Jazz Poems

FOR MILES

Your sound is faultless

pure & round

holy

almost profound

Your sound is your sound

true & from within

a confession

soulful & lovely

Poet whose sound is played

lost or recorded

but heard

can you recall that 54 night at the Open Door

when you & bird

wailed five in the morning some wondrous

yet unimaginable score?

GREG CORSO | 1930~2001

Youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

ROSE SOLITUDE

For Duke Ellington

I am essence of Rose Solitude

my cheeks are laced with cognac

my hips sealed with five satin nails

i carry dream and romance of new fools and old flames

between the musk of fat

and the side pocket of my mink tongue

Listen to champagne bubble from this solo

Essence of Rose Solitude

veteran from texas tiger from chicago   that’s me

i cover the shrine of Duke

who like Satchmo   like Nat (King) Cole

will never die because love they say

never dies

I tell you   from stair steps of these navy blue nights

these metallic snakes

these flashing fish skins

and the melodious cry of Shango

surrounded by sorrow

by purple velvet tears

by cockhounds limping from crosses

from turtle skinned shoes

from diamond shaped skulls and canes

made from dead gazelles

wearing a face of wilting potato plants

of grey and black scissors

of bee bee shots and fifty red boils

yes the whole world loved him

I tell you from suspenders of two-timing dog odors

from inca frosted lips

nonchalant legs

i tell you from howling chant of sister Erzulie

and the exaggerated hearts of a hundred pretty

women

they loved him

this world sliding from a single flower

into a caravan of heads made into ten thousand

flowers

Ask me

Essence of Rose Solitude

chickadee from arkansas that’s me

i sleep on cotton bones

cotton tails

and mellow myself in empty ballrooms

i’m no fly by night

look at my resume

i walk through the eyes of staring lizards

i throw myneck back to floorshow on bumping goat skins

in front of my stage fright

i cover the hands of Duke who like Satchmo

like Nat (King) Cole will never die

because love they say

never dies

JAYNE CORTEZ

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

SOLOING

My mother tells me she dreamed

of John Coltrane, a young Trane

playing his music with such joy

and contained energy and rage

she could not hold back her tears.

And sitting awake now, her hands

crossed in her lap, the tears start

in her blind eyes. The TV set

behind her is gray, expressionless.

It is late, the neighbors quiet,

even the city–Los Angeles–quiet.

I have driven for hours down 99,

>over the Grapevine into heaven

to be here. I place my left hand

on her shoulder, and she smiles.

What a world, a mother and son

finding solace in California

just where we told it would

be, among the palm trees and all-

night super markets pushing orange

back-lighted oranges at 2 A.M.

“He was alone,” she says, and does

not say, just as I am, “soloing.”

What a world, a great man half

her age comes to my mother

in sleep to give her the gift

of song, which–shaking the tears

away–she passes on to me, for now

I can hear the music of the world

in the silence and that word:

soloing. What a world–when I

arrived the great bowl of mountains

was hidden in a cloud of exhaust,

the sea spread out like a carpet

of oil, the roses I had bought

from Fresno browned on the seat

beside me, and I could have

turned back and lost the music.

PHILIP LEVINE

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

From WRITTEN TO MUSIC EIGHT FOR ORNETTE’S MUSIC If the pain is greater than the difference as the bird in the night or the perfumes in the moon oh witch of question oh lips of submission in the flesh of summer the silver slipper in the sleeping forest if hope surpasses the question by the mossy spring in the noon of harvest between the pillars of silk in the luminous difference oh tongue of music oh teacher of splendor if the meat of the heart if the fluid of the wing as love if birth or trust as love as love time turns the tables the indifferent and blissful Spring saves all souls and seeds and slaves asleep dark Spring in the dark whispering human will words spoken by two kissing tongues hissing union Eve’s snake stars come on two naked bodies tumble through bodiless Christmas trees blazing like bees and rosebuds fire turns to falling powder lips relax and smile and sleep fire sweeps the hearth of the blood on far off red double stars they probate their own tied wills KENNETH REXROTH

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

LADY SINGS THE BLUES

Satin luscious, amber Beauty ceter-stage;

garden in her hair. If flowers could sing

they’d sound like this. That legendary scene:

the lady unpetals her song, the only light

in a room of smoke, nightclub tinkering

with lovers in the dark, cigarette flares,

gin & tonic. This is where the heartache

blooms. Forgot the holes

zippered along her arms. Forget the booze.

Center-stage, satin-tongue dispels a note.

Amber amaryllis, blue chanteuse, Amen.

If flowers could sing they’d sound like this.

                         *     *     *

This should be Harlem, but it’s not.

It’s Diana Ross with no Supremes.

Fox Theater, Nineteen Seventy-something.

Ma and me; lovers crowded in the dark.

The only light breaks on the movie-screen.

I’m a boy, but old enough to know Heartache.

We watch her rise and wither

like a burnt-out cliche. You know the story:

Brutal lush. Jail-bird. Scag queen.

In the asylum scene, the actresses’s eyes

are bruised; latticed with blood, but not quite sad

enough. She’s the star so her beauty persists.

Not like Billie fucked-up satin, hair museless,

heart ruined by the end.

                         *     *     * The houselights wake and nobody’s blue but Ma.

Billie didn’t sound like that, she says

as we walk hand in hand to the street.

Nineteen Seventy-something,

My lady hums, Good Morning Heartache,

My father’s in a distant place.

TERRANCE HAYES

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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