Ode To a Don

Don Drummond, my friend Let your trombone leak again Honey from the honey throne Syrup sugaring my tongue Sorrow from the volatile bone Vibrating canals Through which a man and his rain Walks alone Splashing mud against the eyes To hide Children in their tattered war From the history battered pain In self. You were the most brilliant knight of them all On your golden steed Charging from dancehall to dancehall Killing the giants that flock our blues And in a moment like that your lover died. And when the music exploded We young revolutionary dreamers dance Not knowing the telling was not enough To change our colonized circumstance Not knowing the music Was not a weapon for you It was something to make you deaf To the screams Of humanity suffering oprression And when they took away your trombone The cacophony of our sadness The silence from the honey throne Killed you A cornered child in a desolate place.