March 2011 WLT
Clouds gather under a blue moon,
like trouble brewing as strange fruit
continues to swing – keeping time –
while Columbia turntables refuse to spin
the song; is vinyl too black, too flash to be
sleeved in white prisons? The answer lies
like white gardenia petals on a bruise
too subtle to separate from wind; like
a trumpet caught in the ill wind of a jet’s
prejudice in the company of clouds – a
rumble in a jungle of noise, the forgotten b-
side that holds its breath. Trouble brewing.
There’s nothing random about rain;
It clears the sky’s throat for the sun’s shrill
voice; the white hanky is for black sweat.
They’ll all laugh when I say it, whisper
as though I’m making whoopee with Communist
ideals. They’ll laugh like they laughed
when Louis appeared coal-sketched on screen,
years before he lifted the smoke and called
Eisenhower a spade, said let’s call the whole
Soviet thing off, as sweetly as he sang that song
with Ella –– and there’s silence where the applause
should be; because it’s OK when the needle hits
the dark flesh of wax and causes blue screams,
but when the tip hits the dark flesh of a woman
and she wails for justice; shooting off ideas
as she reloads stimulants, suddenly music is
treble trouble. And everybody knows
that the calm comes before the clouds . . .
There’s nothing random about rain; so blow
Louis, blow from cheek to cheek, blow
under a blanket of blue until you get a kick
from a laughing Ella and switch the tone
so swift // so hot // so dark
that the only bright thing will be the spotlight
of struggle illuminating a girl in Baltimore,
learning as time goes by that life isn’t a fine
romance, love, but your soul won’t desert you;
like the note can’t leave the music, like
the shadows can’t leave the darkness.
The secret is to listen; to the slow creeping
embrace of the trumpet’s protest, the percussive
defiance of the piano’s syncopation, the indrawn