Blue Jazz

BLUE JAZZ

October Poem for Amiri Baraka

 

 

When the Word is                                                                           Nommo

No more                                                                                              Then the Word is

Amiri b                                                                                                 Amiri b

Whole man, visible man                                                                   His people’s manifesto

Unbroken                                                                                            Unbroken

 

Wave and particle

Healing, reeling the real, and feeling through,

He is moved to be magic/medicinal

To boptize the Word, hear

Scratch wise/dom in the mind’s ear”

 

Language as found

Flips and founders and flaps

Till the fire next time

Burns

Blasts

Burnishes

The Music to bloom

Defiant

 

Defined and Definer

Our poet, heir to leaves of grass,

Subverts Genesis,

For that time of year

We middle through death for life,

Updowns  a tree to sustain us.

 

If he contradicts himself, he contradicts himself.

He is blessed by the blue jazz

As Miles eternal sings

“So  What?”

Funky chickens always

Volunteer for the blue row of censure.

 

So what if Judas Caliban should don a whiteface

Mask and betray our poet’s brilliant autumn?

We still behold in him mastery,

Graceful grieving grief,

The sanctity of bleeding sorrow songs

On a cross of love.

 

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                       October 2005