We buy a couple of corn dogs and head over to the free stage. My eyes wander off and I see a teenage girl standing on the back of a motorized wheelchair, lurching left and right, while her driver zig-zags across Main Street like a Hollywood stunt driver. I’m thankful city planners have shut down the streets to car traffic. Not just for the jazz festival.
But so people can move, for four days, any way they choose.
In the limestone shadows, there’s room for Ray-Bans and navy polos to sashay and stay cool. Or go melt in the civic plaza heat, where the black clip-ons swing down over her bifocals to get a look-see of that man’s oversized short sleeves, how they shuffle below his elbows. And cornrows appear. Tight red denim. Even scraps of leather. Straw blues hats. Neon t-shirts. Black ties and Fedora hats. Lots of kids, too, with blinking plastic bracelets.
And that’s just the visual stimulation.
I’m bewitched by jazz, by its auditory command. Like dropping an egg in a frying pan. It sizzles, spits, and I have to pay attention. If Coltrane likes it over easy, then I had better keep my eyes on the yolk. When I’m driving, I often find myself hitting the pause button to discern if it’s safe to make a left turn, especially when Art Blakey sits under the hood, cracking his eggs on my engine block. Because good jazz blows a brass whistle and wants to redirect my traffic.
Poetry cooks like that, too, giving me permission to shut down a street, eat a corn dog, and just pay attention.
Let’s Play June Jazz!
All month long we’re swinging with poetry at Tweetspeak. We call it June Jazz. We write found poems and share them on Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs, though we always link back to here. Last week we wrote to the tune of “American Beech Trees” by Patricia Cook.
Maureen Doallas gave those words a good shaking.
In winter’s twilight
spring-lit forsythia march,
shining like lanterns.
March in cold season:
forest stripped, trees’ trunks black,
snow almost festive.
Ice-cold New York night
slowly secrets winter’s trees
in snow like paper.
The Path of Treasure saw the lanterns differently. She wrote,
Lanterns
They do not sleep;
they hide silvery secrets
under thick, worn skin
A whisper emerges
from shadows, Americans
standing in rows of granite–
their quivering souls, still;
the spirit of the outstretched
hand shakes in all seasons…
I feel the grip of hope and place
my hand to my heart , salute
the courageous, the lanterns
on the way. They do not sleep,
these everleaves, these heroes
stark and tall, like the tree.
And John added his own punctuation and jazz. He wrote,
THE LAST KIND
Men, women, and girl singers –
of the three kinds of humans
you were the last. You loved jazz
and the smoky little rooms
where the tunes got played. They
took note of your crusade, your
scat without scatting, your
vibrato-less gee-whizzy Fifties cool,
plus this pluperfect female shape
even George Shearing could see.
But they kept listening because
of your uninhibited phrasing,
your mad human offerings
of punctuation: semicolons where
men could breathe, commas to
put women at ease, parentheses
that gave girl singers courage.
That you always sang haunted
was widely-felt, but the ghosts were
only known by a few. Born to
be blue was always more than
a song. Then rock-n-roll invaded
our land and the loud was too
much, so you made yourself silent,
an esoteric casualty of war.
There will never be another you
is always more than a song.
Here’s how June Jazz works …
If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to Every Day Poems.
_______
1. On Mondays, the Every Day Poem in your inbox becomes a chord progression. Find your own tone. Build an idea around a single poem line. Just let yourself go and write a found poem, baby.
2. Tweet your poems to us. Add a #junejazz hashtag so we can find it and maybe share it with the world.
3. Or leave your found poem here in the comment box.
_______
We’ll read your tweets and share some of your weekly play each week. At the end of the month, we’ll choose a winning poem and ask the playful poet to record his or her poem to be featured in one of our upcoming Weekly Top 10 Poetic Picks.
Here’s today’s Every Day Poem. Now go jazz it up.
Photo by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post by Matthew Kreider.
___________
Buy a year of Every Day Poems, just $5.99— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In May we’re exploring the theme Trees.
- Casting a Line for Surrealist Poetry - November 12, 2012
- The History of the World in Beer - October 22, 2012
- Journey into Poetry: Matthew Kreider - July 23, 2012
Maureen Doallas says
Like those eggs on jazz, Matthew. They’re cookin’.
Thank you for including me in such excellent company.
path of treasure says
I concur with Maureen: a smokin’ post.
And, I also feel the same: thank you for including me among such fine company! It was a pleasant surprise to see my poem here this morning.
Maureen Doallas says
Confession
My aunt’s old pigeon-toed
janitor was in the house,
thought no one but the fake
Hummels in pretty pinafores
was watching. I was. I was
in the forbidden room when
the janitor, rosy-faced, arranged
in a long row in the black velvet
blanket the little brass kittens,
their bulging bellies shiny in gold
overalls. I myself was reaching high
in the cabinet when the janitor
gave the kiss and after I saw stars,
these brilliant stars in the glass.
Nothing, I thought, would get
broken. I was so wrong.
L. L. Barkat says
Maureen. Oh just.
How DO you do it? 🙂
Matthew Kreider says
Can we somehow get the code to Maureen’s creative process and plug it into an App? So stunning, beautiful.
Maureen Doallas says
Thank you, LL and Matt. I can’t explain it. Once I get started, the poem just happens.
Rosanne Osborne says
Innocentia
When her brush stroked
those fat cheeks, chubby hands,
she could not know
that Goebel would give
her iconic images form.
How would a novitiate
know that her concepts
would draw Nazi wrath
or carry global hope?
The coin tossed in the air,
lingers in liminal space
before its called, destiny
distended above the heads
and tails of probability.
The Merry Wanderer grips
his satchel and walks on.
Donna says
Is there an archive that has the images of all of the trees used for June? So sure I saw one but now I can’t find it and have been looking all morning. I have my heart set on finding the one tree that inspired a poem… will know it when I see it again and if there is a link with an archive I’d be so appreciative if someone would post it! :O)
thanks…
And as for June Jazz… who knew I had any Jazziness left in me? It’s been so much fun!
Rosanne Osborne says
Grabbing those Golden Stars
Reaching in was always the problem.
Courage rested between beak
and slender arm. That hen never
wanted me to take what was hers,
and she’d defend the laying box
she believed to protect fantasy
chicks she saw in her beady eyes.
But I was an enthusiastic adversary
knowing new shoes for school
depended on the eggs my mother
sold in town. Reaching in hands
learn survival and acquisition
on the way to caregiving,
and the displacement of bias.
Rosanne Osborne says
Silica
Glass cabinets hide their treasures
behind transparency, deceptive
they are like Poe’s letter,
concealed by presence
rather than absence.
They deny the reality of dust
motes in the gaze
of a hundred eyes peering
through refractions
that presume imagination.
The minds behind the eyes
draw the stories they choose
from the images they think
they see, figments of a world
remote, yet intimate.
Grace Marcella Brodhurst-Davis says
Forbidden
It was forbidden to touch
the old upright piano, after
Pauline tickled it unwillingly
She, a pigeon-toed,
rosy-faced Hummel
in my aunt’s pretty house
-the gold star
Me, all wrong,
under pinafore and overalls,
tilting with musical whims
arranged just so…
When I thought no one was watching
I was brilliant: easing
in on my concert piece,
right before auntie shut
the hinged lid on my hands
Rosanne Osborne says
Latches
Brass latches close.
Forbidden they say
in the finality
of their clasp. The secrets
inside pass beyond
the present
to the dust-laden future.
Prying fingers
will decode
the language of privacy
assigning errant
signification.
path of treasure says
Curious Star
She reaches in, softly kisses
forbidden porcelain faces,
smooth and round with slightly
blushing cheeks. She remembers
leaping in mud puddles, stepping
on cracks in sidewalks, and no
one’s back got broken. Don’t
you know she was drawn to locked
doors, shiny brass latches, and
tempted by signs that said “do not
enter”? Now she is tormented by
years of silent hands in empty
pockets, fiddling with stray pieces
of forgotten lint. She hangs gold
stars on days her eyes steal a fancy
or bigger slice of desire. She vows
to die with a calendar of gold, not
blank spaces devoid of curious mind.
Rosanne Osborne says
Practice
Locker rooms reek of sneakers
and sweat socks, but
band rooms have their scent
as well. Brass and spit,
plush cases marked
with cork grease or valve oil,
dry cleaned uniforms
never quite as sanitized
as they pretend.
The sniff in the nostrils
is like a reed on the tongue
of New Orleans jazz,
the touch of mouth piece
and lips, nubs of the ball
on the dribblers digits,
the liturgist’s sacrament.
Rosanne Osborne says
Touch
The magnetic pull that causes
us to reach out to touch
is the closest we come
to understanding creation.
Touch starts deep
below the cerebral cortex
and works its way
through the coils
of consciousness
until it erupts
in muscular response.
Our hands know.