The God Voice: For Coltrane, Dem Blues-Playas & Myself

Maybe
God
Sounds like
Satchmo
On a good day or
A bad night,
With a slight cold
In a wheezy
Scratch-throated
Cry of
The Blues.

Yeah...
Maybe Jazz
And Blues be
The Music of
A Woozy God, High
And addicted to this
Possibility in us,
And yet
Hip
To this slick
Grog of
Disappointment.

Maybe that
God Voice Cries
From the feet
And the spine
And the lungs
And the lips
And the heart
Of Slaves...
And maybe now
The players must cling
To horns like
Old Negroes
Clung tight to Spirituals
Or lapsed Catholics
Do to prayers and
Crucifixes.

Maybe the
God Voice
Is in our music, yo.

But, on a good day
In a bad way
Some sanctified players
Still come out to play...
And they reach down
Deep beneath

The lost years
The lost faith
The lost pride
The lost grooves
The lost eyes
The bad trips
The counterfeits
The heroin scabs
And infected chicks
To find magic
In that
Sweet and Mystic Riff.

And That God Voice
Kicks in
So deep,
So painful,
So real,
So necessary that
It clears the tears
From the blare
Of the
Horn...

And it makes
Its God Noise
So Real and
So strong...
So authentic
So calm
That it makes you
Believe in
Magic
Again.

Yeah...
Just maybe Jazz
And Blues be
The music of
A Woozy God,
So High,
So addicted to this
Possibility of
Us...
And yet,
Hip
To this slick grog
Of disappointment.



One.