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 BlackburnFrom 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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Jazz Poems
THE BLUES OF THIS DAY
The blues of this day
are as elegant and as sad
as the minor thirds and we all try to sing it.
What we want is to be brass
The horn-scratched voice blown through.
Valves as golden as his. Lord as crazy sex
or first real heartbreak.
It was always his back slightly bent away
from all of us who adored him, gazing across his
shoulders as the band jumped into the party
one solo at a ti
Or they could be rocking way off-ke
going as far away from the melody as Venus to Mars.
Funk can be as easy as t
getting together in the dark.
And as hard as the breaking light
that catches the throat of sated lovers, the morning after.
The talk the night before by the last of his men
who knew the way of the world and then some,
about Miles and his two steps ahead of the century
like the first Black man to leave the Delta humming
I gotta go, but I can’t take you.
I gotta go, but I can’t take you.
If you want to follow, then do what you want to do.
Patricia Spears Jones
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
WALKING PARKER HOME
Sweet beats of jazz impaled on slivers of wind Kansas Black Morning/First Horn Eyes/ Historical sound pictures on New Bird wings People shouts/ boy alto dreams/ Tomorrow’s Gold belled pipe of stops and future Blues Times Lurking Hawkins/ shadows of Lester/ realization Bronzer fingers–brain extensions seeking trapped sounds Ghetto thoughts/ bandstand courage/ solo flight Nerve-wracked suspicions of never songs and doubts New York altar city/ black tears/ secret disciples Hammer horn pounding soul markson unswinging gates Cultural gods/ mob sounds/ visions of spikes Panic excursions to tribal Jazz wombs and transfusions Heroin nights of birth/ and soaring/ over boppy new ground Smothered rage covering pyramids of notes spontaneously exploding Cool revelations/ shrill hopes/beauty speared into greedy ears Birdland nights on bop mountains, windy saxophone revolutions. Dayrooms of junk/ and melting walls and circling vultures/ Money cancer/ remembered pain/ terror flights/ Death and indestructible existence In that Jazz corner of life Wrapped in a mist of sound His legacy, our Jazz-tinted dawn Wailing his triumphs of oddly begotten dreams Inviting the nerveless to feel once more That fierce dying of humans consumed In raging fires of Love.
BOB KAUFMAN
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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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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