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

SUITE TABU 200

 

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Jazz Poems

IN PRAISE OF BUDDY BOLDEN

  1. You have shown me dissipation, the tome, the rhythm, and cool sonorous blue…
  2. The right consciousness is always dream, it wakes in us ideology and topos.
  3. Not only the blues like melic, like persimmon and soda.
  4. Not anything, just blonde sorrow.
  5. I can’t wait to choose my own fall, the bass and pica.
  6. Did you taste the drug, the white words of sound…
  7. 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.
  8. When we play, nothing else matters, not the placards on the train, not the yet and the how. We find plums and pendulums.
  9. I told them that this was not enough. No horses, no shoulders, no fields to drown, only blankcotton testimony and confession.
  10. When we leave, we leave the pipe and parts of the body. You whistle like a factory. Me, like an empty room.
  11. I would like to test myself, and remove these old tunings and feathers, these tulips.
  12. Do it then. Leave for the salty tincture of the city, the North.
  13. 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.
  14. You meant to leave the phonetic terror of the moon, the New Orleans horn of sand and distraction.
  15. 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

SUITE TABU 200

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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

SUITE TABU 200

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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

SUITE TABU 200

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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

SUITE TABU 200

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