Category: My poems

I saw Amy Cervini‘s “Jazz Country” band at 55 Bar tonight. Amy was joined by Steve Cardenas, Anat Cohen and Ike Sturm. The music was gorgeous and this poem was inspired by the first song they played. I won’t name the song so you won’t have the melody and lyrics running through your head when you read the poem. And I shouldn’t have to point out, but I will, that although this is written in the first person, this is not a love poem from me to the happily married Ms. Cervini. Cool? Cool. There have been enough jazz feuds without me starting another! Anyway, enjoy the poem and go see this band.

From Amy Cervini's "Jazz Country" & Victor Prieto Trio

no fences
(for Amy Cervini)

if you had a horse
and I had a horse
we could ride horses
through our crooked village
with our clarinets
making all the children laugh
you in your circled dress
me in whatever a nearsighted fool
wears on a horse
no steeplechase for us
because our village has no fences
just streets that meet at oblique angles
and plenty of space for the angels
of our better nature to sally forth
with the sun on their wings
and clear water in their canteens
there may not be mountains
but we can see the tall buildings
and they’ll do

Yesterday I saw Chris Washburne and SYOTOS at El Museo del Barrio. I wrote this during the gig. Some of the poem is based on the performance and things that were played and said during it, and other lines are paraphrased from the brilliant book The Mambo Kings Play Songs Of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. The last two lines are instructions given to me back when I played latin jazz for a living.

barrio music

this is sacred ground
church on Saturday
we should be dancing
led down the aisle by El Rey
like a victory parade
hips swaying, laughing
we are praying to the holy trinity
the mambo, the rumba
and the cha cha cha
James Brown, Machito and Schoenberg
this isn’t music for sitting down
when you play the clave, play the clave
and clap like your mama’s making tortillas

Hard as it is to believe, I went to my first show at the Village Vanguard in New York tonight. The band was Terrell Stafford, Bruce Barth, Tim Warfield, Peter Washington and Dana Hall. I wrote this in the dark during the set. I wanted it to seem a bit noirish, thus “the blond.” I’m not sure if that’s OK.

Friday night at the Vanguard

there’s something about the way the blond
is tilting her head, laying it back
against the cushions like she’s dreaming

— stop —

now we’re in church and a “go ‘head”
comes from stage left
where the trumpeter sits snapping his fingers
in what would be a cliche in other circumstances

the blond leans forward
she has a cleft in her chin like an action hero
on her it’s intriguing

— can I get an “amen”? —

it’s a ballad again
she leans over so far you’d think
she had a stomach ache, but she’s smiling

I went to Small’s in the Village tonight to see Bruce Barth. I ran into several people I knew and some I’d never met in person. The whole experience felt like a poem, so it seemed only fitting to make it one.

One of my favorite movies is An American In Paris. At the beginning of the film, Gene Kelly does some narration and mentions that he went to Paris because the great artists before him had gone there. I feel that way about New York and poetry, and also New York and jazz. I didn’t change any names in this poem to protect the innocent, either.

9=3+3+3, or, A Night At Small’s

on the train, this:
if you don’t change direction,
you may end up where you’re headed

huh

the sage is sleeping soundly
slumped over against the pole
if this were Japan, someone
would wake him at his stop

or more likely he would awaken
as if by magic
some shared ethnic telepathy
connecting all Japanese to their destination

but this is New York
no such enlightenment
is forthcoming

Louis Armstrong is smiling
in argyle socks
a black Buddha before bebop

Rebecca has blood-red nails
that look jet-dark in this dim light
her double-jointed pinky bent on the bar
her name is alliterative, as is the artist’s
who guesses it

and, for that matter, the piano player’s
(and his title)

the Japanese photographer says
he is ready to go home
twenty-four years is long enough

meanwhile the boy from Pasadena gets the seal
of approval from the boy from Brooklyn
it’s official: he’s a New Yorker now

the mirror next to the piano is reflected in another mirror
looked at from the right angle
there are an infinite number of piano players
(writing Hamlet?)
and an unending row of archers

people clap when they’re supposed to
like a ritual prayer that’s lost its meaning
in the observance

even the photographers look like musicians
and the temperamental cat is not a euphemism