Jazz Poems

LUSH LIFE

I used to visit all   the very gay places,

Those come-what-may places,

Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life

To get the feel of life

From jazz and cocktails.

The girls i knew had sad and sullen gray faces,

With distingué traces

That used to be there.

You could see where

They’d been washed away

By too many through the day

Twelve o’clock tails.

Then you came along

With your siren song

To tempt me to madness.

I thought for a while

That your poignant smile

Was tinged with the sadness

Of a great love for me.

Ah, yes, I was wrong,

Again, I was wrong!

Life is lonely again,

And only last year

Ev’rything seemed so sure.

Now life is awful again,

A troughful of hearts could only be a bore.

A week in Paris will ease the bite of it.

All I care is to smile in spite of it.

I’ll forget you, I will,

While yet you are still

Burning inside my brain.

Romance is mush, stifling those who strive.

I’ll live a lush life in some small dive,

>And there I’ll be, while I rot with the rest

Of those whose lives are lonely too.

BILLY STRAYHORN

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

ALABAMA, c. 1963: 

But

Shouldn’t this state have a song?

Long, gliding figures of my breath

Of breath

Lost?

Somebody can’t sing

Because somebody’s gone

Somebody can’t sing

Because somebody’s gone.

Shouldn’t this landscape

Hold a true anthem

What

You can’t do?

Whom

You can’t invent?

Where

You can’t stay?

Why

You won’t keep it?

But

Shouldn’t this state

Have a song?

And shall we call it

My face will murder me?

And shall we call it

I’m not waiting?

CORNELIUS EADY

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

FOUR BONGOS: TAKE THE A TRAIN for Vinnie

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

MELODY FORENSIC

If someone told me I only had one hour to live,

I’d spend it choking a white man. I’d do it nice and slow.

MILES DAVIS

Years in the gristle of knuckles. Thick muscle

at the palm’s base. Fingers squeezing,

digging valve keys to mold exhales. Some pain

pinched by the reed—would it wail

if you found a pink neck before leadpipe brass?

Forgive the epigraph. Don’t apologize,

your music may taste funny to someone

after reading this. But damn Miles (if I can call you

Miles) why do black men have to scream in art?

What wants off our tongue floats

in the same ether lungs feed wood-wind

(now you got me doing it). Listen

if “I hurt” falls deaf on their ears,

Kind of Blue is no different.

The black-sound congeals in mason jars

lined across the tops of rickety stoves.

We been frying our story, over-seasoned

with silences. Miles

(I’m calling

you Miles) you don’t want to play. Sweet indulgence—

let’s pretend we’re back at the Five Spot, the poem

just another stage light. Move it,

put the trumpet down. Where would you start?

Maybe there, Mr. Cool at the bar—hear lolling,

eyes wilted from you blow,

a coil of saliva in his throat so

sure he can swallow your blue note whole.

KYLE DARGAN 

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Jazz Poems

Dexter Gordon’s tenor sax

plays “April in Paris”

inside my head all the way back

on the bus from Double Bay

Round Midnight, the ‘50s,

cool cobblestone streets

resound footsteps of Bebop

musicians with whiskey-laced voices

from a boundless dream in French.

Bud, Prez, Webster, & The Hawk,

their names run together riffs.

Painful gods jive talk through

bloodstained reeds & shiny brass

where music is an anesthetic.

Unreadable faces from the human void

float like torn pages across the bus

windows. An old anger drips into my throat,

& I try thinking something good,

letting the precious bad

settle to the salty bottom.

Another scene keeps repeating itself:

I emerge from the dark theatre,

passing a woman who grabs her red purse

& hugs it to her like a heart attack.

Tremolo. Dexter comes back to rest

behind my eyelids. A loneliness

lingers like a silver needle

under my black skin,

as I try to feel how it is

to scream for help through a horn.

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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