The Sunday Poem: Herbie Hancock on a Headache

I had a headache today. Fell asleep multiple times. My son’s got a fever too, has had for a few days. Blah. I’m ready for illness to stop going ’round. Anyway, caught intermittent pieces of a documentary on the making of Herbie Hancock’s Possibilities CD. And the experience of drowsing off the music while headachy got me this:

Herbie Hancock on a Headache

The thundundering of the duhduhdurums,
The lashing of the cymbal crasharashing.
Piano diddledaddle flatting fives and nattering,
The bass boom thrumming thump thrump on.

Play the drum head, pound that skin,
Send jolts of timbre dazzle down my spine.
Blow my mind, bounce the skull, a countercoup,
Ivories xylophoning tickles in a line.

But the music, music, music ocean sloshing close,
Washing-whipping, whirl-a-looping, a vortex
Vast and varied with snatches of a song;
In fugue I fade before too long, the scribbled charts

Rocking me to sleep, eleventh for a pillow,
The tang and ride a blanket muffling me to dark.