Ode to Buddy Bolden

Play on! Buddy Bolden
with your sweet cornet
and the big fourth note
(ba-dum, bum, clack, Bee-AT!)

If only America had the chance
to hear you play again
or -- at least one more time.

Unrecorded and lost in time
they say you were the cool cat
who first played Jazz.

Playing in many halls in the very
early part of the Twentieth Century
You could play it ALL
and you could play it HOT!!!

Playing in the counter-culture Red-Light District.
In Storyville, New Orleans
the children head you eternally practicing
and quickly called you King.

If only we could hear you once more
we thought -- as you walked away from that
one parade -- and found yourself within
the pristine padded walls of the institution
we know as the mentally insane.

And America wept as we slowly
found out we would never hear your soulful sound
again -- in the Kasbah of North America -- or anywhere.
All that is left is one blurry picture
and a legend to last a lifetime.

And Resonating through your legend
are powerful heavy notes --
played loudly and unpolitely;
the new music of the soul.
It is simply what you did --
..and it was beautiful.

Take Five (Dave Brubeck Tribute)

Bass drum, snare and cymbal work together with percussive placidity to forge the beginning of a new song.

Soon blasts forth the syncopated piano rhythm in the feel of five-four.
Put your hand to its heart and feel its heartbeat.
A new voice is quick to join the romantic affair of harmony and melody.

In comes the smooth timbre of a sleek saxophonist. Poetry flows from the bell, telling us a story that only our imagination can remember.

The resonating boom of the bass strengthens the foundation upon which this romance is set:

-- all parts fit snuggly together as pieces of the puzzle, for this moment in time, music reigns supreme.

A fine diminuendo commences as lead drops out and only piano remains. We are graced by the sound of ivory keys jumping up and down to the elation of precise musicianship. The stage has been set once again for magic to take place:

Percussion takes the forefront, persuading us of our rhythmic endeavor – the chains of restraint are lifted and all notion of form ceases to exist -- The neglected rhythm generator becomes the untamed and a beast of the beat. We call it a Drum solo

Tonight: Jazz fills the air with its intoxicating aroma of pleasant perfume. Music holds our hearts in firm embrace as it reminds us of our humanity and our capacity for human expression.

We are all different as the instruments upon stage; as diverse as the notes to a harmony. Yet -- we all come together, and for one moment create something uniquely beautiful…


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* Dedicated to Kriss Thompson, fellow music lover, lover of life and most importantly my friend. The world stops to hear the symphony of our lives – Richie Marrufo

The Open Road Revisited

I can be Jack Kerouac
and you can be Emily Dickinson --

together we can blow this joint
and hit the only open road yet to be traveled.

Overcoming our dichotomous anxieties
we will flow as Yin and Yang

A poet's heart, a poet's soul: you and I
build paper cranes until its time to nap.

Off we go into space -- the new frontier
tiered of squaresville and mundane bedrooms.

Off we go:

I can be Jack Kerouac
aand you can be Emily Dickinson --

Subversively singing soft mad lullabies
to our infant dreams: the children of the world.

And we faded like the stars above us, in one last dance

If I were to tell you that this is a sad story -- would you believe me?

If this story had a soundtrack you would hear the sound of a rueful piano playing like a lost dancer on a frigid tundra.

..and just as you began to believe me, our hero picks up tempo and dances across the fiery desert -- locked within a cosmic samba in which all the universe comes alive and shakes it hips to our rhythmic narrations.

Burning hot quasars ackowledge that we are not alone, as soon comes in the jungle-like rhythm of an inventive percussionist. Not to be forgotten is the wild heartbeat of the bass: thumping to the spirit of a curious wind.

If I asked you to dance -- would you join me?

This is the one where we all learn to fly in the end

A Haiku

#7

You are my morning
Cup of tea ; side of sugar
soak like peaceful rain.

Piece of Mind: Il Penseroso-lved

Oftentimes while on a midnight stroll the scenery of night plays out like a lonely piano in a moonlit ballroom as each heavy note gently tears away at the heart -- surely shredding it in halves.

A scene: viewed over and over through the mind's memory
the questioning begins and so it is said: : "It isn't supposed to be this way"

As often as it is, passion overcomes the logic of reason and the inquisitive battle of the mind is held upon a grayed field of interchanging, intermixing, light and darkness.

What solemn sanctuary awaits those who fall into darkness visible --
What grudgingly painful step up the mountain will be made less by that of grace?

Your chaotic asylum holds refuge for the nobler mind --
for at the lowest of our despair lies the capacity for ascension more glorious.



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This is perhaps one of my more complex poems so I wanted to attempt to explain some of it to my readers.

The title is a multiple play on phrases and such. Of course, there is the phrase "Peace of Mind", well that is definitely what I want to achieve with this poem. However, it is also a single thought I had, and thus, it becomes a "piece" of my mind that I wanted to share. The other half of the title is an homage to John Milton's poem Il Penseroso. (usually accompanied with the poem L'Allegro)His poem is about engaging in a type of melancholy but in the sense of scholarly contemplation. by adding to it, I hint that there is a type of "solving" going on in this process of "penseroso."

The first stanza is an opening in which I introduce the setting and attempt to produce an atmosphere of melancholy. These are the moments when we stop and reflect on things in life, and sometimes they aren't kind to the heart.

The second stanza, is playing off this type of inward reflection in which we usually doubt ourselves and such.

The third stanza is exactly in the middle of the poem separating the first two opening stanzas and the last pair of concluding stanzas. This is done intentionally because it is about the balance of life, such a theme is imbued within the imagery of light and darkness in a constant battlefield of grays. The "grays" indicate the complex nature of everything in which, most of the time it is neither black or white. In addition, this stanza makes not of the passion overtaking logic. This happens way too often during moments of melancholy, in which sometimes, logically, there are MANY reasons why this person shouldn't be depressed, however due to passion taking the lead, it becomes a moment of almost despair.

The last two stanzas to me are the most important of the poem because they come up with a type of resolution or acknowledgment to be made out of dire situations of the heart and mind.

"darkness visible" is another allusion to Milton. It is a funny juxtaposition of words in which darkness is SO dark that you can actually see it. In this case, I liken it to despair. So I question what kind of solomn sanctuary can you get from such darkness? Similarly, in the same stanza, I liken life as to climbing up a mountain, and with each painful step the hike becomes harder, once again I question how less can the pain be taken away by grace? essentially, grace becoming the kindness and help of others.

The answer lies within the last stanza in which a justification for a nobler mind comes out of a "chaotic asylum." In the sense that once we feel that we have hit the bottom, the place with most room is to go upwards. For at the lowest of our despair lies the capacity for ascension more glorious.

Looking out the Window

This time, I am working on a five act expostulation in which the shift goes from dialogue to monologue with each act. Make what you want out of it.



I.

person a: Why do you suppose I am here?

person b: To make rhyme and reason out of chaos


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II.

It came to me in a dream.

It often comes to me in dreams. It seeps through like rain on a warm summer night leaving pools of wishes that glisten under a jeweled moon. If only you could hear the music, such music flowing in around in physical form, it absorbs emotion and it transcends words.

As a dreamer I have to realize that we wake up eventually.

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III.

person a: What am I supposed to do?

person b: Follow your heart

person a: By leaving it open, It will hurt.

person b: Then you will learn


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IV.

I'd like to understand you, if I only could.

I look outside and watch the rain fall. I listen to the rhythm of the rain as it hits the eclectic canvas of earthly surfaces. I think to myself and consider how the rain connects the sky with the earth, and in essence they all become one.

Then I sit back and wish that, in much the way the rain connects the heaven and the earth, I would use love to connect our hearts.

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V.

We move forward:

With our eyes on the future, we remain aware of the past and in control of the present

At least we try our best.

"With each mistake we must surely be learning." It is a cycle where we will never stop learning, and indeed, where mistakes will be made as the Earth remains turning.

So in my free time I'll close my eyes and drift away -- humming the music stuck in my head.

Anybody may join me, nobody is required.