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Miles in the electric bath

I hear Miles in the electric bath, brewing a Brew, a hiss and hum of future notes unsung/
Hear the  headhunters who chant the Body Electric, barcodes of the night/
Mercy, Mercy, me — that’s soul cookin’ after-hours, a midnight kitchen of ribes and white bread to wipe the hot sauce from your lips/
Rockin’ the nerves of the city, every night, every light/
Cookin’, relaxin’, workin’ up soul grits and eggs, flapjacks on the side, ya dig/
A breakfast sermon to the late shift, to the dreamers who don’t sleep till they’ve said what they mean/
Smack up, man, Art Pepper’s on the scent, hunting a buzz before show time/
Chrome sun on his horn, a  matchbook stuck in his shoe/

His ghost trails through the alleyways of sound recordings  that held Pepper's dreams/
California sun gave way to a cool-on-the-coast breeze,  of sun  dials and jazz by the sea/
Just ask Chet Backer, who blew a mirror of skies into a room that could grow wings/
Like jazz singers, blues singers, they all are — swing, swing, swingers/
Vibrations in the static, a thump thump in the bassline, a ring in the thing that clings/
Jazz licks and kicks, a heartbeat’s percussion, live at Montreux, then Newport, then now, man, like wow/
The stage is a river, improvisation its current, the crowd its reflection/ Somehow, the healing water is in the notes/Notes drift like gulls over a harbor of smoke and light, jazz crowds of sound reassembling every night/
History in a groove, tomorrow’s echo riding the pulse of yesterday’s bright light into the  new jazz stars of today/
So hear the electric bath bubble, hear the groove breathe, hear the chorus of the night/
Where the West Coast sun mellowed into cool fog and then into a brass-tangled flight/
Let Miles braid the air with hunger, let Pepper snap a spark, let the crowd rise, let it glow/
In this spoken word, the music speaks us back to who we were — and who we might dare to be/

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