Jazz Synchrony.

For the Georgia Ballet

There’s a mystery within
the creation of jazz and blues within the combinations
of instrumental souls who’ve deeply inhaled
the spirit of culture
to breathe the enormity of universe infinities
through Earth-grown steel
and resound echoes that rise up
dormant and passive minds
In Motion.

As the bands play…

As music paves the way
for all she touches to give new life and new reason
for lives filled with the coldest winters
to see the season of Spring arrive
and churn life back
In Motion…

VERSE:
…To Let Jazz be Jazz again
Let the blues be that savoring mystery;
To use rhythm to engrave the voyage of
the great motionless synchrony;

Which convenes us here—

At the footsteps of the bases that
churned this motion into the formula
mixing the magician’s potion
with the desires of cultures
to find the medium to strum
change in the ways we live
the ways we express
the ways we poetically discover
the mystery of the creation of jazz and blues;
through the combinations of instrumental dances
to reveal and revel in its simplicity—

We commence in New York City

Who wears the American crown of liberty,
though freedom jazz-istically resides
at the streets numbered above the one-twenty-fifth.

Leave me where I lay
in Harlem, who once looked beyond the masses
of harmonized New York City growth and direction
and said
“I’ve changed my mind—
I choose Jazz instead.”

Inbred into the fabric of Manhattan’s
rigged workdays and ruffled relaxations,
Jazz in Harlem learned its craft
as the child of lives who didn’t find crystal stairways
but torn-up boards
dark corners
and hills to climb
to be emancipated from the fields of oppression,
to pick The Cotton Club
as the venue to whirl autonomy
In Motion.

As Cab Calloway, Dorothy Dandridge,
and Duke Ellington play…

As music paves the way
for all who she meets
as she listens to the desires and needs
of lives seeking artistic seeds
to plant self-expression
into fertile grounds
to send growth
In Motion…

VERSE:
…To Let Jazz be Jazz again
Let the blues be that savoring mystery;
For Harlem once set the stage for
the great motionless synchrony;

Which brings us here—

Where jazz speaks of rivers,
an ancient, dusky river that
rediscovered its flow
around the curve of Missouri
at the inviting banks of Middle America’s
downward force of nature,
the Mississippi River,
where we find the place

We named, Saint Louis—

Who guards Western America
with its gateways,
while revving up the Blues
for its journey downstream.

Before the song lyrics cry, in melancholy,
“Got the St. Louis Blues—
Blues as can be.”

Influenced by cities miles afar,
tell me everything I’m not,
In St. Louis where the ancestral feast of melody
grabs hold to the arms of Ragtime,
to sparkle gleams of joy
across faces of even the least-traveled trotters,
globing the sounds of cakewalks,
two-steps, and fox-trots,
to define the indescribable
and obscurities of the meanings of life
into channels that mimic nature’s
downward course of river flow action
In Motion.

As Scott Joplin, Tina Turner,
and Miles Davis play…

As river streams pave the way
for two southern sisters
to grow from nourished delta-bred hearts
while settling themselves apart,
yet keeping the harmonized echo
consistently
In Motion…

VERSE:
…To Let Jazz be Jazz again
Let the blues be that savoring mystery;
For St. Louis raised pyramids above
the great motionless synchrony;

Which brings us here—

At the crest of limitlessness,
not defined by time,
nor space,
nor genre,
for no one face can encapsulate
the relentless and unforgiving rhythms
that envelop themselves
in the sweetest lyrical melodies.

This is the blues.

This is Memphis.

Who rolled the mold
and rocked the form
to set the groove,
and the blueprint
to how constellational stars
would align their music
within their music.

The Beale Street Blues give reason
to ration if pain and anguish exist
as the catalyst
for the means of roping our outer expression
with the most secreted
and stored-away human emotion—

For all things of breath
have purpose,
and there’s a life in blues
that strikes cords
that soothe solitude
and conceive connectivity,
bringing forth ideological meanings
to replicate Beale Street ways
to intensify the significance
of this tuneful form.

This is the blues.

No statistical data sought to prove
the unproven,
yet people who know it
feel it,
even believe it,
as if faith is defined in notes
and followers follow sermons
of the ministerial messages
In Motion.

As Ma Rainey, B. B. King,
and W. C. Handy play…

As musical notes pave the way
for another way to love again,
and find their message in the songs,
overpowering heart-trodden wrongs,
from keeping the blues stirring
without restraint
In Motion…

VERSE:
…To Let Jazz be Jazz again
Let the blues be that savoring mystery;
For Memphis laid concrete pavement for
the great motionless synchrony;

Who followed me home—

To the destination bayou,
the multi-purposeful master
who captured the civilizations
of two continental drifts
to single-handedly pull the grounds
of many lands
to coexist
with the measure and tempo
of an artistry of collaborative culture
turned solo.

All eyes wink at New Orleans—
(America’s highest-pitched soprano)

Who turned her sheer existence
into a dichotomy
in discernible disguise—
the antithesis
and the mistress of America,
the silent reminiscence
and the brass band explosion

All inside,
little ole’ she.

Officially, Jazz was born here,
through the wombs of the underprivileged
and the hopes of the destitute,
so saxophones and trombones
could play cards with trumpets
to decide
when ragtime, rhythm, and blues
should be introduced to the masses
for spiritual consumption,
if the appetite was there—

Which indeed it was,
and still is,
for New Orleans
and her quarters,
her people,
her music,
her literature.

This is the place
that turned marshland into ports,
and low-lying sea into thriving brick roads.

The dream that never should’ve been—
a work of wizardry
with our ears attuned
to the reinvention of the wheels
that put the sounds of the renaissance
In Motion.

As Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton,
and Kid Ory play…

As music paved the way,
rebuilding spirits and cores
after traumas and tragedies
tugged open evil’s doors
but couldn’t stop the ignition
of the resurrection
In Motion…

VERSE:
…To Let Jazz be Jazz again
Let the blues be that savoring mystery;
For New Orleans is the resurgence of
the great motionless synchrony;

As the bands play
We convene here
in celebratory dances,
taking breaths of artistic chances
through the spirits of music

That all paved the way
for all she touches
to give new life and new reason
for worlds in the midst
of the coldest seasons
in search of taking their
Springtime blooms
In Motion…

…To Let Jazz be Jazz again
To Let Blues be Jazz again
To Let America be Jazz again
And not let our instruments just pretend

There’s a mystery within
the creation of jazz and blues within the combinations
of souls, instrumentally,
who’ve exhaled the spirit of cultures
to breathe and consume
the motionlessness of life-giving static
instead of steam
toward refueling the ways we live,
retooling the ways we express,
and repealing ways we’ve poetically discovered
the mystery within the creation
of jazz and blues.

To stop the bands
and remind ourselves—

…To Let Jazz be Jazz again
To Let Blues be Jazz again
To Let America be Jazz again
And not let our instruments just pretend

That they are only Earth-grown steel
But are history too—
history
In Motion

Poetry