Conservatory Jazz.
Neither a sun-boat
nor slave-ship
for these scoundrels. Much fast speech
wrapped in fake fur and
anger-lips kissing
a gold watch face, lips bow like
Timbuktu mussulman in prayer over a drinking well
(This bug-hum called hip hop,
doggerel of calling each other dogs
and themselves the many martyred
church-christs of American Dream,
The recording industry executive
Mr Botox Goldstein discovered their lucky untalented asses,
threw them into his recording studio booth,
helped push them through the coral gates
of financial baptismal quarters of clorox heaven
neither I nor any Exec, nor Ersatzstein, Robenstein nor Ahmad nor a vodoo consultant
may everever enter. The Booted Heaven)
can lower inhibitions, so can viewing a film of intersecting nudes. Pornogreish the same
ratatat motions and choreographed studio rec. annihilation.
Instead I kneel to ear-search, in knight-twilight abidance for the music made by the nocturnal shade people who reforged
ruined tools and shovels into instruments, spat orchestras tilled
out of the dry earth, the slave-ship
sun-ship music.It is now nowhere to be found, not under the bridge
even under wreckage.
It is everywhere but nowhere fecund. In absence of records, I seek the earth for ears and larynxes hidden among the roughage and turnips
Rarity no rarer
than ocean shells by the river
How I of a disavowed
Heart swollen with its swallowed salt water
long to hear the cyclopean unchained
sing innocence from tube-larynx
to the discerning-eared
audience of the nails in his feet.
There are the songs by the Unfurnished,
they unfurnish ears, minds and asses,
That was before Oedipa, Edisonia and Euphoria descended, covering the faces of drums
with electric paralysis of shame–
Adieu.
Replacing it all with bug-hum while citing that willy-nilly rap by Henry Ford, ”History is bunk”
Took a metroline from the Amsterdam banlieu
past the many stationary riverboats behind fast-cutting fences
of stopless bicycles. Plainclothes navy, plainclothes armada of Holland passes on
bicycle moulin twisting in a rush through Rain’s turn-style. Millions of umbrellas snap,
I went to the Ij Conservatory, replete with young musicians
enrolled to receive their diplomas in Jazz. I understood
why I never understood some jazz, why I never
understood the fascination, for some, with Buddhism–
to be lake without desire.
*But I could appreciate a fleurette africaine, sweet
as Yemen ghat-grass chewed once by Cain, inherited between my teeth, a love supreme on some weekends,
an Arkestra during the flood, in drought, a sunship. Perhaps some sketches
of Spain, on paper not to be brunt to warm feet. Some wretches to relate to,
None of those memories, dove-chariots drove to
or from the conservatory past nimrods on bikes)
Intermissions, looking out
on the Dutch river. International students. A boy with an afro
has limitless variations on his fathers’, Yusuf Latif’s suites.
There are drinks afterwards. Couples who don’t get touchy or kiss in public,
matter of taste.
They are of my generation,
Infinitely open minded and clean the way a polished deck
On an un-sinkable ship reflects the clouds, in the spaces clear
(of artillery) there is only room for light ness, and a mirror of lacquer-luster deck
reflects broad sky with its peel torn back by bromide that the harvest
dancers of the end of melodies threw into the heavens, to poison
heaven’s clouds mistaking her for the despised whitemen of cinema, the feeding
hands and property claims on the feeding bottoms. Apply scalpel.
Painters and musicians, poets all stand punished for pearly snotty elitism.
No one cared to break open the head of a record company executive
with a blunt saxophone, for all those inundations of rap
there was no bravery, no balls. They carry a padding and wiring that leaves
no room for archaic spooky words like lascivious, baroque
Baroque are my intolerable and incessant daydreams, as illegible as Ugaritic letters on clay easel,
or ooga ooga ooh. Baroque rhymes with broke
I am a 19th century refugee
I admired the houses gypsies built still in caves
on Sacromonte with full view of Alhambra (before I went broke, to
live off Nour Alkamra). I dropped to my knees
as the old humming woman tended to her aloes and cacti.
I went there because of Lorca and wished I had stayed.
The young man with the afro is from Montpellier. His father had a sun-stroke,
but had not yet cultivated Bob Marley’s wailing melanoma,
lives in Milano but will come to see the finale examinations.
I ask him what if a conservatory taught the music of the gypsies, would you
listen to the conservatory gypsy orchestras? Can they Cante Jondo?
Could the tanguedias of the Arabál be made with lit heels
and hellcry bandoneons here? I sneer in all words that come from
my mouth and not my hands. I am transparently a trickster
but my tricks are unbreakably obscure.
The conservatory jazzist sips his beer,
adjusts his contact lens and says no one was talking to me.
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