Catching up with Will Mayo

Art by Karen

 

 

 

It's also been a while since I've posted writing by Will Mayo.  He's been reading and writing up a storm, though, and his work has appeared in a number of other publications as well as this one.

Apparitions

by

Will Mayo

Then - what was it? 1973 or 1974? - my family and I were at our home at the farm when my mother received a phone call from my sister who was alone in the big house back in the city. It seems that my sister was frightened. She swore that she'd just seen a ghost.

"That's interesting," my mother replied to her over the phone. "Somebody just swore that they saw a ghost in the mansion up the hill from here!"

And though there were no further sightings for a while there ghosts seemed all around us..

Love And All That Jazz

by

Will Mayo

And then there was Billy the jazz singer. Billy loved to sing all the classics plus more of his own devising and his voice would range higher than all the rest to hit the top of the charts. But for all his fame and all his talent Billy stayed apart from the world, shying from an embrace here, an ardent love there. And when it came to a wife of his own he shied away from any lovemaking on their wedding night, saying, "It's all a mistake, a fearful mistake...," as he touched the bandages that lay under his pajamas from what he claimed was a long ago car accident.

His wife loved Billy nonetheless for all Billy's modesty, loved him for his fame, loved him for his singing, loved him for a thousand other reasons and said, "That's fine. We'll adopt."

So they adopted, boys and girls alike, and as Billy's fame grew as did his talent and they all weathered the years well. And, of course, they grew old.

When, at last, Billy died from some unidentified malady his modesty did, of course, go out the window and all the doctors peeled off the three-piece suit that he had been wearing when he died in, there as the autopsy was performed in the chamber of death, along with the now-old bandages from nonexistent car accident only to reveal to their and the world's surprise that he was not a he but was a she and there beheld the most gorgeous woman they had ever seen with her full breasts and her just-right loins who had weathered all the years remarkably well. They declared a heart ailment to be the problem and sealed her back to be shipped off to the grave in the way Billy loved best, a jazz orchestra and a full wake of mourning followed by a funeral and viewing for all his fans to adore him.

For Billy was still a man in all the world's eyes and also that of his wife and when she passed by the open coffin she kissed him full on the lips and whispered, “You should have told me” and laid a red rose beside him as she passed him by. His children and grandchildren, now grown expressed similar sentiments as they laid him in the grave and, as a final goodbye, the band played “Love And All That Jazz,” Billy's favorite hit. And then he was gone.

Talking It Out

by

Will Mayo 

 

"I think humanity will last another fifty years and then it'll be gone," the man said to me.

"I think it'll be around a good bit longer than that" I said.

And then between debating humanity's chances we had another bite and passed the sauce along. Truth is, we couldn't figure out our own lives let alone mankind's but we were already on the way. We were talking it out. Which is more than could be said for most.

Then the darkness came on and the man departed and I was left alone with my thoughts. Another strange man trying to figure it all out. Afterwards, we became one with the night as did most others on our side of the globe. We were curious and alive and searching for a reason. A reason that, with time, would be lost to us all. The world was with us and we knew it not and neither did any other. Just taking our chances, that is, before we were done.

I'll also include Will's reviews of two recent chapbooks by Bryn Fortey.

 

Photo of Vince Taylor by Hugo van Gelderen from 1963

Will Mayo's Review Of Bryn Fortey's Talking Music: Poetry And Comment

This is a book of poems and essays about the music business, its singers and songwriters, its pianists and drummers, its trumpeters and saxophonists. Of particular interest is Louis Armstrong, a singer and trumpeter whose improvisation showed sheer genius as well as Nina Simone, the pianist and singer that knew how to seduce and bludgeon with every note and Romano, son of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, that found a kind of quiet refuge from his past in his piano playing. Not to mention Glenn Miller, the bandleader whose death by plane crash at the height of World War Two broke a thousand hearts, and Vince Taylor, the rock and roll singer that scored a hit in France but never in the United Kingdom or the United States. This is a book to take you away on a quiet day into words of a "Jazz-Noir" and gunshots fired down Ginsberg's negro streets at the break of dawn. It closes with a few words about Salome that will drive any Oscar Wilde fan and any jazz aficionado wild with desire. I suggest you hurry and get a hold of this book. It comes in a limited edition and copies are going fast. This reviewer can only hope to do justice to it all.

Will Mayo's Review of Bryn Fortey's With Van Gogh: Connections

These are poems concerning Vincent Van Gogh's relationship with friends, family, lovers, doctors and others and also the author's relationship with the people in his own life. Worth noting are the lovers that spurned the Vincent, the prostitutes he favored, the doctors that failed him, the family that supported him, not to mentioned the bully that terrorized him. I learned a lot about Vincent Van Gogh in this chapbook but I was even more moved by the more personal of poems of Bryn's included here, most especially the final poem in this collection "The Borrowed Land" which begins with these lines -"I will walk again where I've never been/and hear voices raised that do not speak/I'll behold the splendor of sights unseen/where normality has become the freak" - and lingers in the consciousness long after the reader is done. This is a very good book. I only regret that it is only available in a limited edition for surely more readers need to see Mr. Fortey's words. Hurry now and get yours while you still can.

I'll start the music with Billy Tipton's "Don't Blame Me": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQEWBYh8FhE

Here is his version of "Take the A Train": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtntI7YX-ao

This is Vince Taylor's "Brand New Cadillac": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc2pTC0D0j0  

I'll finish with Johnny O'Neal's version of "Route 66": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lLEKEe2npM 

Enjoy!