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
