As If I Lost Something

In the family room with no family
Louis Armstrong is killing Mack the Knife
immortalizing a murderer of vulnerable women
I wander this large space full of trumpet
and that once in a lifetime voice but empty
as if I have lost something
as if Louis might have it
maybe embedded in that subwoofer growl
that horn vibrato
I don’t know what it is but it’s important
what do people mean when they say
reaching for the moon
is that it
something physical but so ridiculously out
of reach that it might as well not be
I wouldn’t be so full of emptiness
if it were not charged with power
now Count Bassie has come in door busters
with Ain’t Misbehavin’
I don’t know about that either
sometimes it seems like just being
an aging cis white male
makes me guilty of so many things
things I try very hard to understand
falling short always falling
just like I fail to understand why
Mack the Knife is a perennial favorite
generation after generation of jazz fans
maybe because it has little or nothing
to do with the words
maybe life is the same maybe finding
this essence has nothing to do
with the words maybe images then or maybe within
the complex worlds of feelings emotions tensions
in art sculpture music but
no even they are not what I have lost
not words and not not-words
as time passes my notion of what completeness
might be is less concrete and yet no less real
perhaps standing at a threshold
is where I’m meant to be right now
perhaps incomplete is exactly what I am meant
to feel
fully profoundly