the kind of empty you feel
as a kid having just learned that
your parents are never going
to care to understand you.
that and jazz.

that kind of emptiness and
Mingus, Coltrane, Davis, BBNG;
still careening,
still empty,
still.
ancient.
time means nothing
and nothing is notes on a saxophone,
or piano, or trumpet, or the sky itself.

where are we in the whirlwind?