Loud Dixieland Jazz Bathroom: Revolutionary ImproVerse Haiku

When pumping music/
into restrooms, play loud jazz /
with lots of deep brass.

Philly Memories Of A Jazz Lover: Oral History Prose

I was talking to a friend’s father, a resident at a Jewish senior center in Florida, about his life. During our walk, we heard some jazz through the intercom. As we sat in the sun room, he started telling me about his younger days in Philadelphia. These are his words (with “my comments” inserted), as close as I can recall:

Hearing Jazz in Philly
“I remember going to a club off of Walnut, and you had to go downstairs. We were sitting there, and the side door opened and they had a guy by the arm. They walked him out, brought him to the raised stage and took him up the stairs, and they put his hand on the keyboard and left him. And he sat down and started playing. From then on he owned the place. It was George Shearing. THAT was music.
Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, I saw them together and separately. They were amazing.
The guy with a different-shaped horn … “Dizzy Gillespie?” Yeah, the Dizz. There was a block of houses in West Philadelphia, and they tore out the center of the block, and he played there. That was a great sound.
Philadelphia was where that jazz happened, even more than New York. They loved to play there, and they just did it for the love… Oh,what music!
The guy with the handkerchief … “Satchmo!?!” Yeah Satchmo. Louie Armstrong, what a trumpet player! He wasn’t known as a singer, but could he play! And the Dizz … when he played, his neck and cheeks bulged out and he would force those notes out through the front, just willed it out.
And Sarah Vaughan… Beautiful! She could sing. And I would be the only white guy there, 2-3 times a week I’d be at the clubs, and they all knew me because I loved — we all loved — the music. Stan Kenton, I saw him. Benny Goodman. Except for his band, we didn’t dance at these places. They were small … and just made for listening.
They would play in the clubs until closing, or we’d go to the Boyd Theater at 11, until 1 or 2 in the morning. Then they’d come off the stage and we’d talk to them, then we’d all go to some bar or someplace and they’d set up and play until 5 or 6 in the morning. That was just for the love of the music! Now you have all these musicians, they have no talent, they just perform for the money. But back then, you could see it, and feel it, they would just play until the early morning because they loved making that sound! That music!
They would all talk to me, I knew them all. I was the only white guy in the place, but they knew I loved that sound. They don’t play like that for the love anymore. And it’s too bad.”

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Giving Up My Seat For The Beat: Revolutionary ImproVerse Rhyming Haiku

When an old lady,/
dressed in pink, wants to groove to/
the beat, give your seat.

Off The Beat Path: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Haiku

Who would have e’er thought/
that, high on the mountain tops,/
white kids could swing jazz?

Dance With Miles Davis Haiku: Revolutionary ConTEXTing Haiku

Miles separates us./
She’s in Davis County, but/
thinks I want to dance.

Continental Trolley? Really?: Revolutionary Blogging Prose

A gentle summer breeze flows like gentle, lapping waves over me, ebbing, flowing, and cooling the bright sun streaming through thick-leaved trees from a cloudless azure sky.

Tanned, chemisette-wearing women float by like the undulating colors of a rainbow after a sudden August downburst at sunset. Their long, limber arms and legs, their dancers’ hips, rhythmically sway to the gentle salsa, samba and jazz beats that flow over the orange stucco portico where I observe, write, and inwardly dance.

Across the median’d, deeply-shaded street, a European trolley clangs its familiar bell as it, too, sways past ornate, wrought-ironed passenger stations and street lamps. I smile at the statuesque blonde eating her passion fruit next to me. A lone, glistening, drop of juice glides unnoticed (by her) down her bronzed decoutage’ as a foreign, yet familiar, song from long ago tells of similar beauties on a Brazilian beach. A dozen foreign tongues from low-slung chairs seem to harmonize as the gentle saxophone tones make love in low moan.

It seems so … cosmopolitan.
So … continental.
So …
Salt Lake City?
Really?

Dancin’ by The Fountain: ConTEXTing Poem

Dancin’/
by the Fountain/
2 da sweet/
Be-bop jazz beat!/
Countin’/
tap, tap, tap feet!/
Repeat.

What if God is a Jazz Musician?

Back in high school I read a science report that stated that radio waves coming from Pulsars, Quarks, and other astrological entities portrayed very sophisticated Jazz beats and rhythms. I wrote a poem, then, which I can’t find… but this is a rewrite that still asks the same question.

The Quasars
and Pulsars
from dying sparks
of Quarks
playing in the dark
form bang, bang,
do wop, bang
rhythms
and be bop bang
syncopated rhymes
in do wop, bang re bop
three-quarter time
on radio
do whop bang discs
in bang bang do whop bang Puerto
Rico
and New Mex
ico.
So …
What if God
bang bang do whop bang
IS a Jazz Musician?
Man?
AND
the Universe
Is His Big
Gig,
Dig?