Charlie "Bird" Parker, jazz legend, 1920-1955
He could have squeezed the living daylights out of Hell
And so he did And at his very leisure
His euphoric appetite for bright pain and dulled pleasures—
hip–hopping be–bopping jammin' slammin'
pumping iron and ironic in metaphoric basements
where swinging trumpets blow—was legendary
His valves those brass knuckles of brute sound
opened like delicate testicles (ah… the swell of it)
under the pressure of his well–manicured hand
Sometimes out of hand But then that was Birdland
He lived for… Oh, what he'd give for:
whole notes suspended from jazz–stained ceilings
ripping renting warbling squealing A yardbird
desperate to fill the uncompromising space
His face a black hole where stars exploding
collapsed into fusion replaced glass windows
shattered like melting mirrors from the Ice Age
Nineteen was a nice age The kid had class
His Cherokee in B flat–pure synergy–
(unsurpassed) peeled poems off of every wall
drove a silk fist with a twist through blood knowledge
stripped down to the quick Once he heard the call…
no one could keep that horn in its cage
Dawn and neon merging together echoed
his interpolations Muted shades of strobing rhythms—
he was a language of collisions—a free fall
of featherless wings Icarus caught in the wailing gale
the chromatic scale of stark illusion penetrating confusion
soft callused lips cut from the equinox of tonal
depth and fragile power The cryptic
and unspoken lodged in his bill—a shuttered
windowsill opening into a symphony an epiphany
a sunflower smiling wide in the ache of his throat
The dark chords of his vocabulary–stuttering nocturnal-
perched now in treetops pronouncing his return
Melodies rose up through rampant leaves of invention
Green summer ferns potted plants rotted plants
April in Paris Bird Gets the Worm Ornithology (no apologies
Thirty–four years of unearthly episodic breakups breakdowns
a narcotic intervention gave him pause but no rest
Melodies rose up through visions of greatness
sketches of Miles Monk and Dizzy
burnt bulbs eclipsing distant strains mixing chaotic
in fresh saxophonic, kaleidoscopic dimension
Pneumonia in half breaths a heartfelt diminuendo
What was he thinking? This is it maybe
This is the moment this is the tone
this is the one sound I can really bring home
No more hot–lining liner notes for the final crescendo
Play me the sudden death of midnights Baby!
Play me the jazz–beaked Bird that old deaf fool
Play me that one impossible screech of a cosmic sage
Blue on ebony arpeggio of dreaming
No one could keep that horn in its cage!
And in one hush of morning Destiny brushed
his dry parting lips his unfettered hips
the suicidal longing of his cold wet drool
The wick of his short flame lit an interval higher
in a sky of blazing burnout—his fame gone cool
That formless ghost of his haunting moan—
his feathers clipped nothing lost nothing wanting
His music out the window his notes off the page
no one could keep that bird in his cage!