Featured Poem:
Unfinished and Klaar
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Featured Poem:
Unfinished and Klaar
Turn up the hip-hop
it doesn’t matter any more
bring out the muggers and drug peddlers
let them speed through the streets
of Korsten with audios screaming and
hooters shrieking because
it doesn’t matter, it is of no consequence —
Wella is dead!
Musician Errol Cuddumbey wrote that lament
for a dead friend: this one’s for him.
You gave me your poems to read,
and lent me bucks for beer,
composed apt vignettes for that poetry show:
we made vague promises that we’d meet more,
and work sometimes together on stuff.
Now the music at your tribute trips me up.
I need words as slow as that last note; blue,
soft-drumming-gentle, shimmeringly brushed,
an under-bass that’s deep, and slides:
it’s too late now. Though it’s never too late
for jazz: I should have known you
twenty five years ago, drinking with the guys
at the old Alabama Hotel, in Korsten,
before it was burned down in that “unrest”
in those odd days of summertime madness
when I was happy being quite otherwise,
with songs stretching like an unfinished score,
and we could have maybe improvised,
you and I, all along the pavements
of Highfield Road, or in a smoky upstairs bar.
But the chords struck for you are dying —
your friend weeps on the Opera House steps;
his My Way was yours. Your keyboard is hushed:
but this stage is still set, and the sax rides
the salty air like a wine-dark songstress,
the bass from below swells, till it breaks —
and brief time is unfinished yet, but klaar.
Turn up the hip-hop
it doesn’t matter any more
bring out the muggers and drug peddlers
let them speed through the streets
of Korsten with audios screaming and
hooters shrieking because
it doesn’t matter, it is of no consequence —
Wella is dead!
Musician Errol Cuddumbey wrote that lament
for a dead friend: this one’s for him.
You gave me your poems to read,
and lent me bucks for beer,
composed apt vignettes for that poetry show:
we made vague promises that we’d meet more,
and work sometimes together on stuff.
Now the music at your tribute trips me up.
I need words as slow as that last note; blue,
soft-drumming-gentle, shimmeringly brushed,
an under-bass that’s deep, and slides:
it’s too late now. Though it’s never too late
for jazz: I should have known you
twenty five years ago, drinking with the guys
at the old Alabama Hotel, in Korsten,
before it was burned down in that “unrest”
in those odd days of summertime madness
when I was happy being quite otherwise,
with songs stretching like an unfinished score,
and we could have maybe improvised,
you and I, all along the pavements
of Highfield Road, or in a smoky upstairs bar.
But the chords struck for you are dying —
your friend weeps on the Opera House steps;
his My Way was yours. Your keyboard is hushed:
but this stage is still set, and the sax rides
the salty air like a wine-dark songstress,
the bass from below swells, till it breaks —
and brief time is unfinished yet, but klaar.
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