Okay, here we go! It actually feels good to have ten poems written already coming into National Poetry Month. So I guess my new goal this year is 40 poems in 40 days.
Today's prompts from Robert Lee Brewer's blog (now with the rather dull title "Write Better Poetry") and NaPoWriMo: (1) write an "introduction" poem, and (2) write a poem inspired in some way by an animated video of Sun Ra and His Arkestra's "Seductive Fantasy." It's a pretty wild and psychedelic video, and you can find it on Youtube. It didn't inspire me to write a "deranged" poem as blog host Maureen Thorson suggested, but I did come up with this:
Introduction to Jazz
Pleased to meet you, I'm Jazz.
I was born plump and fat from Louis' horn
on a sweaty Nola night.
Ella taught me how to speak, words
and syllables I never heard before
as she scatted, the band played
and jitterbuggers whirled on the floor.
Dizzy and Miles were my godfathers,
Diz with his puffed-out cheeks and tilted horn,
Miles with his shades, oozing cool,
be-bopping me through childhood.
Trane brought me into adolescence,
his sax on the straightaway of melody
then winding up the mountain road
into the rare air of unleashed harmonics
where rules no longer applied.
A side trip into bossa nova,
an island where crystal-blue water
lapped at my toes, and Getz and Gilberto
wafted like a trade wind in the palms.
Then I ricocheted back to rock and funk,
Chick and Herbie and Weather Report,
infusing me with new blood,
and Sun Ra, building worlds, launching
my brain into orbits around them.
That's not the whole story.
I'd like to tell you more.
What would you like me to play?
I was born plump and fat from Louis' horn
on a sweaty Nola night.
and syllables I never heard before
as she scatted, the band played
and jitterbuggers whirled on the floor.
Diz with his puffed-out cheeks and tilted horn,
Miles with his shades, oozing cool,
be-bopping me through childhood.
his sax on the straightaway of melody
then winding up the mountain road
into the rare air of unleashed harmonics
where rules no longer applied.
an island where crystal-blue water
lapped at my toes, and Getz and Gilberto
wafted like a trade wind in the palms.
Chick and Herbie and Weather Report,
infusing me with new blood,
and Sun Ra, building worlds, launching
my brain into orbits around them.
I'd like to tell you more.
What would you like me to play?
Also, here is the last of the "warmup" poems I wrote in March, a response to Robert's "T-minus 6" day prompt to write an "invention" poem. It's about a centenarian who got a lot of attention on his birthday last week.
MAD Genius at Work
Al Jaffee's the old man of MAD -
eighty years on the job? Not too bad!
A gifted cartoonist,
and clever lampoonist,
he's one of the best that they had.
In one feature he, I should mention,
penned many a wacky invention.
But some things that he drew
eventually came true,
which may not have been his intention.
From his genius brain, ideas poured -
computer spell-checker, snowboard,
the multi-blade razor,
but not the space laser -
a patent should be his reward.
You're 100, Al - you've got class!
Your prescience is hard to surpass,
and you've lived long enough
('cos you've got the right stuff)
to see your ideas come to pass!
eighty years on the job? Not too bad!
A gifted cartoonist,
and clever lampoonist,
he's one of the best that they had.
penned many a wacky invention.
But some things that he drew
eventually came true,
which may not have been his intention.
computer spell-checker, snowboard,
the multi-blade razor,
but not the space laser -
a patent should be his reward.
Your prescience is hard to surpass,
and you've lived long enough
('cos you've got the right stuff)
to see your ideas come to pass!
3 comments:
A computer spell hacker...
Thanks for your ode that brought this to my mind :)
Actually, all the sources I read said it was a spell checker, or as Jaffee conceived of it, an “idiot-proof typewriter”.
"What would you like me to play?" --- A most fitting closer for "Introduction to Jazz."
Post a Comment