An Avant-Garde Love

If only my memory of a vanishing act would fail me,
The day I started dismantling blue-pink-green building blocks –
Though, I can't recall why I began with X, Y & Z
Alone in our austere study turned sunny nursery.

Without rhyme or reason my lover left my side
Leaving behind a discordant note as
A sour tone does in the numbed-out mind
After a prolonged evening of avant-garde jazz
At a worn-out bandshell under drizzly skies.

He was my private saxophonist
And, man, could he really blow!
His breezy melodies and words swelled with promises
Of raising between-gig babies who would learn our arts
And how he had peppered my life with sweet highs and lows,
Had swept my faltering spirit clear off the charts.

His shiny instrument was a substitute for an ax to grind
When workless nights brought him to me in harmony.
Then he began playing around in minor keys,
Fiddling with the valves of his horn and then my heart.
Now the days he had promised would end in rhapsody
Begin with a mournful womb where his seed should be.

No more will he tantalize me with tenor tantrums,
A serenade-as-foreplay contrasting with workday doldrums.
Instead of tumbling amid the sheets and our treble-bass notes,
I stumble into daylight and the chokehold of lonely fears,
Tripping over discarded hopes and slipping on tears,
Blurring my vision to dash past the abandoned nursery.