145. Crescent City Blues In K

by Nordette Adams - New Jersey

You love our blues, our souls hung
our spirituals sung and carried on breezes
yet deny the truths that bring us to our knees
our sorrows burrowed in battered hearts
wounds deep reopened and salted

Cry for Katrina's dead, mourn
our departed minstrels gone long before them
that smiled and crooned, kept secret
the politics of blue gloom notes
like Satchmo spreading wide his lips with
appeasing pearl whites gritted.

You love the blues, the jazz, the cool and hot
but know not the people nor their lot
nor demons wrestled, angels kissed
death wails howled nightly 'neath shit
birthing music, the beauty, grace welded exquisite
creative genius hunkered to ankles, hips
hearts weighted in painful joy of drunken stupor
cultivating survival, incubating dreams
splitting tongues bursting the spiritblood
you love, you mourn, for which you do mock funerals
but why since what you love's not died?

You see the art but not the artists
nor care to know the hearts that birthed the art of New Orleans
nor her children who sing the blues crude
beautifully on the news. But you'll love that blues too
once the City's paupers have hammered it and
glamoured it between tinkled ivory, the gleam of grinning trumpets
and the depths of distant fingers upon a bass.