the jazzman gets the blues

This poem has two sources of inspiration, this um,..unique..photo prompt from JackAz Photography for One Shoot Sunday(link below) but more importantly, my deep admiration for the surreal post-modern existential, nihilist poetry of the great  

coal black  

to whom I dedicate this humble offering:

the jazzman gets the blues

the jazzman came to Wyandotte

he was lookin to play.

he had his axe in a worn out case

looked like it had been pissed on

by a thousand dogs--

black, peeling, no stickers--

and a bone box with a

beating heart

in his back pocket.

the jazzman found a corner by the bus station

where the winos were huffin it up 

from a paper bag.

decided it looked like a place that

needed accompaniment,

so he took out his sax and made a noise like a combine

on a july day in Longview. 

the winos left.

an old latina woman on her way to work

threw a quarter in his case

out of pity.

the jazzman left Wyandotte

because he’d paid his dues

and hitched to the West Coast.

he had some money left

but he let the

truckers and salesmen

feed him anyway.

he finally made it to L.A.

and cast the hairy eyeball around.

he was wiped out and freakin,

needed bong hits and bedrest.

he was lookin to get laid.

he did.

scroungin a gig was harder

but he hooked up with a whacked out bass player

from Fargo who made everybody call him Fats

two hipsters with guitars

and a rastafarian on the conga.

they called the band the Lounge Lizards.

they played Manny’s Chuck House every Friday 

for two months.

the jazzman thought his chops 
were finally there.

then the waitress Manny was boppin

ran off with all his bread, and Fats.

Manny went flat busted and got kidney trouble.

The one guitar player's old lady had him 

thrown in the slammer

for ten years' child support

and the other went mariachi in Tiajuana.

the rastafarian kept playin the conga

but it was no good, man.

the jazzman was frosted.

he had to agitate the gravel.

he left L.A. thinkin about Wyandotte.

he still had his axe and his dogpiss case

but he was runnin low on reeds

and he thought he might be 

gettin the blues.

there was a flick at the time--

it was bitchin, about Death Stars.

it razzed the jazzman's berries.

he knew he needed a schtick, so he kyped a violin,

got the vader threads, and learned to hiss and wheeze.

he wrote a song called “I’m your big daddy-o, Luke baby.”

it bombed.

so the jazzman hit the road

for the last time.

he thought he met Keruac once

outside an old diner in St Paul

but it was just a shadetree mechanic

named Dwayne. he never made it back

to Wyandotte and he lost

the bone box with the beating heart

somewhere just north of Burns Flat

when he got those hellhound blues, Clyde,

really bad.

February 2011 

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

Photo by JackAz Photography