Elegguas

6 Duke

Duke for Anne Waimsley The old man's hands are alligator skins and swimming easily like these along the harp stringed keyboard where he will make of Solitude a silver thing as if great age like his could play that tune along these cracks that flow between their swing without a scratch of thistle sound & whistle down the rhythm all wing long & what a way to love you madly madly madly with the wisdom of so many all night carioca smokes & dish &clutter knife &clatter up the baad bo diddley dancehall bars &barrios 16 my Cousin Bigard Aing in the piss stain RESTROOMS mood & oboe indigo wet glass of 17 SUPA NOVA HEADLIGHTS Bessie Bessie Bessie Smith the empress of our shattered blues & you smiling up front in the coach every morning after the thousand & one one night stands Watts StLouis SelmaAlabama Chicago Montgomery BusBoycott Cairo where they most nearly kill you Sphinx Pharaoh Memphis Tennessee c 18 where they did where they did where they finally did but the baf>f>y-a.0-tut?ky-l0eal} shout, in out run Jesse run Jesse run Jesse run call yo out cent.low 3(7W ft you caint make it you're nothin , you*re from no body 3rd claM servant cloM got-no-elaM undercioM it li not a. question my friend* about a telephone fall efwke tango with v?tw ofviho diifc in with wfto in ttie ohithouae id a. matter ofhape of the right to continue the "dream about our rightful ptace at the table & i? the curtain psyching up & the lights swimming down into the thunder of silence & each time each time is that creak before birth Jimmy Hamilton's like Carolina clarinet leading us out of the silence Afternoon of a saxophone Caravan Pcrdido Cottontail Satin Doll Sophisticated Lady Transblucency the crco Creole Love Call & Let me hear it one more time for ao II/IE A$0XE3tfOiA0&(§ & DC in summer hot almost too simmer to sip . sop sit out on the stoep with old men . cymbell children cries rising like these northern egrets above the railway tracks where Sonny Greer come walk ing down the sidewalk clickin sticks ii the ole man plays the tune with ancient hands ofjungle tints of stride piano at the Cotton Club New Orleans woman drum Gonscitocs Rabbit Harry Carney Cootie Hanton CDoodyard Qlanton Cat the doo-doo doo-doo wah of l-jarlcm qir-ShaFt warm & deep where i am born upon the sidewalk on the corner . in the precinct with no father to my name . no name but what my grannma give me our mother dragging us across the midnight city looking for a place to sleep at least to keep her box of broken winnings in. takin two jobs like twins so she could feed us chicken bone to keep our hopes alive an not a one a we she always say too poor to hear a pride a 40-40 trombonelion roar i i the ole man's hands are striding through the keyboard sidewalks alleyways &ages from Shakka speare and guinea birD to Caribbean stilt dance veve masquerade & Buddy Bolden's golden Strayhorn horn across the misty goombay levee dawn that no cheap jazzhouse perfume scent can cheapen his hands are playing every Tricky Nantam book in town black black Black Bottom Stomp diminuendo honey beige & hallelujah brown *3 &look the old man's alligator hands are young *4 ...