I Sing The Blues For
You Today
I want to do poetry like Billy Holiday singing the blues
I want to do poetry like Ella Fitzgerald
I want to be me singing my holiday blues
Billie’s songs are poetry so fine it makes me think I’m her
doing rhyme
Thoughts about Billie make me go off line, hook line &
sinker; she puts me back in time
I sing to my lover, I want to make your poetry mine because
you spout rhymes
Observing my life become an unending grocery list of things
to get done
Your life or mine, yours is on my mind - the list of to dos
keeps growing exponentially
Number 1, try out a mattress, 2, buy it, 3, buy new locks to
keep someone out number 4, find someone to install it, make 10 million calls.
Keep writing lists. What did you say? How many sessions, any lessons in
storage? Will the Divine power of intervention help?
I don’t want to bore you with the details and derail you
from my song.
Damn, wonder if I’ll ever see Willa Dean again– oh man, you
know the women I mean
Kept her head wrapped up like an African Queen with her
creamy coffee looking self.
Willa said the secret to good potato salad is to go heavy on
the mayo
Willa Dean days, they’re all in a haze now. I was so high
back then.
The memory lingers, listening & watching while she told
stories. She’d whisper, her voice barely a breeze, tell me about her lovers,
say, “I’m gonna get me some.” … I’d get confused & asked, did she mean her
husband or lover.
She’d show me wilted lettuce and bring it back to life
telling me about her lovers, drugs, & children while making potato salad.
I thought - she’s a woman of many talents, a stoned cold
junkie and a working mom combined
The nose that knows, her preference was coke, good moist
coke at a good right price too on the upper - upper west side in Washington Heights,
162nd street to be exact
Willa had class & style combined; she took me to dress
models at the Ritz one time. Got paid for it too. It was such a pleasure to do.
I even got a pair of designer gloves out of it.
People accepted Willa everywhere we went –
Willa was friends with a famous New York jazzman and his
wife, a New York City teacher. We were at jazzman’s apartment, small tight
crowded living room, upper west side 90’s.
Willa’s friend sat across from me staring at my big breasts.
I can see how tight your muscles are.
Let me massage you she said aggressively hurting me so bad
physically
we had an argument instead.
Passing through hundreds of lives so many colors
Let me take you back to what we share - strivings for love –
wanting to go somewhere –
Wanting to discover who we really are ~
see ourselves through the eyes of others and – finally see
who we really are.
Extend this power to the umpteenth degree. We still wonder
who they think we are ~
Uncover recover to return to who we want to be
Dreams are reality - stop thinking, dreams are the color of
my true love’s hair
Black is the color of my true love’s hair, his dreads caress
my bare hands
A whole-years grocery list pressed into a foggy mist of
autumn red
turns bright chartreuse before bleakly the list dissolves
before my eyes
True colors make my heart sneeze amidst a perpetual mist of
violet-blues
A dream more real than a memory
A dream more real than a memory
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