Warming Up

1. Trumpet

Brash bad boy

bringing a gander into battle.

If your point’s a Camaro,

he’ll drive it home.

Tight-lipped, slip ships

to Signal Hill.

Shrill. Brand the dizzy cattle

with bravado.

Dang it all. Don’t give a damn

where the spit may fall.

2. Trombone

Marble maze,

hello? Pick up the phone!

Clown around New Orleans,

you fizzy licorice twist, you,

hook us on your fool’s errand.

Wanton faucet, yawn.

Let your stocking slip,

one-legged show girl,

let’s blow this joint,

and give ol’ boredom

the boot.

Golden garden hose,

grow and spawn!

Windshield-wipe the sky,

bellow odes to longhorn sheep

and plumbers.

Heroic flamingo, oh,

slide from your throne,

hoist your loopy trunk and blow:

metamorphose us in

your mellow meows.

3. Horn

Cathedral winds haunting, labyrinthine.

A huntsman holds up the tender moon

and snails spiral open. Ah, how the skirts

of languid films spin galaxies into being, planets

whorling waves of velvet. Suave middle child amid

holiday hoo-ha, pour out your cornucopia.

Warm vanilla in pats of butter, smears of cream. Sustain us.

Sonorous, the rams mourn,

their breath levitates above the pines.

A messiah lets down his shroud.

A balm, abide.

Selah.

4. Tuba

Rumble underwater

consolation.

Some days you got to go down

before you can get up again.

Holy Jupiter, dust off

those ostinato mushrooms.

Bison-headed, you’re

no fuddy-duddy.

Rise and fall like a Goodyear.

A T-Rex laying eggs

on the long march to the Gobi.

The human womb echoes

land masses groaning.

Cavernous and grave.

Unfathomable.