Ode To a Street Beethoven

On a Los Angeles street - play it brother, ladle it on black delirium A wind blows – from trumpets, oboes, and saxophones Gather dust at his feet – the orchestral pit in epiphany Bringing devotees – to his cello courting evening with rhapsodies Into the shrine of memory – feed here my soul on this ambrosia His life reads like an old newspaper – subliming grief Now He is a documentary of a news magazine A new beginning for fallen grace A Lopez like Jesus Making us see The slant Of worth In Today’s society. Poet’s who never knew he existed Will from his past all twisted Write him like a song to play They will ignore the smell of his rags and say His music breathes a fresh fragrance of air On rancid fortunes of Julliard. Hear the street Beethoven’s ode of joy. I am not his poet, I am his griot Writing better than his Julliard days Better than an interlude at Pershing Square For if he had done nothing else but dream He would still be one of us Another diamond neglected in the dust Before his dreams became an idiot Wandered away from desire’s puppetry And strings raking our desire He is always minstrel and celebrant And by his touch bassoon and fiddle pants Sweet syllables of delicious relevance Dethroning traditions in octaves and scales Not meant to swim the uneven stream Of unmeasured waves of sorrow Splintering minds of ebony Into stringless discords Of sharp broken Litanies. Each feathery note fluttering against the heart Of the city, a fragment of evening traffic Heard my maestro and was dumb with surprise That genius could wear such a ragged disguise Itinerant vagabond and vessel of all our despair This Beethoven of the street, Mr. Nathaniel Ayers.