August 2000 - Letter 4 - A Score for one Monk

Basting in a stew
of Monk Straight,
No Chaser or
        Off Minor

by Walter Davis Jr.
Even Monk on Duke
his badolself leaves
remnants & changes

by shamanic osmosis.
Those morphic waves
of resonance bathing
me as few other

thangs can. Astounded
by the certain grouping
of one's and oh's
OH the resonance remains.

Must be the angles
the reflections
humor, wit-elegant
the play the sobriety.

Must be the un
compromising lunge
into the historic
blood-filled night.

Might be the tones
playful, the tunes
memorable, even a
whistle pierces darkness.

Might be the light
his antidote for madness
or eternal cool libations
poured by the High Priest.

Hands active jelly
rolled in, cool incubated
Monk - test-batch
from the new planet.

Might be the innovation
reckless, the fully integrated
gesture, the genius in the guise
of a clown.                          

Make no mistake
    there is a method
                     to this madness, this man
        knew his task.

Laid it out in keys
minor & angular
        to the heads linear
      & ears square.

Now the pain elicits
a full-body genuflection
reflecting the in justice
the in-crowd perpetuates.

Time is a runaway
horse w/ Monk
scoring the three
ayem forays into funk

fifties-style, into cool
into blasphemy, as the
epitome of the musical
heretic, no long lines here.

Technique that serves
the deeper message
note combinations burn
new synaptic paths.

The chaos mother
may have warned about.
All this & the
certain prodigal dance.

AH, the dance. Irrelevant
without the play of
loins & ligaments, the
once lost & heretical dance.

With yet a bow to
lineage w/ not even
so much as a wink
and a cool what lingers,

dynamic & obscure.
Elliptical & revolutionary.
Hell - a Sphere
w/ his own gravity.

With the weight
of a star, new
runs, new ways
of syncopating.

New visions of the mystic
the mythic, new corners
on salvation, one bop
genius w/ his bundle

of notes to fire synapses
into future centuries
OW- electric & the
impeccable pulsating dance.

Smell of sweat in
smoky late-night Harlem
club. A way
of phrasing a notion secular.

Absorbed in the task
& we bask
                     in his immaculate
          genius.

peN#972
3:50AM
8.4.00
KPLU