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Three Jazz Poems
What I hear is gone,
playpens clattering
with rattles like drums,
hum of heater on the floor—
I remember this as I tap
the tones out of the
bass clarinet bell. I yell,
Hell! I can tell
the past that steers
the turnstile giving me gate
at the Village Gate
or Vanguard, swapping
songs with 'Trane, washing
the garnet buried in my vein.
Jones
Elvin, avian basher
of the tom, bomber
beating a path through
briars on the 4 AM earth
false dawn declaring
cold and dark,
as your skin, sweating
under mesh, as you mash
twin cymbals of hi-hat
to Coltrane's snaking sound.
I'm around, on the ground
briars rising around me
sky as dark as thorns
are red, as your blood.
Spiritual
Hard as a blue diamond
the soul of a swinging
pendulum minded
master of the jazz jury,
out as jazz is in. I'm in,
polishing the jewel
taking my knocks to
my teeth—the size
of it—the size of the jewel
ceasing to be a stone,
but the emblem
of a people, hard as the blue
diamond, and swinging
through socks to the jaw.
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