Jazz Poems
MOOD INDIGO
it hasn’t always been this way
ellington was not a street
robeson no mere memory
du bois walked up my father’s stairs
hummed some time over me
sleeping in the company of men
who changed the world
it wasn’t always like this
why ray barretto used to be a side-man
& dizzy’s hair was not always grey
i remember i was there
i listened in the company of men politics as necessary as collards
music even in our dreams
our house was filled with all kinds of folks
our windows were not cement or steel
our doors opened like our daddy’s arms
held us safe & loved
children growing in the company of men
old southern men & young slick ones
sonny til was not a boy
the clovers no rag-tag orphans
our crooners/ we belonged to a whole world
nkrumah was no foreigner
virgil aikens was not the only fighter
it hasn’t always been this way
ellington was not a street
NTOZAKE SHANGE
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
THE BUDDY BOLDEN CYLINDER
It doesn’t exist, I know, but I lovev
to think of it, wrapped in a shawl
or bridal veil, or, less dramatically,
in an old copy of the Daily Picayune,
and like a nunstaled, unhatched egg
from which, at the right touch, like mine,
the legendary tone, sealed these long years
in the amber of neglect, would peal and re-
peal across the waters. What waters do
I have in mind? Nothing symbolic, mind you.
I meant the sinuous and filth-rich
Mississippi across which you could hear
him play from Gretna, his tone was so loud
and sweet, with a moanin it like you were
in church, and on those old, slow, low-down
blues Buddy culd make the women jump
the way they liked. But it doesn’t exist,
it never did, except as a relic
for a jazz hagiography, and all
we think we know about Bolden’s music
is, really, a melancholy gossip
and none of it sown by Bolden, who
spent his last twenty-four years in Jackson
(Insane Asylum of Louisiana)
hearing the voices of people who spooked
him before he got there. There’s more than one
kind of ghostly music in the air, all
of them like the wind: you can see it
but you can see the leaves shiver in place
as if they’d like to turn their insides out.
WILLIAM MATTHEWS
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
TOUCHING THE PAST Uptown New Orleans, 1940, And here was a man of the right color, Old enough to have been there, Who maybe heard. So I enquired From the old man doing his yard work “Ever hear Buddy Bolden play?” “Ah me,” he said, stopping his work, “Yes. But you mean King, King Bolden. That’s what we called him then.” He leaned on his rake a while, resting. “Used to play in Algiers, played so loud We could hear him clear ‘cross the river.” He seemed listening. “King Bolden, now, There was a man could play.” We stood there, Thinking about it, smiling. ROBERT SARGENTfrom Jazz Poems | Selected and edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
WE REAL COOL THE POOL PLAYERS SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. GWENDOLYN BROOKSfrom Jazz Poems | Selected and edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
JAZZ BAND
Play that thing, you jazz mad fools!
Boil a skyscraper with a jungle
Dish it to ‘em sweet and hot—
Ahhhhhhhhh
Rip it open then, sew it up, jazz band!
Thick bass notesfrom a moon faced drum
Saxophones moan, banjo strings hum
High thin notes from the cornet’s throat
Trombone snorting, bass horn snorting
Short tan notes from the piano
And the short tan notes from the piano
Plink, plank, plunk a plunk
Plink, plank, plunk a plunk
Chopin gone screwy, Wagner with the blues
Plink, plank, plunk a plunk
Got a date with Satan—ain’t no time to lose
Plink, plank, plunk a plunk
Strut it in Harlem, let Fifth Avenue shake it slow
Plink, plank, plunk a plunk
Ain’t goin’ to heaven nohow—
crowd up there’s too slow
Plink, plank, plunk a plunk
Plink, plank, plunk a plunk
Plunk
Do that thing, jazz band!
Whip it to a jelly
Sock it, rock it; heat it, beat it; then fling it at ‘em
Let the jazz stuff fall like hail on king and truck driver
queen and laundress, lord and laborer, banker and bum
Let it fall in London, Moscow, Paris, Hongkong,
Cairo, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Sidney
Let it rub hard thighs, let it be molten fire in the veins
of dancers
Make ‘em shout a crazy jargon of hot hosannas to a
Fiddle-faced jazz god
Send Dios, Jehovah, Gott, Allah, Buddha past in a high
stepping cake walk
Do that thing, jazz band!
Your music’s been drinking hard liquor
Got shanghied and it’s fightin’ mad
Stripped to the waist feedin’ ocean liner bellies
Big burly bibulous brute
Poet hands and bone crusher shoulders
Black sheep or white?
Hey, Hey!
Pick it, papa
Twee twa twee twa twa
Step on it, black boy
Do re mi fa so la ti do
Boomp boomp
Play that thing, you jazz mad fools!
FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS
from Jazz Poems | Selected and edited by Kevin Young
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