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Jazz Poems
ELEVEN
From Velvet Bebop Kente Cloth
There ain’t/No word
I ain’t/Heard
ain’t/No word
Bird/Ain’t heard
Language is an/Inventor’s
>Privilege
I/Blow psalms.
I/Blow sinners’ deeds.
I/Blow prayer before death.
I/Blow curses.
I/Blow laughter.
I/Blow vocabulary of my axe.
You can’t/Hold
folks/Down who Be-Bop
but you/Kin hold
them/Up.
Every Be-Bopper/Renew
his/Subscriptions
to/Genius when he riff some
thing/New on his axe.
STERLING D. PLUMPP
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
IN PRAISE OF BUDDY BOLDEN
- You have shown me dissipation, the tome, the rhythm, and cool sonorous blue…
- The right consciousness is always dream, it wakes in us ideology and topos.
- Not only the blues like melic, like persimmon and soda.
- Not anything, just blonde sorrow.
- I can’t wait to choose my own fall, the bass and pica.
- Did you taste the drug, the white words of sound…
- Nothing will prepare me, not even drums and delusion. I wander in their halls, their tantrums. But mine was apparatus and rebellion. The plumb edifice of transgression.
- When we play, nothing else matters, not the placards on the train, not the yet and the how. We find plums and pendulums.
- I told them that this was not enough. No horses, no shoulders, no fields to drown, only blankcotton testimony and confession.
- When we leave, we leave the pipe and parts of the body. You whistle like a factory. Me, like an empty room.
- I would like to test myself, and remove these old tunings and feathers, these tulips.
- Do it then. Leave for the salty tincture of the city, the North.
- The leaves were all cankered when I returned. Like a salvo I burned. Not for them. Not for this place. But for this rotten reflection. The only true rejection of process.
- You meant to leave the phonetic terror of the moon, the New Orleans horn of sand and distraction.
- Leave me to fall. For this is all that I know. I accept, I accept this black stone of mine, mine own three lives, my crime.
LUCIEN QUINCY
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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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
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 LEVINEfrom Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet