(A)
This is a poem about Sun Ra playing football.
Aligned, eurythmic, coordinated,
the team make sense and sentiment together
just as they do
in a big band.
Expressions cluster in a back and forth
between players,
producing
as much
as perceiving
their own and others’—a ravel of—
sound and movement;
together in time. (1)
Improvised moves within standard plays,
bodies intuitive: tuned: with skill and practice.
Le Sony’r Ra, the one with many names
which succeed that old discarded,
absent Herman
—Captain might have been one of them—
made of us tone scientists, musicians
for the kosmos, on this ship,
the Arkestra.
As he would often do on his piano—
face on arms down tremendous atonal—
now standing, as he is, in the middle of the pitch,
our skipper naps.
Delirium seems to have taken hold of the captain,
he isn’t moving, why is he not moving?!
It’s coming toward him; it’s going to slam into his face!
Do something, for Christ’s sake, Sonny, move!
(A)
Hypothetical gameplays we rehearsed before
stepping on the grass
fade.
When the real situation puts us at her mercy, our
phrases fall into the rhythm of the atmosphere
—instruments forget to think
of the score.
Players and audience.
Team X vs. team Y.
Set times and lines on the floor with rules attached.
In or out.
Football’s sequences and divisions
run stricter than those of the stage.
Known to dabble in time-space piracy,
Sonny snagged the opportunity:
‘We must play between the cracks,’ (2)
‘Let us play this game how they never knew to play it,’
‘We are neither them nor us,’
‘We are between
the cracks.’
The opponent has shot and it is aimed straight at our Sun.
Ball hoofed on a non-vectored route.
And there he is, snoozing away, as if
the trajectory of the projectile and the time it will take to crash into him
do not blow
on the same frame he idles.
(We, his players, are used to his kips. You see,
there is something that doesn’t ever let him sleep at night.)
(B) [Rubato.]
Later, ball under his arm,
Mr. Ra will walk over to the stands and beckon over
the people sitting there:
‘Come play, I’ve just written your part!’
Our opponent rears
reasonable agitation, what with all
these spectators-turned-players scrambling
into the game. Sonny will have us scoring own goals,
passing the ball to the other team,
‘til we abandon our affiliations—
he warns:
this is the only way to grasp
what is truly at stake.
The ref is expected to get angry,
hurling threats
—‘I shall call the authorities!’
Some will have concerns for their safety,
or worry they are doing something that will swing
them trouble.
The game is running too long.
People have business elsewhere.
At one point, a few will leave only
to return: affairs
are in order.
Outside, word will flame
that a ‘new jam’
is taking place.
Throngs of people will flock
to the stadium.
The authorities will block the doors but
Sonny won’t let the game
stay locked inside.
Later, some will fight to re-establish order.
To no avail, for
we were already out of pitch.
(A) [The crack in the act.]
All of this, however, is
yet to come.
For now, we watch the ball:
asteroid
about to collide
with our dormant star.
T-minus 5… 4… 3… 2—BLINK!
Sonny gasps himself awake.
One step back, then another,
he receives the ball with his hands (huh?)
and not his face, where its landing was predicted
just a quaver ago.
Every single step out here
changes the situation.
Who it is that came to watch today’s game,
their moods and attitudes,
how much they feel for us or
how little,
the smell of grass on a day like today,
all bleed
through to the thick air we gulp, into
the blend of each player.
Motherboard garden: processor of currents circulating at superspeed through
every bouquet of nerves that is standing on it.
(Were this our spaceship, we’d hear
the walls scat
at the effort of holding that sweet woofing and buzzing coming
from our bebop engine.)
Lucifer: feet on the sun. (3)
(CODA)
Aaaaand…. We are back ON, everyone!
Wait—Ra walks over to the stands with the ball under his arm,
Loop back, this pitch is taking flight.
(1) Isabel Cecilia Martínez, Javier Damesón, Joaquín Pérez, Alejandro Pereira Ghiena, Matías Tanco, Demian Alimenti Bel, ‘Participatory Sense Making in Jazz Performance: Agents’ Expressive Alignment’, Proceedings of the 25th Anniversary Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, 31 July – 4 August 2017, ed. by Edith Van Dyck, (Ghent: Ghent University, 2017), pp 123-127
(2) This and many other references in this text come from John Szwed, Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2020)
(3) Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (New York: Harper Collins, 2008/1935), quoted in John Szwed, Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra, p 101