thigh, Sax Slide”
(A Funky Free-Scat Poem)

Skidda-bap bam!—
hips like hi-hats, thighs go wham!
Tongue be tappin’ on a conga line spine,
grindin’ that groove
like the beat owed time.

Click-clack crackle,
she struts in syncopation—
heels spit fire,
rhythm’s reincarnation.
Jazz in her jawline,
moanin’ like a midnight muse,
scat-slick sugar tongue
whispers dirty blues.

Zuh-zuh-zow!
Bow-chicka-bow!
Lust licked the lip
of a bourbon vow—
and the saxophone begged
for a second round.

Snare-popped heartbeat,
bassline thighs,
she moves like velvet
with a vengeance inside.
Shimmy that sorrow,
honeydip rage—
body a stanza,
each breath a page.

Doo-wop twist—
hips disobey laws of motion,
dripping with sweat
and sonic devotion.

Skat-dat-dip! Brrap-pow-pow!
Even her silence got rhythm now.

She don’t walk—
she scatters.
She don’t moan—
she matters.
And the night?
It bends to her beat
like sinners in satin
on salvation street.

 

[_Land]

“Thirst String Theory”
By Bear Sage

I am the twitch
before the moan.
The grunt in your pelvis
you mistake for a thought.

Don’t call me beat—
I’m blood.
Thicker with each pass,
swollen in the silence
between
the scat’s spit-snap syllables.

boom
(don’t)
boom-boom
(stop)

I pull you by the spine—
drag your breath through syrup,
slow like tongues
finding heat
in unspoken permission.

I am not background.
I’m the back arch,
the low growl in your gut
before your hips beg
for instructions.

Scat rides me—
wild and reckless—
her notes grind against me
thighs full of yes.
She snaps, I swell.
She riffs, I rise.

Boom.
Boom-boom.
Boom.

Don’t pretend it’s not
your pulse now—
Don't pretend
your lips don’t want to follow
the wet shape of this rhythm.

I change tempo
like sweat sliding between breasts,
the sharp inhale
when friction meets timing.

And when the climax comes?
Oh, I drop out.
Leave you gasping
in the ghost of my groove—
hollow and holy,
a body
That's been played.