Jazz Poems

JAZZ FANTASIA

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,

sob on the long cool winding saxophones

Go to it, O jazzmen.

Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy

tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-

husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.

Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree-

tops, moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry

like a racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop,

bang-bang! you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps,

banjoes, horns, tin cans-–make two people fight on the

top of a stairway and scratch each other’s eyes in a

clinch tumbling down the stairs.

Can the rough stuff… now a Mississippi steamboat

pushes up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo… and

the green lanterns calling to the high soft stars… a red

moon rides on the humps of the low river hills… go to

it, O jazzmen.

CARL SANDBURG

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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