BLUES MAN
At the Green Umbrella
the blues man
has been celebrated
in the colors of night
with a jazz violin
once locked in its case
of laced Arabic leather,
now ready
for a new venture,
from long days
of Bach counterpoint
until adolescence,
when suddenly
the needle
plays Armstrong
and my brain fevered
clock woke up
on a brown shoulder
outside a solitude stage,
now the French bow
exercised notes
almost out of reach
to the human ear
in an absent time
always feeling
like Rimbaud
or any exile
in orphaned seasons,
waiting only for rosin
to gloss over my fiddle’s
fretted sexy strings
to skin me alive
with its most up beat riffs,
played on augmented chords
like white wine
drunk in a liqeurs dream
from a boulevard
in southern France,
now here in North Beach
at the green umbrella
funky in its time,
you pick up the energy
buried in this cat’s eyes
coaxing a fiddled Muse
at this Friday night gig
impressed with
the smooth salty sea air
in mood variations
like back on the Seine
wondering what happens
to dada’s edgy words
by a newly discovered
Beat poet staggering
to float with the blues.