Masekela!

By Cherbo Geeplay I can touch the rhythm of your beats, and sense the chirpy throb; the music streams it currents to my pulse, the hair on my skin rises, the trumpet ricochets, filling the room, seizing the passages in my veins! I am drifted, to the swings of the melody, the harmony synchronizes, its bliss is on the hill which now fills my mind! A bass once stole my dancing feet, Whistling away on the veld in Witbank. Oh, Masekela. With my snapping fingers, the pulsating tempo is curving my arteries, there is feasting in the fields and a Grazing in the Grass, the herds with nudged cadences can barely hold their joy, feeding off the Jazz, synchronized with Kuti, Makeba, and the gifted Huddleston. Your trumpet wore the piano and a voice that seduced the dancers, caressing to melodic sway rings the saxophone man, whose fervor tenor blasted, then won against Apartheid, now drives away, leaving me, to an empty room, to which, sits a set of idle instruments. Who is going to stroke the trumpet? And beat the bass, and own the saxophone? Where his shiny flutes once breathed, now silence pervades to rust-laden winds. The gadgets left behind glossed with silvery gleam beckoning to be picked up from the stage that once flung them to being in Soweto. Is it true that Pepper birds live in those hoary tubes, singing beautiful strains, whistling to the moon? Or that in your opus, love invites a romantic ocean filled with golden surfs, laced with cords of grooves? Which drifts softly to the waiting night, to be picked up. In the music I know, there is hope flying on the horizon, with no brawls in the way to hinder its flawless trail, now lost on the stage that once flung them to being in Soweto [in tribute to Hugh Masekela:] —1939-2018/January Copyright Adelaide Literary Mag, 2018, NY