Best Gillespie Poems

Tag words: advertising, bebop, bird, bottle, Charlie 
Parker, Coca-Cola, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie,
door, flag, heart, jazz, light bulb, Louis Armstrong,
Miles Davis, palette, Pepsi Cola, pluralism – found
object, retablo painting, sculpture

Arbitrary or subconscious, Saunders picked six.
Man created on the sixth day from darkness;
we came into the...

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He plays jazz as if he invented it
Arpeggios augmented, minored and majored
Transferring from one chord to another
Like flashes of lightning extracting emotional pearls 
all from from such a young mind

One marvels how and from where did this child
Learn to play such complex music 
On what...

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Kind Of Blue (For Miles Davis)

Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx Ny 1991


Before they could lower Miles 
into the damp, dark ground
Two of the PALL BEARERS
Thought they heard musical sounds

Before the Preacher could say
Turn your BiblesTo Acts, 
The preacher paused.

After he read Deuteronomy
He looked back

But there was nothing...

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Carroll O’Connor
from Bunker to Gillespie
and a whole lot more...

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one of a series of color poems written with a pink craylo pen purchased from our local post office-red, pink, yellow, blue, black, green, silver, brown, gray

I love a deep purple jazz poem.
A trumpet blowing, soothing,
Dizzy Gillespie jazz poem.
A plum colored, egg plant colored,
Twilight hued...

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Aint Throwin my'self off no bridges
God made the Ocean for the fish

And at the risk of soundin' religious
Suicide wont be gettin' his wish

Sister Mercer, sister Bailey,
Sing me through this

 'Nough Blues in my suitcase
To make the Titanic sink
'Nough bills in my briefcase
To make a Nun...

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Nu-Jack Kerouac/Tony Adamo 2010

Miles,  Monk, Bird, Dizzy Gillespie & Train 
Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Mingus and the Duke/
Wrote Music books and poetry that had the power to change our musical  written word/
They walked the walk baby and be-boped the talked/
Miles , Monk they...

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Bewteen two granite stones
large enough to keep Jesus
tucked away three plus days
lies a crack so thin
it doesn't allow shadows in
though water finds its 
proper place.
In winter it freezes
Summer evaporates 
its every molecule
It expands in fall
Renews in spring so when roses 
bloom, crimson combines 
pinks and reds.
May comes. Dizzy...

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Vent-ill-Station
I like the brain but my mind 
Isn't real, take it
So I wield change in the face
And I will make a disgrace of
What humans made us
Shaped into, its true
Take some, its good for you
Trace the steps
Dwell on life, the past, the present
Make well of the...

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recurrent suicidal thoughts vain
     gloriously wend 
     (o'er a death cab for cutie weeknd)
     yanking zeal

becalming this crash test dummy rolling 
     stone temple pilot inxs 
  ...

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The older I get the less that I fret 
With my panties wadded up in a tizzy 
As anyone could see I used to be
A mini-me of Dizzy Gillespie

I'd huff and I'd puff when I'd had enough
Like some Big Bad Wolf  in a fable...

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Early in the day o’er in Eastern sky
Dawn comes, then sunrise =
Morning comes over the horizon
Into a new day filled with surprise
Standing in the country garden
While the grass is moist with dew
Pink roses emit their sweet perfume,
I watch the heav’nly canvas rise anew
There are colors...

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Call me Gillespie 
At the thought of choosing sides
This all makes me Dizzy
Where ones befuddled and the other lies

White toothed grinning alligator
Beady-eyed crocodile
Which will we regret later
We'll find out for sure after awhile

One to build a wall to keep us all
Safe from those who want...

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“We’re cleared for takeoff,” the pilot announced, “settle in, our flight time to Atlanta will be 9 hours.”

The Gulfstream roared down the runway and in a moment the tops of trees flashed by. We climbed quickly, and banked. Paris dwindled, the Seine became a string...

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SHAKEN UP

The vortex sucked
me into the globe.
  shaken, distressed
pounding on the confines
of the glass.
   the snow n-e-v-e-r stops.

Music lifts,
   from the bowels
of this new world —
the humor of “it’s
    a small world”

Suddenly the snow alights
at my feet,...

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