Ode to Jimmy Smith: Lord of the Hammond
Man, this cat be swingin' hard/
In a smoky room where midnight leans against the battered walls, a preacher’s fire, a river’s blues, a man called Jimmy calls/
His fingers flash like lightning’s tongue across the B-3’s face—from gospel pew to backroom jazz, He sanctifies the space/Bebop’s quicksilver dances here, bold horn lines now reborn, yet every note drips gospel truth, and blues for those forlorn.
The Sermon! —twenty minutes long, a prayer that shakes the floor, while Midnight Special hums and glows with secrets, warmth, and more/ At Chicken Shack, the groove is deep, each riff a soulful shout, and Organ Grinder Swing lays bare what Jimmy is about/
He took a humble organ’s voice, and taught it how to weep—howl joy, confess, and testify, and rock the bones beneath/
O Jimmy, lord of drawbar dreams, your legacy remains: A Hammond roaring through the night, still pulsing in our veins.
Our Beloved Constitution
Our Constitution is a work of brilliance!
It shines as an example for all nations.
Two hundred years have proven its resilience!
Our country has exceeded expectations.
The Bill of Rights guarantees our Liberties!
And helps ensure domestic tranquilities.
Equal justice for all enshrined in our law!
Our Constitution should be held in such awe.
Despicable Party Politics
Party politics the scourge of our nation!
Putting party over people and the truth.
So clear to see with each Administration!
Policy flip flops and privilege abuse.
Resulting in loss of faith and squandered trust!
Party politics are less boom and more bust.
Bad legislation and sordid backroom deals!
No wonder this is how America feels.
Captured by your pageantry
Mask shielded identity
Bewitched my gallantry
Stole my heart anonymously
Such mysterious glamour
Eerie yet intriguing
Speaking to my emptiness
Replacing all my loneliness
Extravagant mystery
Shadowy history
Surreal and dramatic
Ornately enigmatic
Your life a deceptive dance
Role played romance
Cloaked intentions
And social masks
Lavishly concealed
Make your backroom deals
Trading hearts like tokens
With words softly spoken
The masquerade illusion
The ultimate confusion
Love but allusion
Self-serving inclusion
Bitter truth unveiled
Torn landscape surveilled
Love’s victim impaled
Your manifesto nailed
To my soul
A crow struts into a bar,
it's a crow, not a native American.
There's a hot wind blowing through town
Texas Rangers are drinking on the job.
A young beauty is busy
capturing boys' hearts
on her I Pad.
A land Line rings loudly
from a backroom -
no one has the skill to reply to the call.
The sleek jet-black bird
commences to dance
on the dusty wooden floor,
neck back and cawing loudly.
A picture of Clint Eastwood
looks down from an adobe wall,
he is 150 years old now
but he is still the rightful President.
Some crusty old-timer
throws a ten-dolor bill on the counter.
Soon the crow is drinking
and occasionally playing the fool.
Outside, a mule bray's,
crow flaps up and leaves
for the past.
Hollywood is still slowly arriving.
Native Americans have been on strike
for a hundred years.
The Crow Nation brews its own beer
and rez cops take their share
and don't care.
gossip in the velvet declares my surrender
to strip club excess, where fantasies unfold
a g-string serenata that stains the linger
a slow-mo ride through motels of the bold
the DJ's drumbeat dares me to surrender
to tangled trysts and transactions unclear
a haze of haze, a burden to calamity
the echoes of excess, lingering near
i lose myself in slots of satin thigh
where flickering lights ignite an inner fire
a champagne toast to incense my disease
a random selection to drive me to the mire
inflatable unicorns and hydraulic rifts
dances of desire, offering cuts to strife
backroom tales and fresh neglect of reason
adult playground bunny, passions steal the scene
When fear and stress
overwhelm
I squeeze into the backroom
of my mind...
I slip away
into the world of words
Words that tell
and know,
and heal.
Dark women and their softly lit shadows
haunt our days.
Men who dwell upon form and beauty,
are attracted to moths,
they grow too old, too fast,
their erotic minds
like over-sharpened pencils,
wear-down too soon.
Women who follow men
seeking the dangerous comfort
of strange desires,
blossom, then disappear into suburbia,
where they grow their fingernails,
de-claw their hungers
watching shopping channels.
Are we not all a portion,
and smatter of both these
gender frailties?
We live avoiding
the genitals of angels and demons,
yet the anatomic ****
of the over-sugared,
and unleavened breads,
grow ever stronger
in our backroom eyes.
In America there is talk
of changes coming
Revolution is the tune
that we've been humming
We’re all standing on the ledge
they're trying to push us over the edge
To politicians standing below
just waiting for us
It started with whispered words
in backroom places
From the shadows it took to the streets
through nameless faces
At the start the song was soft and low
but then our emotions began to grow
Now we’re shouting the truth
to all who’ll hear us
Our leaders have showed us
that they are useless
They proved long ago how they have
a hatred for us
Discriminate against poor or old
by turning healthcare into gold
Our human rights will all be sold
to line their pockets
In America, we must act while
we still have the right
It’s not too late for us all
to stand up and fight
Join us now and yell their name
they’re the ones who hold the blame
Without change it will be
the ending for us
Don’t let the government take
our freedoms from us
Let us set the world ablaze
with our chorus
Our voices ring out through the night
to show the world what’s wrong or right
Together we can make
a better place for us
Honey Locust Trees, perched precariously on
Ledges lost amid ruptured chasms of evil
Ant hills, protruding fistfuls of grapefruit-sized
Giant ants suffering remnants within sight of
Chernobyl, in the Ukraine forbidden zone;
Seemingly immune to the poisonous pods;
Literally dripping heavy ants clinging to juicy,
Waxy seeds as they climb and fall over each
Other feasting on spandrel sins denied by silver
Palaces adorned with backroom deals and
Shady hats glittering with guava-glazed
Toasted pecans, spun with rain-soaked
Clumps of blue spirulina hungrily engulfed
By the living dead...
Enrobed
In
Pock-marked
Palladium
“In the end, money always collects.”
Money will hold you, then skin you alive,
Kiss you sweet, then gut your drive.
Feed you today, starve you tomorrow,
Bury your joy in a pit of sorrow.
Buys the love that’s sold in the dark,
Perfume to mask the cold of the heart.
Buys the heat when your bones start to bite,
Flicks the switch in the dead of night.
Buys the powder, buys the blade,
Seals the deal in the backroom trade.
Buys the blood, the hit, the debt,
Every mistake you won’t forget.
Buys a smile that don’t reach the eyes,
Buys your truth, then sells you lies.
Buys the chains you’ll wear for free,
The dream you choke on, down on your knees.
Buys the roof when the rain starts to fall,
Sells the walls, leaves you with nothing at all.
Buys the crown, it buys the throne,
But nothing it touches is ever its own.
Money don’t care if you’re young or old,
Don’t know hunger, don’t feel cold.
Keeps on moving, keeps on fed,
Won’t stop chewing till you’re good and dead.
Buys your breath and it buys your skin,
Waits for the moment you let it in.
Grinds you down till there’s nothing to save,
Spits in the dirt on your unmarked grave.
WORLD WAR THREE
Yes, the noise is all about planes and tanks
Frontline hardware, as was always the case
But in reality, it’s cheaper timely innovation
It’s the third world war – of disinformation
The human story, a soldier’s strained face
But the backroom boys may get little thanks
There will be coverage of both side’s forces
With systems operators hacking crucial sites
And coming up fast from the rear, is A.I
And self-navigating drones flown just to spy
The treasure is in destroying more terabytes
Less about military, it’s intelligence sources
There will always be gunfire and casualties
It is expected, featuring well on TV news
But when national I.T systems are failing
The public response is much angry wailing
There won’t ever be enough repair crews
One then looks internally for the hostilities
There will of course, be many who’ll die
But a designer virus will be more extensive
Power supply probably the first to stumble
Then healthcare, while politicians fumble
And all along, modern war is less expensive
Yet with constant naivete, we wonder why
American soldiers have given their lives
in war after war after war after war
Be they in the Army, in the Navy
in the Air Force or the Marine Corps
For four constitutional freedoms
they made the ultimate sacrifice
Freedom of Speech, of the Press
Freedom of Religion, of Assembly
the right to petition and redress
Rightly do we honor the fallen heroes
who've nobly defended our country's ideals
But it is on us who remain to preserve what we've cherished
not to forgo them in tawdry backroom deals
Yet it seems that is just what we've done for the past 60 years
What began as 'cultural revolution' has morphed into fascism and fear
Can we this Memorial Day recall and restore our vaunted freedoms
ere they vanish in dusky corridors of abandoned museums?
To see forever
I left the ship at the industrial part of the island
my tour of duty was over and took a taxi to the other side
to take a ferry to town.
At the café near the ferry landing, I drank a few beers glad
my work was done thought about what to do in the coming
days of freedom from the confinement of life at sea.
Since I had hours to wait, I bought a fishing line, hook and
a sinker, as bait, I used banana skin (it was all I had)
The water was so glass clear it appeared limitless I could
see the fishes swimming about and the seagrass slowly
waved with the mild current.
Bending forward, so fascinating looking down into a watery
world, with water so pure, it was as if the fish was swimming
in the clouds, thought of the Maori fable when the sky and
water was one, and life had yet to be born.
Somehow in my dreaming trance, I fell into the sea, people
came running, falsely commiserating over my mishap.
In the backroom of the café, I changed into dry clothes.
An actor returns to his Beverly Hills mansion –
blows his brains out with a 38 special.
I must have dozed off,
cops at my door,
a line of chain-smoking flashbulbs
in baggy turn-ups.
I watch myself being taken away in a body bag.
The movie is badly spliced.
Black Packard’s keep morphing into flying saucers.
We are all wearing hats,
even the writers in the backroom
are wearing wide-brimmed hats.
The women are wearing hats.
They wear pencil thin skirts,
and talk out of the side of their mouths.
A screen flickers;
a skinny man behind an obscuring microphone
apologizes for the delay.
Meanwhile, space aliens have landed in Brooklyn,
and are exterminating people in hats.
It’s a radio show hoax,
but I don’t know that –
until I wake-up
into a world filled with terror and chaos,
there are no aliens and few brimmed hats.
I can’t sleep.
Somewhere to Nowhere Mystery
Enigma’s sleuth climbs up for clues – somewhere to nowhere
Facing innocuous door wearing an opaque face, end of case or beginning,
The physic soul tumbles into a void of suspicions
No evidence to track – no hints mesmerize theories -
No guarantees of finding another sunrise on the other side
Magic or mayhem, mystery or monster, memory or momentary,
Damsel or time’s leaping tiger topsy-turvy;
Ebony staircase turning to sand, no way back from this fourth dimension
Nowhere to somewhere,
Exit or entry disappearing into a dawn of discoveries -
Stakeout leaping into oblivion perchance –
Destiny’s detective blinded by star flung fate –
Old glories or new splendors – portal slow opens
Primal scream of amazement a new puzzle emerging
Conundrums and riddles tipped on their heads;
No closing the case
New leads to follow at the backroom crossroads of somewhere
To maybe nowhere.
9-19-20
"Riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Attributed to Winston Churchill.
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