Jazz Poems

WHAT I’M WILD FOR

I broke when I was ten and forty-

year-old Mr. D. was clambering on top of me

and it was all I could do to kick him back, keep

the red ceiling light in sight, and wait

for her to find me. So this is what she’s on

her knees for every night, praying

for Pops to come on back, rip her skirt off

and ride her until it’s only skin she ever wants

to feel again. I wanted to fling that in her face

the way a slick trumpeter cat from Philly

flung any panties at me summer I was fifteen.

I’ve seen more love in Alderson, behind

the warden’s back, behind Jim Crow’s back

on the way home from movies: dykes would touch

hands, feed cigarettes to one another

like they were kisses, before the cells broke us all up–-

forgers, whores, boosters, pushers, users.

The soldiers had it, too, begging for pieces

of my dress and stockings, tearing them to petals

under their noses because they have the smell 

of woman on them. I could love a whole

army like that. But two husbands later

and the hungry I feel is not the 600-miles-a-night

on a bus flashing slow silver between gigs

while my stomach opens wide. The cure

for that is simple as a couple bucks, red beans

and rice. What I’m wild for is a few grains

of dope and the shakes I get from head to satin

feet when it’s “Strange Fruit.” One night, my

body can’t

hold me down, the notes break clean, and no one

can see me, but they point to the voice flying over

the band and say, Billie, nobody sings 

hunger like you do, or love.

JANET M. CHOI

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Jazz Poems

JAZZ

I’d like to know everything

A jazz artist knows, starting with the song

“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”

Like to make some songs myself

“Goodbye Rickshaw,”

“Goodbye Lemondrop,”

“Goodbye Rendezvous.”

Or maybe even blues:

If you fall in love with me I’ll make you pancakes

All morning. If you fall in love with me

I’ll make you pancakes all night.

If you don’t like pancakes

We’ll go to the creperie. If you don’t like pancakes

We’ll go to the creperie.

If you don’t like to eat, handsome boy,

Don’t you hang around with me.

On second thought, i’d rather find

The fanciest music I can, and hear all of it.

I’d rather love somebody

And say his name to myself every day

Until I fall apart.

ANGELA BALL

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Jazz Poems

FALL DOWN

in memory of eric dolphy

All men are locked in their cells.

Though we quake

In fist of body

Keys rattle, set us free.

I remember and wonder why?

In fall, in summer; times

Will be no more. Journeys

End.

I remember and wonder why?

In the sacred labor of lung

Spine and groin,

You cease, fly away

To what? To autumn, to

Winter, to brown leaves, to

Wind where no lark sings; yet

Through dominion of air, jaw and fire

I remember!

Eric Dolphy, you swung

A beautiful axe. You lived a clean

Life.

You were young–

You died.

Calvin Hernton 

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Jazz Poems

LISTENING TO SONNY ROLLINS AT THE FIVE SPOT

There will many other nights like

this be standing here with someone, some

one

someone

some-one

some

some

some

some

some

some

one

there will be other songs

a-nother fall, another–spring, but

there will never be a-noth, noth

anoth

noth

anoth-er

noth-er

noth-er

Other lips that I may kiss

but they won’t thrill me like

thrill me like

like yours

used to

dream a million dreams

but how can they come

when there

never be

a-noth–

Paul Blackburn

From Jazz Poems | Selected and edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

SNAKE-BLACK SOLO

For Louis Armstrong, Steve Cannon, Miles Davis & Eugene Redmond

with the music up high

boogaloo bass down way way low

up & under eye come slidin on in mojoin

on in spacin on in on a riff

full of rain

riffin on in full of rain & pain

spacin on in on a sound like coltrane

my metaphor is a blues

hot pain dealin blues is a blues axin

guitar voices whiskey broken niggah deep

in the heart is a blues in a glass filled with rain

is a blues in the dark

slurred voices of straight bourbon

is a blues dagger stuck off in the heart

of night moanin blike bessie smith

is a blues filling up the wings

of darkness is a blues

& looking through the heart

a dream can become a raindrop window to see through

can become a window to see through this moment

to see yourself hanging around the dark

to see through

can become a river catching rain

feeding time can become a window

to see through

Quincy Troupe

From Jazz Poems | Selected and edited by Kevin Young

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