Breakfast in Little Talks, Ubud

Jazz swings softly

In Little Talks latte and noodles

For breakfast as tourists

Walk by with Bintangs to get

Sunday started and

I’m glad they don’t stop.

_

They leave Little Talks

To me.

_

Li Qing on the menu

Over mie goring

With the jazz swinging softly

Piano and saxophone and silence.

Little stops in the sound somehow

Help the flow

Moments of silence in just the right

Spaces

Between the notes no music

Can accompany a party

Or a hangover

With equal assurance

Quite so well as jazz.

_

Turn up the volume

Lift the tempo and perhaps

The Sunday morning Bintangers

In the street

Might have stopped.

_

Or not.

_

Someone asked me in England

Once

If I understood jazz -

An aficionado an expert

Making sure I wasn’t

A poser

Making sure I truly

Got it

Before deciding if I was worth

Talking to, I suppose -

I don’t pretend to understand it,

I just like it

I answered.

_

A fairly decent

Response I thought but thinking

Now

The question annoys me more

Than it did.

_

It’s music.

_

Listen and like it or

Don’t.

Feel what it wants you to feel or

Don’t.

_

One summer in Tirana

An apartment in Blloku and

Next door a jazz teacher opened a cafe and

His students would play

Every night while people

Smoked thin cigarettes and drank red wine

With Charlie Chaplin

Who never said a word.

_

Teacher told his students

Jazz was meant to be played in places

Like this

To people

Like this

And sometimes the feeling of joy

For his music

Became so much

He would grab his saxophone and join

Playing loud

And fast and march

With his students playing

Out of the cafe and into the street

Saxophones trumpets trombones

Playing laughing and cheering

Down the street and back again

Back inside where the drummer

Kept the beat til they got back

And they’d blend back into that beat

Without a note

Out of place or perhaps

With every note out of place I

Wouldn’t know I

Wouldn’t understand I

Just liked it I

Just felt the joy of their

Playing.

_

Seven years later

Post-pandemic the place

Was closed down

When I went back at last

to Tirana.

_

Noise complaints from neighbours who

Never

Felt the joy.

_

The piano trills in Little Talks

Popping bubbles over

Soft-scratch drums steady

Beneath the swirling music

As the heat beats down

In the street

The music swirling gently

Like a stream streaming softly

Out into the street where nothing ever

Stops.