Jazz Poems

LEAVING SATURN

Sun Ra & His Year 2000 Myth Science

Arkestra at Grendel’s Lair Cabaret, 1986

Skyrocketed—

My eyes dilate old

Copper pennies.

Effortlessly, I play

*

Manifesto of the One

Stringed Harp. Only

This time I’m washed

Ashore, shipwrecked

*

In Birmingham.

My black porcelain

Fingers, my sole

Possession. So I

*

Hammer out

Equations for

A New Thing

Ogommetelli.

*

Ovid & Homer

Behind me, I toss

Apple peelings in

The air & half-hear

*

Brush strokes,the up

Kick of autumn

Leaves, the Arkestra

Laying down for

*

New dimensions,

I could be at Berkeley

Teaching a course—

Fixin’s How to Dress

*

Myth or Generations

Spaceships in Harlem

Instead, vibes from Chi-

Town, must be Fletcher’s

*

Big Band Music—oh,

My brother, the wind—

I know this life is

Only a circus. I’m

*

Brushed aside: a naïf,

A charlatan, too avant-

Garde. Satellite music for

A futuristic tent, says

*

One critic. Heartbreak 

In outer space, says

Another, —lunar

Dust on the brain.

*

I head to New York

New York loves

A spectacle wet pain

Of cement, sweet

*

Scent of gulls swirling

Between skyscrapers

So tall, looks like war

If what I’m told is true

*

Mars is dying, it’s after

The end of the world.

So, here I am,

In Philadelphia,

*

Death’s headquarters,

Here to save the cosmos,

Here to dance in a bed

Of living gravestones.

MAJOR JACKSON 

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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