Poetry: 8@80; The Suite

Poetry: 8 @ 80, SOUL MAN

Grandma's

mama told her
stories
of how they got
over
and she passed them on not
just to your
mama
but to you
Speaking with her
hands
as much as her
mouth
spinning tales through
meals and
handmedown clothes
made new
and moth harps
blown
singing
of the New
Old South
songs which
you
took through the Navy
and then on
into L.A. sunshine
and you felt
the dank dread
of
heartbreak
and loneliness
yet you distilled them
for us
 and we began to
feel
we could make it
if we
tried
even as we
acknowledged
that
universal need for a
shoulder
to
lean on
You blocked
the blaxperts
seeking to model - really to
muzzle -
your soul
and knowing
you just cant smile it
away
you stepped out of
the fake glare
but the musical seeds
were already
popping up
all over
in "modern" r'n' b
and even New Jack
cause
every artist knows
that your
words
and your sounds
make for

A Lovely Day

Poetry: 8 @ 80 PRESIDENT FOR LIFE

Yours

was a power
all could
embrace
save those
seated
in stolen
Power
they saw the
threat
in your elemental
truth
your rejection of
orthodoxy
Old generals
even old
schoolmates
brought face to face with
the end
of
their repressive
order
even as the
winds
of
change
you sowed brought
a whirlwind of
mayhem
sorrow
tears and
Blood
with your good
mother
set on her
head from 3 storeys up and
You
left for dead
how could they have
known
that rather than stilling
the dynamo they were merely
spooling
it
engendering an
explosion
fanning a flame
that would set even
Broadway alight
Now Kalakuta and
the Shrine
once brutally
repressed have
like You
Slipped the bonds
of
space
and
time

Poetry: 8 @ 80, CALL HIM MORGAN (for Lee)

Sidewinder

Rumproller
Speedballer
Never pigeonholed
Soft-Lee
Bright-Lee
Lighting
up the Tunisian
Night-Lee
Lightning fast
licks
unaware
that fro him time
Ticks
even faster
living with adn throught
the drugs
who knew that
between sets at
 Slug's
in a once sseedy
sector
Helen's
missiles of
wrath found
thier
vector
Ending
a career
 a life
that today we
still hold dear
who oculd
rightly declare what
stars
he would have
leapt over
waht
musical
promises he would have
kept
just one
thing
that All can see
in sound
in tone
in
pure
jazz flight
thee'll never
be
another
Lee

Poetry: 8 @ 80, ETTA FOREVER

For

all the
wanna-bes and genuine
Ingenues
that have tried
to turn At Last
into some prim princess
anthem
with
all the soul of a piece
of cheap glass
Etta
was too
busy gettin' down
with her Good
Rockin' Daddy
Having a blast
She rarely
glamorized
and never sanitized
Black ove
the rhythm
was
timeless
and the
blues
was laden
with
the juice that kept a people
Alive and well
through four centures
of
living hell
in AmeriKKKa
she
could never go
Blind
to the
atrocities
anymore than she
could
give up
the Intensities
of
Sunday Love
sweeter than any service
unifying sinnerman
and
saint
each delighting
to hear
her coo
I Just Want To Make Love To You

Poetry: 8 @ 80, GOOD NEWS WOMAN

With the

name
of a worldly ruler
yet you have rendered
all
Unto your
Lord and Saviour
from playing
church as a little
girl
to playing concert halls
across the
world
proclaiming the good news with
the majesty
of
the blues
sweetening
stirring
honking and
rasping
in equal measure
Striving to
save
Light growing
brighter
from walking
the Caravans to
schooling Kirk Franklin
and all the way to secular
Hollywood sidewalk
You are
the Mamma
that many remember
and revere
to this
day
in the happiest
of ways

Poetry: 8@ 80, TRANE KEEPS COMIN' ROUND(from McCoy)

So long

I have
lived
with expanding
boundaries
though I never
played
a note with you after '64
I ffelt- even before I heard - the
nudge the
push
the blind
cartwheeling
of note over
note
"Noise"
I sad then
even with Elvin's
multi-tonal
stick shifts in my
head which
for a while I kept buried in
Blue Note sand
waiting
for the
waves you chased to
carry you to an even more
distant
shore
Now
bittersweet irony
I am finding my own
way
 to that
place
but only on the inside
Outwardly I still
stand
like
conventions
Inwardly
your
counterpoints
resonate
as they
dissonate
with all the
prim gaiety of
Dixieland
I feel it I know
it
but
for all my
inner assurance I cant
share it
Like Morse Code in
stereo
But all my
faculties
ain't gone
I hear
Kamasi
and them other
young-uns
Comin' on
and I can
smile
Even as I
walk out of the
room
leavin' everyone
Wondering

Poetry: 8 @ 80, FIVE CROWNS(for Ben E King)

because you

saw many nights
come
You
were able to reach
for the
romance
in
the darkness
You knew
the sweetest
pleasures
Lay in the
Last Dance
Your voice
was
alchemy itself
turning many a teenage
tryst
into
magic moments
Music
to hold us
in a
Trance
to make us
feel
that life was still worth
the stress
the betrayals
the put-downs
the unsolicited
advice
Through your
voice
we could equate
One magical
night
to a thousand
Years
your songs
did more than
soothe
they strengthened our
belief
in our invincibility
and the safety
of
our
World

Poetry: 8 @ 80, ONE MAN EARTHQUAKE (for Prince Buster)

Rougher

Tougher
smart to the
streets
A human blade on
the beats
Rising
with the dawn of a new
Era
where wax hot off
the wharf
blasted out through
shanty-lined streets
to rude boys
and
fanciful
girls
and young Rasta
rebels
skanking in and
out
You set your own mark
Carved your own
Bench
passed sentence on
rivals
and issued
muisical
decrees
that reverberate across
the globe even to
Holllywood
Though they haven't
fully
understood
what it is you were really
about
they never could plumb
the depths
of that
Indomitable
Spirit