Welcome to Michael Amitin from Paris!

Photograph by  Christophe Alary

Tonight we fly from Montreal to Paris with Michael Amitin's poems!

Marooned Bells

Marooned on a couch brown raft -rocking lle-de-France

Sullen blackboard jazz blowin from across the navy N’Awleans seas

Slo-mo angels doing somersaults on my torn red curtain reverie

in these broken Halloween bones and mask

I rummage through the ashes that crashed me into

this pink, new golden face dawn..

floating past jagged-edged icicles into the night melting

chocolate Clark Terry’s “They Didn’t Believe Me.”

Love lost is something we can never afford

head stuck on a starboard mast

crashing through storm waves painted in dead dreams

And feeling that familiar frost-bitten regret again- that we never consummated the close quarters of then,,,what are regrets other than dead sea gulls floating in a ghost soup sea

Dylan has Blue Eyes

Dylan has Blue Eyes

blue as acid rain above the iron mines

he stole away in the steel toe, snowy night

tangled up in a winter howl New York

blue parade - watchman cries like a wayward stork

collapsing in post-war wharfs of solitude

its all over now

JFK bullets signed, sealed delivered

Dylan’d just arrived in town

Escorting Jane thru after hour dark sour alley ways

creak-eyed ragtime forgotten stairs,,

making love till daybreak in lonely whistlestop shadows  

below the seedy swept windowpanes-

Cinderella sweeps up night's sad confetti

Jane deep blue morning

he's hopped a passing train

to the next crumbling town

hurling knaves to the boiler pot

on the tombstone heels of Jack K

he carved his plot

Dylan has blue eyes

seen Hurricane Carter do blasphemous time,,

Emmett Till dug up from southern soup brines

Hattie Carroll, the deluge feral- bombers flying grease oil nights,

innocence chained in a Texas two-step charade

angels crying star spangled tears

She hears the tracks rumble

left behind on anxious street,

she awakens, lifts her finger to the wind

knows what direction he’s in, far from that

bluelight dream hotel

Danse of the Exotic Bolivian Food Massacre

And in that dream

A Spaniard playing charango- leans over, turns on

a tape

‘spill your life’s purpose’

a half-pint remains

my lies shake the roof

Caroline sashays

high on hoisting red flag-draped trays

exotic bolivian food shades

streamers bouncing off her marble-fine high- octane silken New York culture thighs

In a dark alley panic- thinking I’d left behind my Mandolin

Her matchstick lit me back into flame

when I grew tired of counting ashes

beige corduroy pantlegs crossed in the woody smell

of the dank gallery Monmartre nights

Photograph by Elvert Barnes

Marvin

What’s goin’ on?

Manrique asks

he slides into the ripped red passenger seat

my beaten up, burgundy wine-stained Nissan

Fresh from a 7/11 twinkie run

he looks at me- pale behind the wheel

drivers blaring

for us to hightail our asses out of the

thin slice strip mall parking space

Marvin, man..

Huh?

MARVIN’S DEAD

Marvin..just heard it on the radio,

Marvin? Marvin Gaye?

yeah

How?

Filicide, man- his pentacostal cross-dressing papa preacher

sprayed a bullet right through Marvin’s gold record

broken chequered cocaine-stained heart

golden voice over, here in ’84

so young, tragic in the magic, why?

so great

mercy, mercy me

Poet, storyteller and musician, Michael D. Amitin spent most of his life traveling the roads of the American West from California- east through the smoky burgs and train depot diners of Western Colorado, where he lived before moving to Paris.

   Inspired by Yeats, Corso and Ginsberg, Amitin has recently been named International Beat Poet Laureate 2020-2021. His poems have been published in California Quarterly, AbstractMagazineTV, Black Magnolias, Poetry Pacific, and others.

    A current collaboration with Parisian photographer Julie Peiffer has given rise to the "Riverlights" project, and a chapbook entitled ‘Riverlights.’

Let's finish up with some music, starting with the Clark Terry piece that Michael mentioned in his first poem..."They Didn't Believe Me": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG6gnP9Y_sc

I couldn't find a video for the Benoist Raffin Trio, so here is the Clover Trio with "Prayer to the Unfamiliar."  Raffin is the drummer.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW7LqWOLj10

Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau play Dylan's "Scarlet Town" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEVnOgtJSY0&list=PL3nLxk67YqZlz8opJyMfuBc8T_wG41yIX&index=3&t=0s

Here Marvin Gaye sings "What's Going On" at the 1980 Montreux Jazz Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpGPBoS5nTE