Whorehouse Music

Forgive me if I tend to romanticise the past... - Radio Days

For me, jazz is like a siren’s
tones, floating from the rock
of all things past much like the wrens
in migration, the Spanish stock
once flown from Scandinavia.

Mermaids and birds and sea and sky…
the music makes me think
of what is picturesque and gay. A shy
and sedentary lad, a stink
of melancholia pervading time and place.

That’s me until Bechet, Ella, and anyone
more black and old and talented than I
emerges from the rock. The wintry bone
will melt, dissolve, in saxophonic lye.
And summer of the French Quarter will set.