Long Gillespie Poems

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...

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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
 ...

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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...

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Natural soporific narcotic

Recurrent suicidal thoughts 
vaingloriously wend along winding road
within windmills of my mind
(o'er a death cab for cutie weeknd)
yakking, yanking, and yawking zeal
becalming this crash test dummy rolling
stone temple pilot inxs
of maroon 5 plus...

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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...

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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...

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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 
 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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The Kennedy Center is known to the world
For honoring those in the arts – 
From Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Astaire,
Whose talents top all of the charts.

Sinatra, Gene Kelly, L. Bernstein, Kazan
And Benny and Lena and...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Julie was born with an abnormal right foot, 
And this congenital disorder just meant that, 
She decided on a prosthetic at the age of 5, 
A 3S80 Ottobock prosthetic to give speed. 

She came into...

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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,...

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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...

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