swifts & s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings
circular paths
Steve Swell
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fine lines
competitive nature and Buddha nature
are fine lines
only of value
when noticed while crossing them
and understanding why
Caution, voyager
Bridge the Bristol
River
Blue
With Bebop,
and Jersey City
and too much
time on your
hands to
now this is not
right and that
might be worse
but never knowing
the lesser of
two evils equals
The hot, Biblical Hell
of alternating spaces of
someone else’s making
Forgetting the business
of here.
Circular Paths
Circular paths,
the call of the unseen revealing its mysteries in the
ancient rituals of curiosity and discovery
to discover what’s in the cracks, to keep digging until
a dream emerges and breathes on its own
Hiking through the Amazon, the uninhibited inquisitiveness
pushing the brush aside
as playful apparitions come to tease me
Rattlesnakes make their way through my tympanic canal
suggesting an underground route
Where dancing is preferred over words
Industrial size fans blow through enormous empty spaces,
decorating the walls with chameleons and brutal bug
eye views that are distorted into the freshest of air
that is suitable for drinking, acknowledging all
aspects of living
There’s an ancient-future that reveals itself constantly
here. A modernity that grows and blooms from the rich soil
of the recent, flowering into the next, to assure the winning
of a hard scrabble evolution into humanness…………
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Trombonist, composer, educator, poet Steve Swell has been an active member of the NYC music community since 1975. He has over 50 CDs as a leader or co-leader. He has toured and recorded with diverse jazz personalities from Lionel Hampton and Buddy Rich to “outsiders” Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor. He runs workshops around the world and is a teaching artist in the NYC public school system focusing on special needs children. Swell’s poetry has appeared in Metropolitan Review SUNY, Acoustic Levitation, and in the anthology of poems by musicians, Silent Solos. You can hear Swell reading his work on “Songs from the Poetry Box.”