Jazz Poems
PREZ IN PARIS, 1959
By 1959 he’d moved to ParisPrez wouldn’t eat. Sweet alcohol harassedhis system. Cooled, the jazz “To Be or Not to Be” –withdrawn, a whisper–seemed a jot.
Once there’s been ways to get bak at the world;Ex-G.I. Prez had tried and tired. He hurledhimself now–hearsay, smoky horn–down-stage.“Well, Lady Gay Paree, it’s been a dog’s age.”
he might’ve said. Or “Ivy Divey! Wrong!The way that channel swims–toocold. “This song–the lyric’s weak. We’ll drown. No eyes, my man.No, let’s don’t take it from no top. The band
can skip it.” Prez. Monsieur le Président, who played us what can work, and what just won’t.
Al Young | May 31, 1939 – April 17, 2021
Poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008.
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Jazz Poems
STRANGE FRUIT
Southern trees bear a strange fruitBlood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
And the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
LEWIS ALLANfrom Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
JELLY WROTE
jelly wrote,
you should be walking on four legs
but now you’re walking on two,
you know you come directly from the
animal famulee
& you do. but dr jive
the winding boy, whose hands only work
was music & pushing
“certain ignorant light skin women” to the corner
was never animal
was never beast in storeyville, refining
a touch for ivory on pool green
with the finest of whorehouse ragtime; use even
for the “darker niggers music. rough,” jelly wrote
“but they loved it in the tenderloin.”
o the tall & chancey, the ladies’
fancy, the finest boy for miles around,
“your salty dog,” but with diamond incisors,
shooting the agate under a stetson sky
his st louis flats winked into
aaah, mr jelly
A.B. Spellman
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
COLTRANE, SYEEDA’S SONG FLUTE
For M & P.R.
When I came across it on the
piano it reminded me of her,
because it sounded like a
happy, child’s song.
COLTRANE
To Marilyn, to Peter,
playing , making things: the walls, the stairs,
the attics, bright nests in nests;
the slow, light, grave unstitching of lies,
opening, stinking, letting in air
you bear yourselves in, become your own mother
and father
your own child.
You lying closer.
You going along. Days.
The strobe-lit wheel stops dead
once, twice in a life: old-fashioned rays:
and then all the rest of the time pulls blur,
only you remember it more, playing.
Listening here in the late quiet you can think
great things of us all, I think we will all, Coltrane,
meet speechless and easy in Heaven, our names
known and forgotten, all dearest, all come
giant-stepping
out into some wide, light, merciful mind.
John
Coltrane, 40, gone
right through the floorboards,
up to the shins, up to the eyes,
closed over,
Syeeda’s happy, child’s song
left up here, playing.
JEAN VALENTINEfrom Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
BILLIE HOLIDAY
Here lies a lady. Day was her double pain,
Pride and compassion equally gone wrong.
At night she sang, “Do you conceive my song?”
And answered in her torn voice, “Don’t explain.”
HAYDEN CARRUTHfrom Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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