Inside Veins

Abstract

Inside Veins(for Sidney Bechet & Michel Fabre) Sterling D. Plumpp (bio) At first I can not tell whether you are an out law or prophet. Calling from a plateau half way between St. Peter’s post and my baby’s arms in hell. Calling in blues washed but not ironed out of Mississippi birth place wrinkles. You do not force the woman in side you in to head rags and aprons. She sings in side veins of your axe. But I never listen to you because I fear your horn will have a Bigger in its tones. He wanna erect an altar of tongues where his moods can find avenues for his travel plans. [End Page 441] Bigger always longs to make another world. And you teach him Sunday school lessons in D-natural. And I do not want sounds to bleed on me. You play after the war music. But, I live near Bigger. There is no peace or treaties anywhere I imagine. Your music, days, you make and cast your nets, in. You say. 2 There are no dreams for the dispossessed. I steal mine from between hours as they sleep after a vigil of my torture. I give them wine. I give them tales. Lyricist, you auction my mother’s laughter. You pilfer tones from muscadine breaths and cherry blossoms inside a lonely voice in side your voice. Soprano or clarinet. Speaking tributaries of a history that connect the Mississippi with Seine boulevards of pain and longings. You bring Dick from Little Richard’s hop scotching reveries among ethics of Jim Crow. It is silk I hear in your melody from brittle footsteps of garbage dumps. Translator of memory and rhythm, you clear harvests of dreams so I can plant my lines in their silences. [End Page 442] You play menus for those who slight the culinary arts of oppressors. I run a school for blues. You say. Start ‘em off with the right pass worlds. And America ain’t nothing but a Poli Sci fiction cast as saviour in bad dreams. 3 Each riff I breathe is a runaway’s memoir. Your song straddles the back streets of Congo Square and weighs logos of pain. You do not play when Johnny come marching home but Johannes does go wagging his tales from Paris and its metaphors of blood. Spilled for ideas and art. Your music is a cloak for places dreams negotiate for more space. Pages of the imagination where Satchmo and Fletcher and Duke and Count and Bird. Are union stewards of improvisation. 4 I hear latches unlocked. Migratory windows opening behind Dizzy’s closed [End Page 443] eyes at Minton’s. You beat WC to the punch bowl of down home blues down home blues. And pour them from your heart according to almanacs your home land lends songs you manage for salt peanuts. And a Saturday night you can own. I hear lavender and the color hurt you get post cards from dreams under Vichy convesations of bullets. Where truces with darkness. And St. Louis Blues emigrate from cellars to lord over a glass of burgundy. You, poet of exile with in your land and with out polling distance for a consensus of individual voicings of days we rise polling for genius you proclaim. I hear your laughter and allegiance to canals of blood your fathers and mothers swam through. To get W.E.B. and Booker T in to close encounters with Satin Dolls and Three O’ Clock Jumps. In liberated zones of nodding heads and patting feet. Where James Brown engineers his Night Train of hoodoo lored haint cars. 5 I hear your moans from the Left Bank where blues pulls me [End Page 444] after troubles send me under three times and three times three times and three times three. I hear your moans from loneliness and nameless silhouettes of ropes hounding your name and my name and the shadow of your soul. I hear your moans your blues liquid cries dripping from windows of your axe and I make them mine I jine the circle dancing and make them mine make them mine Sterling D. Plumpp Sterling D. Plumpp...