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.
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