I continue to appreciate the team at Jerry Jazz Musician for celebrating America’s unique art form, and showcasing not only the sounds, but the words around the sounds. For my fellow old school jazz fans, check out their current feature, dedicated entirely to Charlie Parker, The Godfather of Bebop and the Original Bird that flew far out and soars, still.
This one, which is the poem that concludes my recent collection Rhapsodies in Blue, is a tribute to his most famous track and based on a daydream of sorts: if we could blast this song from every skyscraper, simultaneously, our myopic priorities would get straight, STAT, and we’d catch up, instantly, to what Yardbird was talking about almost a century ago.
Now’s the Time*
Not blessed with faith in revelation, I have a dream
which suspends disbelief, financial constraints,
and physics: seeing myself high in the sky at rush hour
and arresting all traffic, to broadcast some Charlie Parker.
A burning bush before the apocalypse, now: everything
ceasing & otherwise silenced as this sound scrubs and
rewires the collective consciousness: a confirmation.
Listen: we’ve tried everything else, and at this stage
of empire, is there anything aside from Economics,
Isms, Ologies, and Apathy to remind us our best work
isn’t done behind desks or inside vacated bank vaults?
One horn toppling towers of babble, recreating this world
from its wreckage, every salvaged soul suddenly speaking
in one tongue, able at last to tell exactly what time it is.
(*First recorded in 1945, “Now’s the Time” is one of Charlie “Bird” Parker’s signature compositions and can be regarded as a statement of purpose for the bebop aesthetic.)
From The Blackened Blues, here’s another celebration of the Bird (gratitude to Five:2:One Journal for publishing this one in 2017).
Charlie Parker’s Premonition
At least Bach believed in God—this is what saved him.
Can you fathom that freedom, the peace of such certainty?
In thrall to exigency, at once owned yet refusing ownership
of one’s art. Accepting endowments that, on blessed occasions,
override routine; on hallowed days clamor for consummation
in a voice you alone are capable of divining, or better still,
chosen to channel: a commission you neither oppose nor suppress.
Sadly for the faithless, God’s accessible only through transcription,
and often selects vessels not spiritually suited for the exchange.
How would you handle the hot urgency of some holy inspiration
if it awoke inside your mind, screaming like a starved exile?
Could you mitigate earthly debt in the sacred currency of psalms?
Or would you require synthetic unction to abide the consecration
of a million illimitable miracles—even if you scoff at such stuff?
