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bmoore28@yahoo.com

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"This is Jazz"

Smooth as coffee'd milk and vodka,
the Negro man blows his horn.
The drummer swings, as the bass walks,
and I hear the beat that is not there.
That pregnant pause between time,
That is-- as big, as the universe.
It pulls at my soul.
I kick off my shoes and feel at home
in the harmony of the ivories.
The chords twinkle and shine as champagne
notes bubble from deep within a sax.
The backbeat rocks me awake, a fine tapestry
woven out of a groove.
Effortless syncopation, a solid foundation,
for a paint splattered saxophone night.
Tonight we ride rhythms like
steamboats floating here in New Orleans
on this dark Mississippi, this thick artery
that connects us to the heartland.
The full moon sits in the cradled smile of her
eyes,
as the night smokes jazz like reefer.
The Negro man sculpts sound,
smoothes out rough blue emotion.
I close my eyes and am baptized with
his tears, bathed in the lapping moans
he transforms to glory, with the alchemy of
hot brass with sensuous, sultry, Bourbon Street
sex.
This is jazz!
You can read it in the smoke that hangs thick on
club walls.
This is 200 years of struggle to be free,
this is Negro pain, this is Negro pride.
This is a call to worship. This is a call to arms.
This is Jazz! You can read it in the cracks in the
street, in the cracks in his wrinkled black face.
His notes wail like a siren, not to warn, but to
lure, to entice, and we caught in this moment like
stone monolith engrossed by the medusean madness
of New Orleans and we sit upon history, sit amidst
culture, like disciples at a great prophets feet.
3 am voodoo and a bucket of libation-- I sold my
soul to be a poet- to be a Negro man, to preach
pain and pleasure to a world of indifference.

© Copyright, Bob Moore.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.