MILES DAVIS KIND OF BLUE AND UNDER THE WEATHER
Ancient salpinx b flat
Kind of blue three octave Harlem bodegas
Warp onto Lenox Avenue
Pitch bending street players execute
Trays full of gin
Chanting purgatory trumpet sin
Third stream live performance
Blasts through underground battle fields
Tectonic jazz players
Converge into musical earthquakes
Chord progression improvisation
Wild raw excitement
beat
beat
beat
Steady rhythmic swing wailing sound rock steady
fusion funk
detonates blue bolts of vibrato
blending
into the bitches brew
Dreamy lyrical style
contrapuntal hollers
In jazz flavors
marinate cool and hot
cool and hot
hot
hot
Cubist jazz innuendo
knocked out by Jamaican rum
birth of the cool
sizzles
sapphire howls sprint down
revolutionary row
while phantom bebop bums conquer
scat drenched nightclubs
trombone fencing
around jazz totem poles
fire and glass
pour into cognac glasses
lighting
the prism of a telescope
magnifies
the melanin of stars
revealing the race
of the universe
Dancing around the bottom
hungry wolves
dive into the fire
fur soaks in revelation
dripping sultry droplets
of lightning liquor
Drummers bust out
of their metal jackets
Catching shattered notes
bouncing off the stage
Where they tip
melt and rattle
the decrescendo cage
The rims of thinning vodka
Miles to go
In trumpet snare melodies tap
lips plump blood fuelled immortality
Timpani steel rods gravitate towards bloodhounds sniffing center stage
slower intricately subdued harmony
Takes over city lights flickering
Stravinsky reminisces shower the gutter
And people remain distinct
on the corner of rural sounds
That dance hidden beneath the streets
Bangs beneath the top of ticker tape where cars
And buildings shake up and down pricking the skin
Of unknown history pounding pounding
pounding
West coast jazz continues
to expand hotter melody
Bursts along skid row
and jet-setting to an island in the sky
Precipitating onto the shores of Harlem
Where the Greeks once stood overlooking the ivory tower
Steam engines roll around the corners
Blaring through the man hole covers
Where soft and distilled
blue notes
whoosh through gold pipes
Sputtering out
sketches of Spain
through a Harmon mute
And it rains
rains
rains
rains all night
Inside a nightclub opening with a can opener a composition of pain
Blood trickles down arms that tighten measures bass lines and snares clap
Clap
clap
Blades run off the deep end
and rich high tonality waters
Trumpet flowers
honeysuckle pours into jazzed up streets
Where red lights
yellow lights
and green lights
Creep into window shields
that glare across transparent
Motor cars filled with cigarette ash
And smoke clouds
Misty streams of fire consumption pack lungs
Pressed against opaque shadows
That reluctantly leave the hollow
end of a brass antler
Primitive tusks
Resurrected
In the archaeology of cool (tender inflamed) jazz
Visceral opus stuffed inside a trumpet
Instrumentalist
In a destitute time
That fire shocks
Symphonies out of their conductor’s batons
Blood cold reminisces fall out of rocket infused reveries
Dissect the faces of people
Who don’t let anyone know what they think
Bread and wine Passover the tips
Of Minton’s Playhouse epitaph guards are torn
Hip gravel and shocked skin
Infiltrate the gardens of 52nd Street
Where poker stars actresses and butlers
Pour lava into the Onyx
Dancing between castles of slums that breathe inferno
Three deuces neon sign temptation
Trumpet throbbing sexual synergy
Rips apart the shadows on the wall
Where nightclub caves
Force kerosene soaked men
And women to stare at their hungry
sextet silhouettes play
the Concierto de Aranjuez
The trumpet player escapes
From the caravan
And walks to the coliseum of lions
That feed on leftover phantoms
Dense with percussion
And complex meter
That splinter a querulous incisive tone into
tranquil
pitches
Where junkie habits
Litter
The firing squad’s front line
Prayer filled ecstasy trumpet blasts
Through the labyrinth
Of century jive ass talk
Keep creating and changing is the manifesto
Written
dancing
On the wall chipped and mangled
Cough
Cough
Beat
Beat
Beat
Raging storm in the summer heat
Rock style backbeat
Anchored by electric bass grooves
Mixed
free
Jazz
Blowing by a large
Ensemble
With electronic
Keyboards and guitar
Plus a dense mix
Of percussion rocking and tipping
Over the lotus
That blasphemously carries
Weight
Over the tremolo bars gripping science
Swept underneath the stage
That ages and decays crumbling into every rotten
Musical rage
Fixing the fingers that tap
tap
Tap
Dripping between the coils of sound
Feeling remorse
That crowds along the wet dark murky streets
Flaming steps keep oiled feet
Grounded on the pathway to a pendulous
Melody
That is suspended by mystical harmony
In the older days of music conductors came with greater care
For every unseen
And forlorn part tread not
Poor mister cadence
For the song and dance is everywhere
anywhere
Over there
Drinking from a chromium plated fountain
Its silver tinge slides down
Budo
Horns saxophones drums trombones
Convex improvisation
Vaulted arched
Polygon composition floods
A round sound
With no attitude
Like a round voice
With not too much tremolo
And not too much baseline bass right in the middle
No middle
No sound can be played
And then Parisian
Night cats tour the unspeakable monuments
Of infinity where they piss
On statues of down beat junkies
Where ballads become spacious
Melodic and relaxed
Jazz giants go walking in the blue haze
Nocturnal resound pounds around
The prince of darkness
Whose return at the Newport Jazz Festival
Featured quintet masters
John
Red
Paul
Philly
They played long
Legged legato
Contrasted
By high energy solos
And then round midnight
Came another set of smoky
Quarter records
Session slammed by heroic
Whole notes
Reaking out
Relaxing
Steaming
Working
And cooking
Miles plays and plays and plays
He dips in the horse
Riding his way to Filles de Kilimanjaro
On something called time no changes
Or freebop
But abandoned that mistress
For Nefertiti
Who brought no charms
And no gold
But her face was sparkling
With
Bronze
And the sound
Melted
Crimson rubies
Into a river
Full of burgundy tinted swallows
That flow from the pryrite
Keys
Like the raging Nile at sundown
Streaming along the currents
Of wailing
Clanging
Soft fools gold and amber tusks
Of twisted meditation
Through pyramids
Stacked on top of each other
Like soprano
Chords
Bass
Screams
And hollow
Tenor intensity reaches out
To grab the fortune teller off the A train
Who parks alongside Fillmore East
Extending mood changes
Heavy dark intense
Space music
That experiments through funk
Playing wah-wah effects
And then everything plundered
With the sublime Calypso Frelimo
Fluttering across
The seventies into the downtrodden eighties
Full of false hope
And simulated allsuions
Of spies
Tip the beat that Miles
Instigates
With saffron improvisatory dust
That scatters
Across the history of beat
Bum
Beat
Beat
Beat
Into the ears
Of unborn tragedy
