Sometime in January of 1993, I was introduced through a mutual friend to the minister of a black church in Memphis, Tennessee. It seems that this minister was looking for poetry to include in one of his sermons during Black History Month that year, and our mutual friend had assured him that I in fact was a poet. No matter that I was white, from the North, and relatively unencumbered with the inclinations of the minister's AME congregation. Apparently, his stock of poetic flock was in short supply, and he was convinced that as a "real" poet (he had, I think, read some of my work at the time, where I was enamored with jazz rhythms, fresh from two years at Berklee College of Music) I could deliver the goods. I wrote several pieces in the next couple of weeks, and he ended up using one of them. Another piece written at the same time, but not provided for his review, could have also served, but provided a much more obscure metaphor than I thought at the time he was looking for. Here are the piece he used, Too Many Unified, and the other, Plastic Pocket Harmolodics. The first title is marginally self-explanatory. The second title refers to both Don Cherry's use of a pocket trumpet, and Ornette Coleman's term for his brand of compositional and philosophic theory, harmolodics. Both poems incorporate my deep and abiding love and respect for the music of not only Coleman and Cherry, but Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Perhaps also a couple of veiled references to Bootsy Collins and George Clinton. They also reflect upon my birth just about a month before the assassination of Malcolm X.
Too Many Unified
A Love Supreme played on the airwaves
speaking silent screams I heard
truth cannot be bullet-proofed
the voice's sermon seemed to say
In Detroit '65 i woke in birth to this:
before the burning summer's swelter
truth be told I can't remember much
I read the news much later
I rode the L toward the lake
I took the bus south-central bound
I passed the White House where I saw
jockeys striking on the lawn
A Bitches Brew drunk in the alleys
speaking sermons soft I heard
truth cannot turn 'gainst itself
the voice's singing seemed to say
In Harlem '65 I woke in birth to this:
before the churning cauldron's spilling
truth be told I can't remember much
I read the books much later
I walked the railroad to the north
I sat on steps behind the fences
I passed the pickets where I saw
leaders leading where they'd fallen
Free Cell Block H spoke in the nightclubs
humming hurtful hauntings I heard
truth cannot be spoke but lived
the voice's whisper seemed to say
In Memphis '65 I woke in birth to this:
before the hateful carbine's humming
truth be told I can't remember much
I saw the film much later
I rode the BART to see the Raiders
I took the T past Roseland Ballroom
I passed the graveyard waiting vacant
thinking of Crispus Attucks.
JAN 1993
Plastic Pocket Harmolodics
Run down changeling boots the funk
Improve the shunned extractionary
Stove in traction rips rough ready
Pockets not for inner sanctums
Cherry cola cough surrender
Queasy Compton did the mother
Freaking heat in slumber tumble
Xray eyelids slip the winking
Bop the Bird the sticky finger
Fallen anglos sin cojones
Open quiet quick and greasy
Down the town round wound up lounging
Run down starlings cop the mutants
The groove pontificates for Shiva
Flip the whip trip banned in Boston
Coleman-nation green and hunchbacked
Cherry copper coated kicks
Molotov and off the mother
Speaking shit in rumble mumble
X the spot where Malcolm put it
Stop the word the slippery jungle
Pent up houses of the holy
Open skies bleed hard and humble
Central busts the changes open
JAN 1993
