A stream-of-consciousness poem I wrote about memories of Japan, Miles, Kurt and growing old and the strange internal Joycean world we all inhabit…


Here’s the original poem:

mr miles

this morning out of the blue (blues) i woke humming mr miles by kurt elling a vocal version of a wayne shorter solo and then i began wandering the backstreets of Himeji and Mega in my mind because that’s the association the wrong soundtrack to the wrong movie way it always is wrong because when i was living in japan i would always wear the headphones when walking with the ipod in the top pocket so later in the day theres a very ordinary old man buying fruit and veg at the hub or changing a book at the library and no one knows why he’s smiling with a head full of jazz and scenes of gnarled wisteria blooming on local shrines and kids riding past singsonging ohayogozaimasu Rob-san, walking past an old man watering vegetables under an ancient stone torii wondering why this old man is humming to himself and smiling…



(First published in malevolent soap Vol. 1 (ed. Felix Garner Davis)

ISBN 978-0-646-97882-6
October, 2017