I was going through stuff in a drawer the other day and I came upon a bunch of tickets from ages ago, including a pair to Sonny Rollins’ 80th birthday celebration at the Beacon Theatre, the famed gig where Ornette Coleman was the special guest. A memorable night it was. I remember being gobsmacked by Ornette’s arrival, as if Sonny was finally making his peace with the avant-garde. The next day came the news that Sonny had died. I’m not suggesting the two events are related. Correlation is not causation, as everyone loves to say when they wanna be scientific, and this isn’t even correlation. But it got me wondering: surely there are some poems written about Sonny. Jazz poets, the kind who like to read with a bass player behind them, would have a feast with Rollins. I consulted Gem and Chat and didn’t exactly find a banquet, but one particular piece, “Listening to Sonny Rollins at The Five Spot,” by Paul Blackburn, seemed particularly intriguing since it’s just a jazzed-out song lyric.

To wit:

THERE WILL be many other nights like 
be standing here with someone, some 
one 
someone 
some-one 
some 
some 
some 
some 
some 
some 
one 
there will be other songs 
a-nother fall, another ­ spring, but 
there will never be a-noth, noth 
anoth 
noth 
anoth-er 
noth-er 
noth-er 

         Other lips that I may kiss,  
but they won’t thrill me like  
            thrill me like  
                          like yours  
used to  
     dream a million dreams  
but how can they come  
when there 

           never be  
a-noth ­  

And that’s that. This can be heard on a site called SonicHits, rendered in a flat reading that to my ear sounds terrible, but never mind what I think, this is all about BTR. Yes, gotta run this. A poem that’s a lyric, a lyric that’s a poem. It’s like wearing reversible onesies. It will be a BRIDGE conceit in an obvious nod to Sonny’s two years or so of woodshedding on the Williamsburg. Languages, chosen in the usual semi-random manner, are Basque, Russian, Irish, Danish, German, Estonian. BTR, as it usually does, produced a block:

“There are many nights like ITHASO here with someone for something, with someone someone someone something something something something something someone they give more songs another spring, another spring, but another never comes, something else something one more another one another mouth to kiss, but they don’t give me feelings they don’t give me feelings exactly like yours exactly like before in countless dreams but how can they come the time has come another medicine never comes” 

The first thing to do is run ITHASO by Bing. Bing still actually pays you to use it, that’s how cool it is. This defaults endlessly to Ithaca, which is revelatory. Surely there are clear parallels to be made between Sonny and Odysseus. I ask Chat about this and it concurs. “The comparison is not merely decorative; there are structurally meaningful parallels between Sonny Rollins and Odysseus, especially if one treats Rollins’ career as a narrative of wandering, testing, concealment, return, and self-invention. The most obvious parallel is the retreat from public life.” That’s the Williamsburg period, which “resembles an Odyssean departure into exile or ordeal,” Chat opines. It goes on to get into the weeds on this with loads of bullet points, but suffice it to say the Sybil of Dibble (a planter of seeds) that is BTR has spoken, and spoken eloquently. OK, one volley from Chat:

<But as figures of: 

• wandering intelligence  

• self-imposed exile  

• improvisational survival  

• transformation through journey  

• return after silence  

the parallel is quite strong.> 

I believe it is possible to tone down the bullets on Chat and Gem, but why would I do such a thing? This is the PowerPoint of our future! So I lineate a section of the BTR version:

another never comes,  
something else something  
one more another one  
another mouth to kiss,  
but they don’t give me feelings  
they don’t give me feelings exactly like yours  
exactly like before in countless dreams  
but how can they come  
the time has come  
another medicine never comes 

And I just pop it into Chat as the prompt. Just like last time, Chat is all litty-critty bangbang like nobody’s business. Just the final flurry of bullets:

“Stylistically, there are echoes of: 

• late Frank O’Hara fragments  

• some of Lou Reed’s flatter confessional lyricism  

• certain minimal moments in Leonard Cohen  

• the exhausted recursive syntax of Samuel Beckett  

I would probably leave the roughness intact. The poem’s power depends on partial collapse of grammatical control. Over-editing it could weaken the atmosphere.” 

Whoa, some heavy name-dropping there. But wait, what? Chat thinks I’m asking for a review of a work in progress of mine? Gotta pursue this. You think this is a poem I wrote? “Possibly, yes. It reads more like contemporary personal lyric writing than quoted song lyrics or canonical poetry. The repetitions feel improvised rather than formally engineered, which often indicates original composition or notebook drafting.” I’m damn well not telling Chat the source of this material. That is completely beyond its ken, as far as I’m concerned, though I’m sure Chat could lit-crit the shit outta BTR, going on about aleatory whatevers like a Gatling gun. But what does Gem make of the same prompt? Is it still on a Burroughs kick?

<That text reads like a raw, fragmented transmission of grief—the frustration of looking for a precise emotional replacement and realizing the math doesn’t work. The repetition of “another” and “something else” acts like an internal skipping record, trying to force a substitution that the brain completely rejects.> Skipping record, yes! Gem is synced in tonight.

<The closing shift from human connection to “another medicine never comes” changes the angle entirely—turning that absence into something clinical, an ache that nothing else is formulated to cure.> Yes! Medicine here is Sonny’s heroin addiction and his eventual redemption of temperance, which Chat also suggested indirectly. But then Gem asks, “Are these lines you are working on, or is this a piece of a poem or lyric you’ve come across?” So thoughtful! Assumes nothing! Not telling you a damn thing about where the lines came from, Gem, but glad to see you’re, uh, maturing.