1. Canto for Boo Boo
- based on Thelonious Monk’s “Boo Boo’s Birthday” -
“The sun has lost its power,
the stars are flying nowhere,
the cosmos is stuck
up in the air.
Broken axles and wheels.
Deity’s got none to spare.”
Or else it’s quote, or quota,
or snow in Minnesota.
Some syllables slopped
into a row.
Scanty thoughts to recall,
nothing precisely to know.
Seconds before the last Big Bang
suspended God’s inscrutable pang,
did he envision Pez and Keebler?
“Venetian love is feebler,
as Mars no longer heeds her,
and Shelley was dumped
into the lake.”
That’s the last thing I heard.
29 bars, for God’s sake!
2. In Walked Bud
- based on Thelonious Monk’s piece of the same name -
1.
Here is a story.
I’ll let it speak for me.
It never did bore me,
nor does it intend to bore you.
Once, in the mayhem
that happens per diem,
a girl named Maria
(a maiden quite long on virtue)
endured for seven years without
a sock or a shoe.
And how she fell thus out of luck,
I’ll tell it to you.
All of her paychecks
were stolen by Sleestacks
who hid them in haystacks –
and that kind of thing can hurt you.
2.
Saturday morning,
without any warning,
anon they come storming –
a dozen reptilian upstarts.
Heavenly manna
(they say it was canna-
bis), long before Hannah
Montana. They fall like Pop-tarts.
What time’s it on? We ponder what
the TV guide says.
It’s good as Tolstoy to the mas-
ses suckered on Pez,
Scooby Doo, Pop Rocks,
“the Animal’s” headlocks
and Fat Albert’s buttocks –
three decades ahead of Hogwarts.
3. Ragged Crows
- based on Charles Mingus’s “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” -
I
What do you make of it, Molly -
this introduction to a world?
So long we had been left out in the cold.
A cup of coffee first, then forth we'll sally
upon our toes.
The alley glows
with daybreak's throes.
Let's set a beat
upon our feet,
our ragged crows.
And what follows
in this new retreat’s tomorrows
can be gathered from no sun,
nor threads from which our rags are spun
as morning is from dusk undone
and begs us to shake off this gnawing cold.
Oh Molly, it will never do to dally!
No time to scold
ourselves. Who knows
what noose we’ve slipped,
what chasm tripped
to land on toes,
on raggedy, ragged, haggard crows?
What do you make of it, Molly -
this introduction to a world?
So long we had been left out in the cold.
A cup of coffee first, then forth we'll sally
upon our toes.
The alley glows
with daybreak's throes.
Let's set a beat
upon our feet,
our raggedy, ragged, haggard crows. Oh,
our crows! Who knows
what noose we’ve slipped,
what chasm tripped
to land on toes,
on raggedy, raggedy, ragged, haggard crows?
4. Ferner alle Morgen
-- after J. S. Bach’s “Höchster, mache deine Güte” --
Matter, render up your silver
lining in this dusky sphere!
Populate this vacuum! Filter
light upon this musty bier!
Matter, help us get this going!
Shine your light on something showing!
Bold existence, without peer,
pacify the helter skelter
aimlessness of nothing here.
Engineer for thought a shelter!
Shine your light on something showing!
Matter, help us get this going!
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[Next: Love Song]