the rain, beating
/
a philly-joe solo
/
on the brim of
/
your fedora
cant even get
/
your foot
/
in the front door
/
of the jazz joint 
Charlie Parker CDs
The Essential Charlie Parker / Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 / Charlie Parker with Strings
Diz ‘N Bird at Carnegie Hall / The Best of Charlie Parker / Jazz at Massey Hall / Boss Bird
South of the Border / Confirmation / Ornithology / YardBird Suite
* * * * *
bird on the wing
By DB Cox
you traded
your cabaret card
for somebodys
idea of paradise
& now —
youre standing
outside a club on
52nd street,
the rain, beating
a philly-joe solo
on the brim of
your fedora
cant even get
your foot
in the front door
of the jazz joint
they named for you
bird, the man
who could glide over
chorus after chorus
smooth, sure, & fast
as your little sisters
ass, & never run
out of things to say
bird, liberator of paris,
king of bebop —
gets another royal
welcome home
so, what now —
the jazz clubs
are being replaced,
one-by-one,
with strip dives
& theyre playing
rock & roll
over at the
paramount —
claiming, bops
just an outline
of the past,
a graveyard ghost
* * *
but you can
come with me —
if you wanna go
to kansas city
a place where you
can play without
a goddam license
& you wont have to be
charlie parker with strings;
you can be free —
a bird-on-the-wing…
posted 12 November 2004
DB Cox is Blues musician/poet, originally from South Carolina, now resides in Watertown, Massachusetts. He has had writing published on-line in: Verse Libre Quarterly, LauraHird.COM, Zygote In My Coffee, Remark, Underground Voices, Sacramento Poetry Art & Music, and others. His work has appeared in print in: Aesthetica, Circle Magazine, Shadow Poetry, My Favorite Bullet, Mystery Island Magazine and Open Wide Magazine.
He has played guitar since the age of 14. After graduating from high school in 1966, he did a 4 year stint with the U.S. Marines. After his discharge, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts to attend the Berklee School of Music, where he eventually found the blues circuit. He loves writing for the same reason he loves playing the guitar — a way to communicate how he feels, at a given time, on a given day. donniebegood@comcast.net
* * * * *
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family thats about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrinas inexorable winds is the voice of Wards narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her familys raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brothers blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt. Her fathers hands are like gravel, while her own hand slides through his grip like a wet fish, and a handsome boys muscles jabbered like chickens. Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isnt usually just metaphor for metaphors sake. She conveys something fundamental about Eschs fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, whats salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.WashingtonPost
* * * * *
Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid
Wilderson, a professor, writer and filmmaker from the Midwest, presents a gripping account of his role in the downfall of South African apartheid as one of only two black Americans in the African National Congress (ANC). After marrying a South African law student, Wilderson reluctantly returns with her to South Africa in the early 1990s, where he teaches Johannesburg and Soweto students, and soon joins the military wing of the ANC. Wilderson’s stinging portrait of Nelson Mandela as a petulant elder eager to accommodate his white countrymen will jolt readers who’ve accepted the reverential treatment usually accorded him. After the assassination of Mandela’s rival, South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani, Mandela’s regime deems Wilderson’s public questions a threat to national security; soon, having lost his stomach for the cause, he returns to America. Wilderson has a distinct, powerful voice and a strong story that shuffles between the indignities of Johannesburg life and his early years in Minneapolis, the precocious child of academics who barely tolerate his emerging political consciousness. Wilderson’s observations about love within and across the color line and cultural divides are as provocative as his politics; despite some distracting digressions, this is a riveting memoir of apartheid’s last days.Publishers Weekly
* * * * *
The White Masters of the World
From The World and Africa, 1965
W. E. B. Du Bois Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)
* * * * *
* * * * *
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update 28 December 2011
Related files: breakdown lane endless river shades of ray supernatural fire bird on the wing repetition of a song for sonny
