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[17] In Walked Bud |
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Criss Cross
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Tuesday, 29 November 2005 12:23 |
in walked bud
for les reid & john petrie
first there was monk
before the war
& then from further up-
town, in harlem,
from the neighborhood
of coleman hawkins, sonny
rollins, & jackie mclean,
there was bud powell
or earl alfred bud powell
on piano, strict interpreter
of dizzy & bird
for the keyboard, fleet
of single line & fast
to abandon
the heaviness in the left hand,
to make room for the bass & drums
& the harmonic
implications
of the melody, the farther
reaches
of the chords, the dizzy
atmosphere
which resulted
from the compression of experience
& the deep urban intelligence
of african americans
born in manhattan
or brought to harlem as children,
coming up on the streets,
standing outside of bars
& after-hours joints with the whores
& the dope peddlers, straining
to listen
or to hear from the bandstand
or to see the musicians inside
with such aspirations, to get up there
themselves, with they little horns,
behind the drums, or at the piano,
hands on the keyboard
& a room full of people
looking up
from the depths of their lives
to flood the bandstand
with huge waves of love
& warmth, then back out
to the streets, & the ugly
stares, the cold
bitter hatred
of the white people,
the nightstick
across the head
in philadelphia, the loss
of consistent memory,
the shock treatments
inside the several nut houses,
a phony dope beef in new york city
& no more cabaret card,
loss of license to work
in the nightclubs of manhattan
or even brooklyn, iced
out
of everything
but the will to make music
out of the guts of a piano,
the amazing bud powell,
the blazing bud powell,
now faltering
& lost, now lucid, now
gone
again, in toronto
with bird & dizzy
& mingus & max roach,
fresh out of creedmore
& more shocks to the head,
may, 1953, on the same night
rocky marciano
knocked out jersey joe wolcott,
drunk & crazy bud powell
back in manhattan, a night
at birdland with bird
in the first week of march,
1955, gone all the way out
of his motherfucking mind,
bud powell,
bud powell,
bud powell,
bird's voice ringing in his ears,
mingus pointing his finger
from the bandstand,
these are sick men,
he said, ladies &
gentlemen, please
don't associate me
with this madness, & in
walked monk that night
to catch some music, with his head
set straight on his shoulders
& his feet
firmly on the ground, in control
of his faculties
like few men of any time,
1955, just a week before bird
would leave us here
& bud would stagger on,
the scene changes,
time waits,
exile in paris
from 1959 to the end
of his life, but on this night
at birdland there they are,
bird at the microphone
intoning his name & bud
staring off into space, & monk
taking it all in,
crazy
too, like a fox
to say to bird & bud, i
told you guys
to act crazy, but i
didn't
tell you
to fall in love
with the act. you're really
crazy now....
louisville , ky
october 12 , 1985/
detroit
december 7-14 , 1985 |
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