Sergio Ortiz Returns

Let's start with Sergio's poem inspired by Etta Jones.

Walking in the Limbo of Words

the lighthouse of the indefinite

trafficking voices of absence,

skeleton walls smuggle freedom.

My country: a poem under an illegal shade.

A sun full of cameras rides

my skin like ghosts

who claim what is rightfully theirs. 

I lead the echoes of my flight

to a heart masked 

as theatrical delirium,

my wrinkled memoir  

slow dancing to Etta Jones’s,

I found a dream, that I could speak to. 

A dream that I can call my own.  

At last I touch your lips 

with my revolutionary blood

and leave my confession 

on your cinnamon eyes.

With No Punctuation 

You insist on dealing with my silence

by making sure no one rises to my defense

Between the lips of your vulva 

scented flowers

open locks

on doors that listen 

to what belongs to me

No endless

distances

no monsters

nothing of the low note

minced 

by my voice

To be able to sing

with amazement

sing

with no punctuation 

or alarm

Reparations to Eros

May silence never ride 

on the dormant back of a heron. 

May it leave a homeopathic drop of luck 

on the waters of my trembling body.

May my skin bear no resemblance

to the unshakable epidermis 

of a frozen pachyderm.  

I must confess, I am in debt

to a slave driver's arms.

Tasted his fruit, 

but could not distinguish 

sour from sweet.

Black Salt

You fall beyond your sap / abated remembrance / vile fear of tears // In you my heart / a circle of fire / black salt on the river banks of your Himalaya // And I am shipwrecked / confused tangle of dreams that mocks the cacophonous memory of water.

A Thousand Darknesses

In memory of the Holocaust Victims and Celan

We went to Mirabeau Bridge

and paid your promise.

The hours passed

on the Seine, our lives

increasingly smaller 

grew confident

thinking a suicide chose 

the side of the Tower

where nothing ends up falling.

We threw our coins in the water.

No Country for the Elderly

The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees,

—Those dying generations—at their song

Sailing to Byzantium

By William Butler Yeasts

I set the rain on fire, lacerated the sun

with my straight razor

so I could part company with time.

I'm saving my abysses

to scamper away from the cold

so as not to be disgusted with death.

This country is no place for the elderly,

the ridiculous collections of antiquated scores,

birds bebopping jazz melodies on the autumnal tree

of sensory music that ignores everything.

Teenagers standing on God's sacred fire

turn to me and say…

Stick to being the teacher

of your wrinkled breath.

Of course, I must start with some Etta Jones.  Here is her "Don't Go to Strangers":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBLaJtXbpRg

Her "I'll Be Seeing You" also features her long-time love, the tenor saxophonist Houston Person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcok47x_sMk

Let's play some vibes.  My husband made a request for some Jason Marsalis.  Here is his "The Man With Two Left Feet":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utk_OKKh2ic

Another song of his is "Offbeat Personality":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D79DbEU9jv0

Back to the papers!

Tad Richards and Sheikha A.

Tonight Tad Richards combines two of my favorite things: jazz and weather imagery.  The poem below is from his collaboration with visual artist Nancy Ostrovsky.  It's also part of a series "about a young woman, the daughter of a modestly successful jazz musician, who has left her husband and is trying to figure out who she is, mostly using jazz as a conduit to her inner self." This time the jazz musicians whom Tad invokes in this poem are men born in the 1930s: Hank Mobley, Wynton Kelly, and Lee Morgan. 

THE WEATHER CHANNEL

A front of warm air reached our region
around noon today. During
the afternoon, it will ooze on in,
probe with sticky, eighty degree fingers,
so that, she supposes, she could drive
in and out between yesterday’s clammy cold
and the oozing certainty of muggy heat,
like a county with local option on daylight saving,
or the sound from her rain-drenched speakers,
a few bars of Hank Mobley’s reassuring bebop,
then silence. She imagines the missing solo,
how Wynton Kelly might have picked it up,
brought it to where the sound kicks in again.
Lee Morgan is a harder read. Lost,
she moves inside to the weather channel.
The front is squatting now, threatening 
impossibly heavy storms—or did he say
possibly heavy storms? A guy calls,
she met him last week. He just wants 
to make sure she has candles on hand.
Hurricane lanterns are better. She asks him if
he could fill in the missing parts of a Hank Mobley solo.
Sure, he says. How about Lee Morgan?
Sure, he says. Him too.
No, you couldn’t, she says.

To read other poems in Tad's series, see these links: http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2016/10/she-took-off-her-dress-poetry-by-tad.html
http://thesongis.blogspot.com/2016/07/welcome-to-tad-richards-and-nancy.html

I also want to add two poems that Sheikha A., a poet from Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, has sent me.  Her first poem "Swaying Crows" reminds me of all the crows I see in my neighborhood these days: flying, perching in trees, even strutting down the street with the kids.

Swaying Crows

This afternoon, crows opened

their mouths to pigeons:

a debate on lost seasons.

It wasn’t long until a murder crowded

the neighbour’s sill drowning out

the sun from warming the water bowl.

In my city, leaves have yet to see

the gloriously transparent 

red visit for a coating.

The poor leaves know just one colour:

when smoke from roaring motors

plough their roots, these leaves know

just one way to bloom. Crows have

(always) the vision of a surly lover.

Voices that have been told

they’re too loud for an evening

with the stars. How leaves hatch

neglect intelligently

while crows sing

like refrain just grew a rose.

Sheikha A.'s poem about rain fits in well with Tad's.

Rein

The books are in their shelves.

My mind wired to the tunes

of reluctance refusing to leave

the clouds. The earth edging.

Winter’s feet have not learnt

to walk on sand. The bickering 

of rain heavy within the sky.

My pages are drier than fruits

hanging by their thin stems.

Some of us have freed.

Some of us in flight.

I grow obscurer in your gaze.

The rain loses core – 

falls like a sad song

on hollowing roofs.

Last week I played a few by Lee Morgan, so I will just play this one (relatively) early song "You Go To My Head":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMsBCDVXHGc

Hank Mobley and Wynton Kelly play with Art Blakey and Paul Chambers on "Soul Station":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmtHdBPzi_w

Here Mobley plays with Morgan (and a few others) on "All The Things You Are": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aKbALH8UNI

Kelly and Mobley perform "On a Clear Day" in Baltimore:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfbiIpwcaZY

Welcome to Jackie Chou!

Photo by Metro96

It's been wonderful to see all of the new contributors to The Song Is... this fall/winter.  Tonight I am posting California poet Jackie Chou's piece about not driving.

Riding the Pumpkin Colored Carriage

The night approaches

As I stand by the bus bench

Gazing at every oncoming large vehicle

With hopeful eyes and extended neck

Thinking, is that the one, the 266?

Only to realize, when it gets closer

That it is another bus or a truck

I am used to this kind of night

The Los Angeles city bus

My prized mode of transportation

Takes me to pivotal occasions

Then disappears into its station

Leaving no trace of my whereabouts

After twenty minutes

The blinking lights of the 266

Finally appear from a visible distance

I wave at it with all smiles

Like a beauty queen in a parade

Forgetting the wait

The cold I have endured

I climb up its rubbery stairs

A willing bride ascending the altar

Tapping my pass and thanking the driver

It has been almost twenty years

Since the Driver Safety Department

Revoked my license

For an extensive psych history

I was not always this gracious

In my twenties I drove a pure white Ford Escort

Had a father who put a twenty dollar bill

On the ironing board every other day

For gas and maintenance

With the convenience of a car

I went to every party I knew about

In delicate dresses and three inch heels

Not the coarse clothes and sneakers

I now wear to walk between bus stops

But still, I yelled at my father

And threw furniture out the window

My father passed away in 2003

I never got my license back

I am still walking and taking the bus

Only to go where I have to go

Not where I feel like going

And becoming humbler

More appreciative everyday

Jackie Chou studied Creative Writing at USC.  She writes poetry in an attempt to construct meaning out of everyday experiences, to defy ordinary perceptions, and as an alternative to “ranting” to friends on Facebook.  She attends writing workshops and has been published locally. 

Last weekend my husband and I saw an excellent documentary on Lee Morgan: "I Called Him Morgan."  Although I've posted his music before, I am going to include a few more songs tonight.  Enjoy!  I'll try to look for something from his California albums although I have to post "Search for the New Land."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDfkkRa1VA8

This is his "Hey Chico":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLSTAoXCeds

"Something Cute" was the next cut on Charisma:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0UtTFo_ydc

I'll finish with "Absolutions," which is live from the Lighthouse in California:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c54WwI12pMc

Welcome to Daniel Snethen!

Finally this evening I am publishing the Great Plains poet (and biology teacher/researcher) Daniel G. Snethen's poems.  (He is primarily based in South Dakota these days.)  I have traveled through that region but never really stopped there, so it's interesting to read poetry that is informed by that part of the United States.  Certainly, as a poet, biology teacher, rancher, and researcher into the American Burying Beetle, Daniel has much insight into nature. 

an old yellar day

boar coon attacked my blue-tick

cross on Pepper’s grave

Buttons

Buttons

have four blind eyes,

poked out with a needle—

bound with Momma’s black sewing thread:

sightless.

Christmas colored leaves

white poison ivy berries

fatal fall foilage

gentle April rains

robins feed on fresh mown lawns

earthworms in mourning

glowing northern nights

Aurora Borealis

Alaskan light-show

gyroscopic winds

cottonwoods bend, groan, and snap

Dakota cyclone

myriad snowflakes

kaleidoscopic crystals

promises of hope

ornate box turtles

kangaroo rats and yucca

Nebraska’s Sandhills

Let's add Freddie Hubbard's "First Light" into the mix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwvxiBEPDdA

"Red Clay" refers to another region's soil, but I think it fits well with both "First Light" and Daniel's pieces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA1ZelIbUfI

I want to continue with Milt Jackson's "Sunflower": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qse46GNnU4

I'll finish with Ahmad Jamal's "Blue Moon" and "Invitation":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUvkO4A5Vo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOAepSLbohs