Ode to the Man Playing “Amazing Grace” Badly on the Trumpet in the Strip Mall Parking Lot

Because what is music if not this half-assed arpeggio
             of tortured notes buoying us away from broken asphalt?
Sometimes I need Louis Armstrong’s cheeks swelled as if ensnaring
             the mythic beast of high C, sound of banshee,
siren sound drowning the sailors until they float back up
             to the D-flat world. But other times I seek
the emphysema squeak of geese, screech
             of butcher knife on ceramic, chalkboard kissing a hand
of ragged nails. Sometimes I need the pig-squeal
             of steam escaping through a teakettle,
my grandmother’s last breath rasping across the room
             to the tempo of the ECG, which is why
when I heard you blowing your brass
             like a still-drunk bugler at morning reveille,
I stopped in front of the mattress store
             with its BOGO Muzak to listen
to your horn’s helter-skelter as it dropped half-notes
             to the ground like misshapen seeds.
Then with your right hand gripped around the valves,
             you turned the stand’s sheet music and leapt
into “Amazing Grace,” and how sweet that wretched
             sound that saved no one, but barreled us over
like a concussed running back, stiff-arming our senses
             and hopping onto the curb to mix with the corrido
careening from Taqueria Picante. And I sang
             as that corrupted grace drifted to the One Stop Laundry
where it jangled like a cupful of quarters,
             and though I cannot prove this, I heard it jumpstart
the dryer in the back right corner that sputters
             and spasms like Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”
And I sang as though I once wasn’t lost
             with the U-Haul’s musk matting my hair
in an empty parking lot in Johnson City, blowing
             “The Banana Boat Song” on the neck of my last 40,
a tune that was neither amazing nor grace nor anything like what
             you’re doing now, O octuplet-removed understudy
of Wynton Marsalis, not Gillespie just dizzy with sound,
             you who bring the trumpet to your lips for us who walk
across parking lots with bags full of the discounted world,
             holding onto whatever music we can.