Poetic Suite, final draft

A work that evolved on these very boards. I just wanted to have a place where it was all together in one post, hence the reprint, with very minor edits.

ON THE JAZZ: POETIC SUITE IN 6 MOVEMENTS

I. JAMMING

Guitar in hand, I jam.
In free-form musical verse
my memories live and become whole.
I remember
jamming with junkies and drinkers,
deep thinkers all,
raggedly aloof,
kings of strings and sundry things.
I jam to an ocean breeze
and a calypso beat.
I take a seat
beside a leathery bluesman,
and shout out his pain
in pentatonic glory.

As the music plays,
the dance begins,
and I remember.

I dance between the flurrying fists
of schoolyard bullies,
with a smile on my face
and diplomacy on my mind.
I dance to the rhythm
of a man crying for loss of love,
and coax an awkward waltz
from his tortured soul.
I dance to make allies
out of enemies.
I dance around a world in limbo.
I dance so that I never forget
the nature of the heart,
the drum-taps of life,
all the while
holding my guitar,
strumming out the stories.

Sound and fury,
beauty and pain.
I stand upon a mountaintop and play,
and all of it comes back to me
in echoes.

II. THE HUNCHBACK AND THE HORN

The wind weeps and bends
with the weight of sorrow
emanating from the bell
of a battered saxophone
deftly handled
by a shadowy hunchback.
Tears flow down his weathered cheeks
to be transformed
into sound sublime.
The slaves of urban souls
are set free, and they sing,
bleating for the battered child,
moaning for the mothers abandoned and abused,
honking for the hardened hearts of whores,
droning in Dorian for the darkness
of the downtrodden, the drug addicts and their demons,
praying in polyrhythm for the passing
of the endless, poisonous night.

In silhouette, against the moon,
the hunchback and the horn seem the same,
two question marks in unison
pasted across the heavens.

III. INTERMEZZO

Velvet-pawed, the pianist
cautiously caresses the keys,
black and white,
reflecting the odd, fleeting calm
of the city at dusk.

IV. RIM SHOT SNARE

Tappety-tap, rat-a-tat-tat,
staccato Krupa thunder
keeps ricochet time
with the gunfire in the streets.
Tappety-tap, rat-a-tat-tat,
caught in the crosshairs
of a rim shot snare.
Boom boom boom, the bass drum
groans a backbeat called hope
like a howitzer, beating back the bleak,
banal yoke of entropy.
Swish, clash, the cymbals
ring melodious metallic
through the fabric of time,
the blacksmiths hammer,
the rumbling gears of industry,
the hum of automation,
the steady breeze of labour,
the whine and buzz of failing fluorescent,
the fiber optic messages tripping across
the waves, brushed gently
into the air above.
The drums capture all
in the crosshairs of a rim shot snare.

V. REQUIEM

Play, piper, play a mournful air
in a solemn modal key
for all our fallen heroes.
Play for them piper,
that their souls may rise upwards
on the gossamer feathers
of dreams diverted, declined, deserted.
Pipe with burning breaths of fire,
and lift the raging red that stains
the waters, the plains, the desert sands,
all our hands, the lives interrupted.
Play on, piper, in sonorous, sinewy tones,
anchored by the pipes constant drone,
lest we forget the lost ones
caught up in a silent, smoky scream,
the never ending hopscotch
of a pipe dream.

VI. RENAISSANCE (Epilogue)

A luted minstrel walks
fleet-footed through the carnage
playing a myxolydian melody
called ?'Fortuna'.
Ancient riffs reach for the sun
to be recast in gold overwhelming.

Blinded, hypnotized,
the rats converge
and shuffle towards the light,
lost in visions of discarded treasures
found only in the trash.