"coltrane" poems
Hear the bass, grace notes race all over the place
Cymbals paced, hi-hats chase, weaving between the bass
The piano - chords struck with wide spanned hands
Poly-rhythmic, multi-layered sounds in strands
The timbre of reed vibrating against warm metal
Precision; a sixth, a ninth and an eleventh interval
A major, a minor scale; a frantic modal sweat
A small sound for mankind; but a truly giant step
Each note slices through the eclectic beat-drop
Singing and whispering this post-modern be-bop
Multi-phonics scream, like controlled feedback
The seductive saxophone – this weapon of attack
The boundary is stretched, new ground broken
The holy saxophone has never thus spoken
And I pay homage, all my deepest respects
Go to the man who made those giant steps
Aug 22, 2011
Aug 22, 2011 at 9:25 AM UTC
There's a passion that burns
within me that's never
more alive, than when I'm
In the garden.
And in the garden of
love, my favorite
flowers are the tulips.
They're especially inviting
after a bottle of Chianti
on a hot July night, with
John Coltrane seductively
blowing from the CD player.
Equally captivating, is the little
bud that lies North of the
tulips. And with the right
amount of attention, the little
bud, the pea in the pod, creates
a nectar of the gods that tastes
sweet, like honey to my soul,
like maple syrup to my spirit,
a heavenly sap that flows like
the beer on tap at an
all you can drink club.
Like Dylan Thomas at a
pub in Wales, my heart sails drunk on the tulip's fine wine.
And then like magic it occurs,
when ovulation yearns for
procreation, and on those nights,
On those nights...
I could spend forever in
the tulips.
Apr 6, 2023
Apr 6, 2023 at 2:20 PM UTC
.*if, and however many mistakes i made in typo... attempting to compete with Spawn, using the black panther... ****** please... it's like that "healthy" competition of butter, using margarine... Black Panther isn't Spawn... Spawn is... Spawn... yeah... thanks for ruining my 12" wish fetish... i was so dying... to... i was never going to **** an English girl to begin with... thank god.*
you're seriously going
to "correct" me
using black panther....
seriously?
spawn was the ********
to what....
to whatever you're
doing these days....
i don't want to be
the blank panther...
**** being black panther...
************
i want to be *spawn"..
******* quasi-nigger...
john coltrane...
you a mariah carey
back-up singer or some
otherwise alien whacky
alien-backlog?
compared to spawn...
the black panther
looks like a ******* ******
wing guy...
for what's deemed
12"...
black...
mire like bleak Parthenon...
some columns,
no spirals...
waste of time...
black Panther, what?
so Spawn...
was just a waste of time?
Spawn was the gran-daddy
where the Batman was the daddy
given the Joker
was the gran-gran-daddy...
you get me?
Miles Davis too much for you?
the blank panther is such
a ***** move...
it's like... come Kosovo...
when expecting Sarajevo...
****** this **** will not
stick...
high flying ****
if you think this will become
a ******* pancake...
no, ******
take your blank panther back
to Yakanda, or whatever...
your Spawn was cooler than
Lego Batman...
**** your white *****
and leave me to my existentialism
of... making a "heroic" exit..
akin to Elvis...
but more or less minding
Roy Orbison in a sing along.
p.s.
lego batman movie quote:
black panther *****
spawn go go go! spammy!
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 12:02 AM UTC
The Crickets cackle “crisp,”
With an only interruption, being I,
Atop dust, whisper and
Desert highway.
I’d tell you if I were running,
But I’m not quite sure, not yet,
Leaving the Coyote to eat,
Respite, and devoured,
The singing Crickets,
A’howl later,
To deliver answers unimpeded.
I have a faint memory –
A snake’s grip promised, via hand and
Crystal contingency,
“Wiser,” once bestowed, the mystic;
An epic complete, atop 17 years of thunder,
Steel stained crimson,
Street stained whimper
And forever remaining,
“Under-construction.”
Symbolic a more relevant scaffold,
½ bamboo and the other steel, the tower,
Note ‘fore me, it’s only purpose –
Elsewhere, and anonymous,
While I tap my belly to some
Melody we’d once enjoyed;
Maybe something by, “Coltrane,”
Or maybe not; but music we’d both
Recognize and reminisce too.
It’s an awkward alchemy of sorts,
As the Crickets, post-mortem,
Persist if only to chirp, and the Coyote mulls.
When the dust continues to cake.
When the whisper finds newer ears.
When interrupt’s abrupt, erupts,
Pacifies and interrupts again;
My precious distraction –
An amnesia loyal in away from, “then.”
Somewhere beyond, “there,”
And onward, “anew.”
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 4:17 PM UTC
Alice Coltrane, your music brings something out of me,
Something nameless
something I keep buried.
As I lay on this bare mattress, humming along to “Turiya And Ramakrishna”
I ponder if you knew your legacy.
If during those last days in 2007, you ever thought your work could inspire poets of the next generation
or was that even a question lingering between your tempels?
Perhaps not.
Well as this pen dances to the melodies you wrote,
I think, and think
and blink
and sink
I wonder if my last hours will happen a year from now or a decade
or a month
or a week
And what will remain of my creations
Have I touched enough lives
Have I loved enough souls
Have I danced enough
Gave enough
Laughed enough?
I envy the sand devoured by oceans
because it’s simply moving on to its next life
I envy photographs because their moments last forever
I envy the tortoise’s shell
I envy the hourglass because its fate is no mystery
I envy those who do not envy
I envy the days before sundials
when days simply couldn’t fit onto paper squares
I...don’t want you to worry.
I am a spark
Finite but furious
bright, unstable, contagious
and capable of lighting your way before I fade
At least I hope.
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 11:53 PM UTC
Monk tinks tonight
fine glasses clink
convivial banter
bubble pop blink
in breathing rooms
bit woofed and stirred
the smoke mint sound
we dare exhale
Monk swings about
a bell do ding
the huey blues
bird bops on wings
hips juicy moves
rubby mounds wet ****
slow drum rolls blow
dance steady bump
Monk rocks the house
the clock do tick
me feets be tappin
gonna busta trick
key ******* bounce
mouths all agape
we gettin down
like crazy apes
Monk’s muzik rides
a sonorous beam
levitatin hipsters
to places unseen
gosh groovy tunes
a **** good gig
we all stoked up
Monk we do dig
Monk played alright
some swingin tunes
Happy B Day Monk
you over the moon
Thelonious Monk
(October 10, 1917 - February 17, 1982)
Thelonious Monk
with John Coltrane
Trinkle ******
10/9/13
Suffern
jbm
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 3:25 PM UTC
is just another word for control freak.
But let me back up.
Who decided that things are FTW?
**** competition.
I apologize for line 4, but I wanted to make sure you know
I’m being serious.
Winning is meaningless.
The one thing the Arts had going for them
is gone.
It’s all about being the best
and it’s devastating G-d.
When I play my saxophone
at the right time with right mind
I swear John Coltrane
couldn’t recreate that.
When I write a poem
about truth or of it
I swear ee cummings couldn’t
have written it.
Expression is all that really matters,
but only to me.
The world doesn’t accept it, so
it doesn’t accept me.
That’s just the way it is.
I’m not concerned with success.
I’m not like all the rest.
I am happy and blessed.
Does my mind deceit me?
We’ll see
When I face Judge
Sep 6, 2010
Sep 6, 2010 at 1:27 PM UTC
The coffee cups are *****
But it’s the cleanest way
To drink whiskey here.
The barman lost half his right fingers
To a wood chipper in his early 20’s
And spent the rest of his adult life
Flipping the world off.
He got it down to a fine art
By the time I showed up.
He didn’t smile when I ordered my drink.
He didn’t smile at all.
The jukebox hasn’t changed
For two stagnant decades
And most everyone but the regulars
Are too scared to use it.
It’s the same rotation
Of Elvis,
Muddy Waters,
BB King,
John Coltrane,
And early Bruce Springsteen.
Not a woman in sight
But every song is about them
And we are all here
Because of them.
Certain patches of carpet
Have not seen a crack of light
Since the Berlin Wall fell.
Nothing changes here but the customers-
And that change is incremental at best.
The same filthy etchings over
The same filthy cubicle doors.
The same Cherokee Indian
Smoking a Cuban Cigar
In the heartland of America.
I can’t find myself here
But there is no feeling of loss.
There is no profundity in anything here.
Just squalor
And enjoying one’s squalor.
I think that is what it means
To be truly happy.
Aug 17, 2018
Aug 17, 2018 at 5:24 AM UTC
Delia
once seduced
the house maid
in half term
home from school
some posh place
where she had
with success
oft bedded
the new young
maths teacher
whose glasses
thin wired
she took off
before ***
in her room
for extra
tuition
(her father
from his fat
wallet paid
for extra
maths not ***
then after
leaving school
and the young
maths teacher
(sad female)
and having
bedded her
young cousin's
French nanny
she went to
some college
to study
the cello
and music
she had ***
the first day
with the thin
trumpeter
on the floor
above her
a girl with
luscious lips
and dark eyes
who after
a good ****
could play like
Miles Davis
so cool that
Delia
would play her
cello ****
like lovers
embracing
she and her
instrument
then have ***
to the sound
of Coltrane's
saxophone
and the girls'
******
wanting more
sighs and moans.
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 3:19 PM UTC
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
Walt Whitman
walks by me
somewhere in 1891
I nod to him...he nods to me
lost in himself
Clinton is being inaugurated
Brooklyn Bridge
saunters by
dressed in the summer of '67
the subway
wears its best graffiti
the music of trains and Coltrane
the Flatiron Building is jaywalking
the Empire State
chats him up
a child's hopscotch
almost washed away
a moment's masterpiece
Robert Moses
looks across Long Island
longs to build the city only he sees
he gazes into my future
I look into his past
I pass Robert Mapplethorpe
a man in a white suit
nailed to the darkness
by so many stars
an old saxophone player
busks Rogers and Hart in Central Park
"...I didn't know what time it was..."
two obese Chinese
take up most of the sidewalk
both speaking fluent - Irish
Leaves of Grass
lies scattered across the road
read now by the wind
a car caught in traffic
blares out Joel's
"New York State of Mind"
I laugh at such
a happenstance
a walk-on-part in my own movie
escaping the borders
of the body
I walk through times
I am all the times
of the world
they intersect in self
Walt and I
sitting on a park bench
waiting to go somewhere else
an 1990's rain
falls on an 1870's NY
they are beginning Brooklyn Bridge
I meet my self
coming and going
an older and a younger me
time held prisoner on the wrist
I turn and walk away
into this the newest of centuries
Sep 15, 2018
Sep 15, 2018 at 3:23 AM UTC
his name was John Coltrane, and when his long fingers,touched tenor saxophone keys, his notes slapped jaded, sullen attitudes, about jazz, including my own, musical notes ,leaped, bent, twisted, soaredin the air, as he played ,with eyes closed, as if lost in,a personal dream, the saxophone moaned, cried. whispered, told the good news, on the mountaintop, Coltrane was in the house, rocking it, he did it,simply, yet, unlike any other,ever heard before ,that moment, gone now, in the shadows of time, but his music, remains, still gathers new followers attention,pointing ,an indignant finger of cool, at those, who wish, they knew,coltrane, before he left, the station
Dec 20, 2013
Dec 20, 2013 at 10:39 PM UTC
Amerikeisha tapping out the drumbeat with her see through plastic mechanical pencil
Me sidewinding my way through highschool
Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet waking the souls that are buried in the lockers,
Chick Corea and I are returning to forever
The land where summer is the only season
And daisy dukes are greatly appreciated,
John Coltrane is helping me realize
How beautiful girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes are,
I've been dancing to Dave Brubeck since this morning
And I can't get Maria out of my head
I just picture Maria
As this girl
Feeling Pretty
Oh so pretty
I imagine if I saw her in the street
I wouldn't double take
But Take Five
Charlie Parker playing saxophone like
It's as easy as brushing his teeth,
Nat King Cole
Serenading Hispanic women with his soothing tone
Robert Glasper experimenting with his music
Burning you brain like mentholated cough drops
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 8:57 PM UTC
Sometimes we are made aware of beacons in the rest of the dark.
Like stars littered across the attics we trap ourselves in.
Sometimes we chase rainbows with beggars eyes and wishes like children.
Some people are like soup soaked bread crumbs and wool mittens with the fingers cut out.
The rest of us are chimney soot.
And they are ‘chim chim cheree‘.
They are song filling every corner of the antique shop.
Silver under tarnish and weights and measures
balancing on the hands of the scale
suspended from the spear of a woman in white robes
with blue eyes that match the sky when we stare at it
and it usurps the corners of our eyes
and we are made aware of how small we are
as we get lost in how complete it is when it is with out clouds
with silver linings that never seem to follow through to rain.
And some of us?
Some of us are rain.
And thunder that shakes your soul.
And images of gods in black and white that burn themselves onto our minds
for us to study with our eyes closed.
And some of us are doing the best we can.
And some of us are not us.
But are the others.
And we would be lost without them
to point beyond red sails on sundown ocean horizons,
just before the world turns blue.
And some are the pops and cracks between the notes of Coltrane on Vinyl.
And you.
You smell of confessional walls and a nursery.
You smell of camp fire blankets and bruised roses.
You move like corner of the eye shadows
and windshield wipers with no chance of beating the rain.
You write like stone tablets and feathers.
Blown bubbles and spun webs.
And you feel like chance.
And love.
And strength.
You change like ropes on ship decks and tarot meanings from gypsy to gypsy.
And you are beautiful.
And beautiful.
And beautiful.
And everything.
And everything.
And everything.
Strong like ropes on yard arms of old ships in ancient seas.
And you go and you take us there.
And we go, because we want to see too.
And we want to be full on wild flowers and raspberries.
And we want you to show us the line on our palm
that separates the dark from the light.
And we want bed time stories and lullabies.
And with my eyes.
And with your own too.
And more importantly.
You.
You are the place where there is hardly no day time and hardly night. Things half in shadow and things half in light. On the roof tops of forever. Coo. What a sight…
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 1:48 AM UTC
Duke said,
“People pray in many different languages
and God hears them all.”
I’m equally a Jew and Muslim,
both living in perfect peace within me.
I’m a little bit Baptist and a little bit Episcopal.
I yearn to swim in the living waters,
and hunger for the cup and bread.
I’m more of a Quaker then a Buddhist.
Only because I’m American and I can’t speak good Chinese yet.
But Buddha’s Lamp is my constant companion,
illumining my every step in this dark world.
I’m also equally composed of east and west Indies
and sometimes even druid.
The Great Spirit and Tantric arts
remain mysteries to me.
I only know them by feeling.
And yes our Afro Heritage.
The drums, the whistle, the dance,
synchronizes our heart beat
to The Beneficent One’s finger taps.
Yes we celebrate The Holy Spirit
with cymbal, voice and drum.
I am a full dues paying member
to the 2nd Hoboken Chapter
of the Unitarian Universal Catholic Church Respectively.
We meet down the block from Sinatra’s Synagogue.
We are all apostles and responsible
for our small spaces that we rent here on earth.
I know I’m 100% Zoroastrian.
I am mesmerized by the fire.
My heart aches for the light.
I tend tiny candles
and listen for the lonely fire
of Coltrane’s sax.
I’m a nun and
a Thelonious Monk.
We run an inn for weary and lost travelers.
We build hospitals to cure the infirm;
and schools to teach the golden rule of love.
We try to do things differently.
Dizzy practiced the Behai faith.
“OOM BOP SHE BAM” I pray.
Music Selection:
Dizzy Gillespie,
Swing Low Sweet Cadillac
jbm
Oakland
12/26/98
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 8:29 AM UTC
I want to put on Coltrane
to experience the verbs
of a sweet bastardization
oh kind whippoorwill
sing to me
jbm
Oakland, NJ
09/86
Music Selection:
John Coltrane
Wise One
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 8:48 AM UTC
Rain soaks through my shoulders
And trickles down my spine
Like fingers over cracked and fractured stone.
Your breaths come like zephyrs
Your limbs tangle up with mine
Your voice, the only one I've ever known.
And Coltrane blows a story tall
To a bass line like a siren call
Building tapestries of Cashmere
For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.
You'll always be the bright full moon
That filled my chest and filled the room
While Rome is burned to embers
The drums of war rose carrying the tune.
Footsteps on city walls
Hands upon splintered wood.
The battles lead to losses for all sides.
Honey comes from stinging bees
I'd get some for you if I could
But winter left us lost on drifting tides.
Still Coltrane blows a story tall
To a bass line like a siren call
Building tapestries of Cashmere
For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.
I'll offer you a silk cocoon
A watercoloured afternoon
While Rome is burned to embers
The drums of war rose carrying the tune.
Morning sun brings the day
The smell of candles still
Clothes hang to dry from chairs along the walls.
Take our time to wake up
Arms protect you from the chill
"Yesterday," the radio news recalls.
Then Coltrane blows a story tall
To a bass line like a siren call
Building tapestries of Cashmere
For a dry and blistered blank concrete wall.
The sunrise like the silver moon
Paints us in gold and fills the room
While Rome is burned to embers
The drums of war rose carrying the tune.
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 3:54 PM UTC
Explosion in funky beats
Dreams in the key of acid
The Ascension of Coltrane himself
Nothing more Nothing less
Bliss in raging fevers
The exact color of exquisite
Heartbeats in lime and bubbles
with a dash of salt
Help you remember how it feels
to feel
Mar 6, 2022
Mar 6, 2022 at 10:51 PM UTC
Below Orion’s belt
He will fly.
Sailing in on the evening breeze,
Through a clustered cloud of E’s.
To the timbre of a stammer,
Above the cedar trees.
A wish for lips to seize the soul is filled,
Without tongue, or a love-stoned kiss.
No, this moonlight drifter need not sneak
To steal your attentiveness.
Raspy cool, birthed on a cool train, a Coltrane,
Flickering inside a steel blue horizon.
A stray bolt of lightning
in a darkening jar.
Did you see it?
Condensed droplets of jive crystallize
As sight spreads with a cock-crow sunrise.
Shadows yield to spots of sunshine, and
The hum knifes through atoms of air,
Awakening the Early Ears.
A fulfillment, furnished.
A drip, a drop,
A drip and a drop,
Arranged in pairs of sinking threes -
The details of an ensemble’s dream
Infuse the day’s reality.
And with one last vertical dance,
Time slips back to a simpered trance,
As basso continuo leads you home,
Through a lonely mountain pass.
A zephyr is crowned,
Sitting atop a morning cloud,
To culminate, an unfettered kite,
A lazy bird in flight.
Feb 16, 2011
Feb 16, 2011 at 3:58 PM UTC
It was a woodcut in our high school history text, Unit 4
Beginnings of the Modern World, that so disturbed,
from the Nuremburg Chronicles depicting the burning of the
Jews, flat perspective,
faces of the victims among flames, in no particular agony, not
especially Jewish,
during the Black Death 1/3 of Europe died 1347-1351 alone.
Although
you die together you die alone.
Earlier that week, I had attended our 6th grade's performance of Fiddler on the Roof, thinking
Coltrane should have recorded Matchmaker as a bookend to
My Favorite Things
but as the play darkened
with the town's absorption into the diaspora, democracy
yet unthought of and rule of law a fig leaf for authority
Jasper, who played Zero Mostel, delivered his line well to
the effect
you're just doing your jobs while wrecking our lives.
Anyway, nothing like that is happening here, is it?
The gardener planting tomatoes, the gravedigger finding skulls,
there is so much life a little death won't matter.
Jasper
was a beautiful ham,
big as Zero.
A friend posed
this question: must all states be melting pots like the United States?
I said yes
not because they should but since
it's inevitable. Let labor flow like capital!
America was the last word of the play and brought a tear of pride
to my eye.
Immigration, exasperating argument re the Other.
How many's more than enough? 9 billion, a rational,
real number that exceeds or we're convinced
is within the carrying capacity of the planet.
Climate change is the new Black Death.
I like the Amerindian body type and face mixed in with the
European, African.
The irrepressible economy rolls out reams of logs, ores of
elements, bags of ice, fields of rice.
Embargo. The moon stares, bare, full of interstellar space.
Better a cold shoulder than a visit from our military.
The crazy Nazis must have felt themselves extraordinarily
compassionate toward the mother, earth, the goddess,
history, or some such abstraction and, thus, acted on a
fraction of all they did not know.
Selfless soldiers just doing their jobs guarding the border or,
on the other hand, collecting ****** for the burning of the Jews.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:58 AM UTC
Yo soy el antípoda del poeta americano
Poets in the wind
Yo soy el cadáver de la tumba
Horses in the bed
Yo soy el alabastro californiano
California is my dream
Yo soy el sueño de California
Tiffany's bay
Chocolate brew
Yo soy la Costa Oeste
West coast lips
Adiós to California, Juan
Adios to California, John
Not John Coltrane
Not John Smith
Not John Bach
John Hiatt is the name
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 2:39 PM UTC
It's not a debate to negate;
It's not one or the other.
Fallacy of false dichotomy—
Makes you think less of me?
He's dead.
How do we do this?
Thread the racism needle?
Carefully. Humanely. Sincerely.
Coltrane said "Supremely."
A love supreme.
A love supreme.
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 4:02 AM UTC
Messy, 'specially on Sundays.
Feet a'shamble from stumblin' drunkhappy.
"It's all good, baby," Blakey yells over the drums.
Bourbon flavored women hard to swallow
with their jagged softness. Smoking section (whites) stares
down dance floor (everyone else) with guilt induced jealousy.
Coltrane's back in Philly studyin.'
Pinstriped chuckle from the Rosenbergs;
kinetic energy giving birth to the cool.
The trumpeter's high turns his tool into a weapon.
The sound briefly stealing him from his demons.
"I'll find a guy when I finish my set."
Black and white televisions: blacks in white suites
Smiling china white for an all white audience.
The movers, to this point, have only been black.
Little hero Harry thinks
blacks and whites should die on the battlefield together.
Everyone's starting to get it.
"That guitar sweeter than my old lady."
Charlie and Miles holding each other's needles
while Thelonious and his hard candy go bad.
Leanin' on bricks in a back alley.
The circle passes the joint around like the good times.
"Just keep em rollin."
The skirts expand and deflate wildly to the rhythm.
Pure sweat melting into the floors like drops of water on roots.
A melody never heard before.
Aug 26, 2015
Aug 26, 2015 at 7:36 PM UTC
mccoy tyner
played piano
in the john coltrane "classic"
quartet in the
1960s
he is still
alive
today
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 1:32 AM UTC
jimmy garrison
played
bass
in
the john coltrane
quartet
in
the
1960s
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 1:29 AM UTC
*the aerodynamics on that **** past the **** **** me... miles davis on the trumpet! followed up by john coltrane on the sax.*
sure... it's like egg-friend rice, of any kind replicable...
but this is hoisin sauce, and soya sauce...
jumping at each other in the mix...
or that's: half an hour, sitting on the window-sill,
sitting on my foot folded, massaging my ****
thinking: there's bound to be a few more
inches' worth of **** stuck up there....
c'mon heel! massage that **** a bit more,
if we get a few more farts out... we're bound
to get the **** out too!
that's the funny thing... you can have a lodged ****
but then you can also **** and the **** doesn't
come out...
how do farts byspass the ****
that really is, a weird question...
it's a bit like comparing it so psychiatry...
all these thoughts (farts) keep coming out...
past this thick fudge-berg lodged in my head (the ego)...
how did they ever bypass that shit-berg's worth of contemplative
and monetary's unit worth of reasoning about,
in the first place?
well... if you're going to circumcise people...
might as well call the **** the mind...
and make fun out of circumcised freud...
better now? ah hmm mmm?
farts the thoughts, thoughts bypassing the lodged
in **** turd's worth of ego...
surely if there's aerodynamics... there must be some
sort of cognitive-dynamism... a bypass...
people love to simply call it ignorance...
but it's not...
oh, lookie here... fits neatly, right into my trouser pocket;
what was it?
farts, thoughts, ego, ****
well.. you know... some of us like the idea of shortcuts.
May 14, 2017
May 14, 2017 at 5:21 PM UTC