4 Poems: By Keith Flynn

BOPOLOGY

 

CUBISM PLUS QUANTUM PHYSICS EQUALS JAZZ

Americas crooked vocabulary

Featuring the four horsemen

Of the ABOPALYPSE

Buddy Bolden wrestling with Genesis

Jelly Roll Mortons EGOMANIACAL

VAUDEVILLIAN RAGS

Sydney Bechets insane vibrato lullabies

And Freddie Keppards paranoid refusals

RACE IS THE WOUND THAT MAKES THE KINGDOM IMPERFECT

(and the sum of the equation must mean Jazz)

 

In the beginning there was so much music

That you could pick up a horn and it would

Play by itself

AMERICAS MONGREL HATRED

The meaning that is beyond ideas

Was smothered

In the mud of SATCHMO

Syncopated like the core of the earth

Punching and bouncing

Across Storyville living Blues Bopping Reefer

DEEPER THAN AFRICA

And clicking ivory gospels in the Sporting Houses

CHING-A-LING and Black Benny Williams present

THE OPIATE BAZAAR For all Turkish Blends mingled with

KING OLIVERS SWINGING PIGIRON MELODIES

The White Elephant lumbers forward

With devastating speed and her minions

Charleston on airplane wings

JAZZ BELONGS TO THE COUNTRY NOW

As the country has long belonged to Jazz

 

Daisys son, Edward Kennedy Ellington, the Duke

With both ears spread twenty stories high says

SLICK MINUS HICK EQUALS BAGS OF LICKS

Tricks spilled beneath a velvet chandelier

And only the most select patrons

May enter here

THE ABE LINCOLN MEMORIAL GARDENS

Where nerve-exciting sexual catastrophes

Whispering foxtrots and deconstructed

Creole orchestras are blaring

UNIVERSAL IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS

The tom tom laughs

The tom tom cries

Competing against the crazed right hand

LIONS OF THE GHETTO

In breakfast dances

Following Buggers demented mute

Chopping wahs in the worried dusk

Making what could be

What was

 

 

 

BLACK BEAUTY

(For Duke Ellington)

 

Duke is asleep. Think of the moon

Like a nail clipped from its finger

And drifting through the marshy dark.

The stride piano comes sticking its feet

Down all through Harlem.

       A nasty horn,

With its cone squawling, signals a rebuke

To the natural evolution. Let every Southern

Raindrop, patient and furious at once, drop

Its padlocks from the sacred wranglers

And vagabonds alike. Let every voice

Have its place. Duke says,

       I got my own

Scale, brother. My tattooed bride swallows for me

And me only, spewing her surprise east and west,

Like a flower perched atop the crest of a wave

And riding home the beauty that only blossoms

In the dark. Duke is asleep.

         The vital push

Is sailing through eternity in the basilica of Harlem.

In the ether of veils, like a stray horn wafting

From a fog-shrouded barge, Billys hand reaches

Through the waterfall and caresses the Dukes

Day old stubble, rousing the jasper hydrangeas

Of music. Like a mollusk

                                          moving under its shell

Or a shadow, the last lonely mountain in space

Pushing across the starry plains, the giant mans

Mind turns like a perfect panther and jumps,

Claws at the ready, decidedly awake on the silver couch.

 

 

 

EPISTROPHY AT LAKE LURE

The piano aint got no wrong notes. --Thelonius Monk

 

First the picture, then a simple overtone,

Ripples on a sad piano. A child in the water

Is screaming her first word, thoughts moving

Across her mind like the shadows of birds,

Her mouth a puddle so dense that thousands

Of stars drown themselves for mercy

In the dark insistent pull, a word uttered once

And refractions close behind. In the misted

Pavilion two young lovers, separated by decree,

Stare like statues breathing, silhouettes

Of the Venus de Milo staring intently into

The others eyes. Miss one chord, Coltrane

Opined about Monk, and you feel like

Youre falling down an elevator shaft.

If we could remember our first word

And the will it took, like trying to herd fleas

Together in a glass enclosure, each impulse

Paying no attention to the others, superimposed

On the edge of catastrophe and O what motion,

A concentric ripple of polyhedral certainties,

Laying out all the undiscovered lilies

That invent the world with surprise.

 

 

 

THE BROKEN SINGER (For Chet Baker)
No one Ever really     Forgives. We agree To forget, At least Momentarily, The pain   Of betrayal. We take The hurt And put It away Like a Favorite pipe In an old Sock drawer, Or the photo Of a lover Whose taste Will not fade.	And we wait And we watch And we pull Out the Memory when The rally Is needed. Hatred is subtle, With its Own wings. Like a singer Whose voice Is shot, Helpless Before the Nodding crowd, Blowing the Last low Fiercely felt Note into Their hearts.