August 24th, 2003
TARE
Do you remember those digital scales from AP physics and chemistry in high school? The ones that had the TARE button on them to reset with the current weight? But of course you were thinking “TARE? Stupid Oxford Metrics or whatever idiot science company in Connecticut…first of all it’s T-E-A-R, and second this has nothing to do with paper or assholes so why is this button on the scale? Why don’t they just say “ZERO” or “RESET”? Crumby moron eggheads failed English.”
I think that was a rather inefficient way of saying we’re moving on, so TARE a new page off in your mind before reading on in this blog.
Damn it, I forgot what I was going to write about. Oh yeah. Miles Davis. So there’s the jazz fanatics, the casual listeners, the idiots that put Kenny G on the Weather Channel local forecast, and there’s me. Yesterdays. It’s a good piece. I recommend you find it. And when you do, read the following poem aloud (and ideally have a glass of bourbon on ice with a steamy summer night). The man makes me think things. Lots of things. I miss writing.
Enjoy.
From Eight Years and Ten Thousand Miles, the early works of Steven Rorrer…
Yesterdays
Steven Rorrer
soft and dear your face
on the brim of my mind so late at night
how can I best describe
the way you hang around my thoughts
a 45 that keeps on playing
a duet, horn and piano
up and down the register while I nod
as the bass keeps time
the bourbon in my glass is cold
and I hold it to my forehead with eyes closed
throbbing behind the sweat of my skin
still hot from the fervor of your touch
why are you here so close , when I am far away
every night you sit at my table
sucking the cool menthol from your lips
as the condensed vapor runs down my arm
your eyebrows shaped in dark, thin lines
looking sure, you blink a moment
holding a cigarette between willowy fingers
as you uncross your legs and adjust your seat
here every night at this time I drink alone
but you join me just the same
I wonder where you are; are you sleeping
or up late alone as well, sitting there with me
