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Category: Writing and Poetry
I n the mid-90's, I experimented with various version of Brass Orchids, my poetryband. This version (bass, percussion and tenor sax) played a feature gig at Estelle's, one of the hot poetry saloons on the corner of North, Damen, and Milwaukee Aves., the apex of Wicker Park when the poets ran the corner.
The poem is "Terra Cognita."
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fading stabs of summer sun
rest on my kitchen table, on a map unfolded.
i look down upon a thousand square miles of west coast Motherland,
fingers lost in the paper ocean just beyond Dakar.
daydreaming.
a party, outside somewhere, jumps to life.
Bahia rhythms flow, daydreams overflow,
into rhythms............of creation,
of a million colors dancing out to the horizon,
rhythms of ritual, movements clear as fables
old as dust.
Bahia cadence takes a Zydeco twist, bounces into High Life symphony
suffused with grace.
i close my eyes and imagine claiming the whole incognita planet-
a foot on half the continent, fingers on the European shelf,
warm breath tracing an eastern path
through Asia Minor to India, Australia to Polynesia,
sweeping up Kamchatka through the Bering Strait
down to Tierra del Fuego.
now at the door, the music, spread out like summer smoke, is everywhere.
found the party at dusk, welcomed in,
everyone's bright colors merging
dark dancing drinking laughing writhing.........floating in sound.
damn.....just like New Orleans.....
parties just like this,
held out back of somebody's post-plantation style house;
the food and the music and the women and the food....
and having my palm read,
my heartline traced by Creole fingers.
left the party at dawn. could still see stars.
riding the watermelon line with no clear destination
and could just as easily have been on the Streetcar named Desire,
rumbling past diaspora landmarks,
the pure essence of the place
helping me conjure as i write.
it's been said Chicago and New Orleans shares an undertow,
ancient waters full of voices come and gone like shadows;
i hear you, whispers riding the music.
i hear you.
3:29 AM
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