'poems about anything' and 'all the brass awkwards'

a while back i was walking out of a grocery co-op in berkeley, when i saw a young person with a little typewriter in his lap and a cardboard-and-marker sign that read 'poems about anything.'

he was writing a poem for a group of girls, and they looked on smiling as he joked with them and pecked the keys at a tiny, irregularly torn scrap of paper. 

he would adjust the scrap with his fingers when he ran out of space, which happened about every four words. 

after the girls had their poem, he started on one for me. as he typed, he looked around, said hi to scruffy hipster types who he knew ("pacman" and "mouth"), called "poems about anything! would you like a poem today?" to the passing grocery shoppers.

the poem he wrote for me was about trombones, because it came up that i used to play trombone. 

here is the poem:

the most awkward and
forgotten of all the
brass awkwards ska
band and nineteennine
ty something means we
are participating in
culture larger bigger
than we are and back
when instruments were
expensive and strictly
for the upper crust
or those who serve at
their behest and since
then as pleasure has
become less of a what
we make of it and more
of a pervasive state
maybe the non electric
audiblast trombone makes
a comeback for its ability
to slide from sound to
sound like situational
ethics and classical music
needing modern relevance so
rich people give free sound
to willing participants

my housemate jen, who is a new music composer, had been having an existential crisis about the relevance of new music in the modern world, so this was surprisingly apropos. 

i mentioned this, and he brought up "noise music," saying that it drew a solid following of punk kids. he wanted to encourage jen, through me, with the fact there are indeed people out there who are interested in wild new music. 

i agreed with him wholeheartedly, even though i knew the academic and avant-garde classical world that jen was facing was a lot different than the world where punk kids lived.

i gave him a dollar for the poem. then he was off, with his little avocado-colored typewriter, cardigan sweater, and orange beard, to try his luck in rockville. "i'll see you again," he said.

i liked him a lot. i hope he is still writing poems about anything. he brought a lot of joy to me and others that day.