AFTER HOURS:
10 Jazz Poems

by

PAUL PINES

BEBOP HEAD: FOR RICHIE COLE

What you say
gets lost in
what you said

always hungry
for more than
words can say

and hunger is
what its about
no matter how

good the ear
soft the voice
slim the body.

How far was
Eddie J.
Bird or Fats

Navaro? But
the real
question is

what do you
do if you're
still hungry

and don't have
any more time
on your hands

I LIE AWAKE ALL NIGHT

thinking

about
Charlie Parker's
discovery
of "figures"
between notes
bleeding
through the tune
like ghosts
sometimes as particles
sometimes as waves
quantums
of audible
light

while

Chano Pozo
instructs Diz about
'diablitos'
configurations
of sub-atomic time
used to create limitless
improvisational
space

as Achilles
in Zeno's
second paradox
never beats the Tortoise

(SUNRISE!)
to the finish
line

LITTLE JIMMY SCOTT at sixty
sounding like a perfect lady
talks about his career
if only he'd remained
on the scene
he might have been
as recognized as Betty Carter
or Ernestine Andersen

unembarrassed by
his alto-tenor

(Its the range I was
given. At least my pitch
is true.")

describes a song
as Michelangelo did a piece of
sculpture:

"The notes are
already there so you
can lay back."

Sings.

"...do the gods above me

think so little
of me...."

like a chisel
to marble
his voice
to air

GOODBYE, JOE: A EULOGY DELIVERED
BY MICKEY TUCKER

When I first got to the City
before I was married
Joe Carrol said,

"Mickey Tucker,
I love my wife Alma, so much
I wouldn't leave her
to go to heaven."

That was
the only time
he ever lied to me

MONK'S DREAM

Twisting

the symphony
as Ives
did

but
with
one
finger

a single
note
implied

between the keys
a note
we can't
hear
no less
look at

call black
or white...

JAZZMOBILE

Did you

dig

Dexter

dancing

in front of

Grant's Tomb

when

his keyboard

took a solo?

HE DID THE LUSITANIA!

puffing
a cigarette
arched
his back
fanned
his knees
and listed...

a ship

with explosive cargo

HITLER'S FAVORITE TRUMPET PLAYER

When Hitler wanted
to hear jazz in Paris

he looked for this guy
Eddie Jefferson

refers to as Hitler's
favorite trumpet player.

I see him all the time
on Second Avenue

in a brown silk suit
gold cuff links

and a rug with peaks
like the Hartz Mountains.

This morning I spot him
hatless in the drizzle

bent over a mail box
on 5th Street

whispering
down the chute:

"Il ne veut passer!"

AFTER HOURS

I love
to be dissolute with you

get high
and stay up all night

listening
to jazz

Everytime
you move I watch

your breasts
through that sleeveless

blouse
hear
your thighs rub
in harem pants

and feel
the ocean shift...

how could anyone say
I've wasted my life?

THE TIN PALACE TROLL

TEX ALLEN
leaned across Bradley's bar
and thanked me
for the years
I let him practice in
my basement.

I thought:

What's done is done.
The world breeds new joints
and savvy kids
and mornings so long-of-tooth
you wonder they were
ever otherwise.

"Listen," he said, "you're a poet
and it musta been tuff
running a club but
if you never do anything else
you've done enuf
and if I didn't tell you this
I'd be worth less than a weed
that owes something to the sod."

MINGUS
at the Five Spot
playing for all
he can eat
Blackburn
by the coalstove in McSorely's
scoring pages with his nerves...

there was a time when poets

and jazzmen built lines
like cities to live in

I grieve for it

now in '89
my head
a graveyard
of forgotten names where
DREAM STREET
ends
!
at MONUMENT SQUARE
[!]

Copyright © 1996 by Paul Pines.

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