THE BIRDMAN BLUES CLUB

This is one of my favorite poems. There's a strange parallel between the demise of poetry and the demise of good music. Sure, there are still some great musicians out there, but what happened to the Mozarts? The Beethovens? Hell, even the Charlie Parkers and John Lennons.

This poem is dedicated to them--

THE BIRDMAN BLUES CLUB

The Birdman Blues Club,
the last of its kind in this part of the city,
was empty—save six musicians and one mahogany bartender
wiping wooden counters free of dust instead of drink.

Yet the band still played—
the guitars twanged as if there were a crowd of three hundred,
the upright bass resonated deep and with conviction,
a Martin Luther King speech spoken with strings instead of sentences,
while the piano, horns and snare could be heard from two blocks away
making even sleepy Johnnie Walker wake from his repose.

Meanwhile the singer, the lead cat, the daddy of the pack,
a man so black his shadow seemed white, throated smoky words,
his once marble voice transformed into gravel,
his once trademark bellow reduced to a whisper.

With eyes half-closed, the bartender tapped his feet,
and snapped his fingers,
as he remembered better days—
a time when real music, played to real people, had a real following.

--Noah Evslin