Deep Dish poem-a-month

Four (Side A)

I hear you say
all the time: every night when I blow,
I find places Bird did
not visit.

My axe is several universes
I/Strive to explore.
I hear you/Riff. Mars/I
visit with my/Little
finger/The sun I say hello
to with a/Fluid riffed jab.  There
are no margins/For my axe's
voice/Only endless territory
uninvented and/Unexplored.

Every night
when/I blow.
I find/Places.
Where languages/Do
what/I speak.
As dictionaries/Of tomorrow.
Beyond
the/Yonder's Wall of a blues
man.

I was/Born when Be
Bob/Start Be-Bopping.
I catch a/Bad case of
it/Waking up riffing
and riffing/Bout alien
places/I be Bopped
in my/Dreams.

Poppa/Had to be
a/Tenor axe man though
he/Riffed only his voice.
Octaves/Tonal out
posts/Between prayer
and/Cures.  And high/Pitched
looks/All
most/Screaming make him
a/Tenor.  Momma/Alto axe
of/Ascension.  Her/Words to heaven
had their/Special high
ways/Paved by celestial black
top/Sprinkled by the shuffle of
angels'/Feet as they rejoice
at/hearing askings on vacuum
phones/She sweet talk
from/Bare
feet/Riffing cures.  She/Alto
mountain/I climb to get day
light opera works/She riff
in dreams/She alto
pages of/Dream torn
from/Fragments of yesterday.
She/Alto axe woman
riffing/And riffing.
And/Gifting laughter.

Sterling Plumpp

Velvet BeBop Kente Cloth, copyright 2003 Sterling Plumpp. Third World Press.  Used with permission of the author.

Still Born Song

My
task is to solve my voice's finger
tips' extensions
for its daily languages
Where blues
is the negotiator of my songs

My diurnal moans
are survival kit
carsons exploring new
territory my voice finds
in Bessie Smith's pig
foot and empty
bed again and again

Remember
there are no speed
limits in linguistic
voyages for self
expression of selves
lost no walkie
talkies surveying hiding
places for patrolmen with radar
guns aimed at pocket
billiards of your imagination

I come here
bound in chain
linked hostility

but weaving

language over avenues
of a thousand years
my memory has taught
seasons the geography of absent foot
steps

All
my life I have
had border war
zones with authority

Because
I am a power
forward pass in celestial
discourses with authority
where Jerry Rice argues
for slants over middle
of the road potions

And Karl
Marx drives in
side Lois
Lanes with is lef
hand finger
roll mastery over part
time lies the master
advertises as obedience

Nameless
I sit naming names of nights
in their dark ward
robes of mystery in
side Hawkins'  The Midnight Tenor Man
Blues Sage  hawking  pains on boulevards of melodious
journeys through windows
of the soul Where the Middle Passage
rests in some black mother's prayers
for delivery of her brown paper
bag of dry
bones with her still
born song's name in it     No
body knows the troubles
I see coming down yonder's wall

The Auction Block
club was
not about civic pride or neighbor
hood improvement    It was a gossip
column of marching thieves
My
ballads some
times sweep and clean house
boy's ears for it   And Some
times I feel like a mother
less child cooked for it

Sterling Plumpp
Ornate With Smoke, copyright 1997 Third World Press. Used with permission.