Jacko and Jim
Jacko the Jazzman, office hack,
computer screen by day. At nights
he roams the pubs and village halls,
blowing his sax’s rise and fall.
The church, its restoration fund.
(That building bathed in history).
Jacko and they raise funds, that night,
that winter, Jazz by Candlelight.
Jim Devotee basks in the sounds,
the candles, altar, scents and light,
the husky sax, the wail, the call,
the ragtime, boogie of it all.
He’s near recumbent on the pew.
His foot beats time, be-doo, be-doo .
Jazz sidles at a lackadaisy pace
down aisles and byways of the spirit’s grace.
First appeared in San Pedro River Review, Spring 2018
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Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet who lives just 30 miles along the coast from Dylan Thomas’s Boathouse. Although he does not see himself as unduly competitive, he has just won the Prole Pamphlet Competition with Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes from which ‘The Ella Fitzgerald Song Book’ is taken. It is available from the publisher at www.prolebooks.co.uk
“Jacko and Jim” is an offbeat, most enjoyable jazz poem. It is amazing how a jazz poem functions so well in a poetic structure where rhyme and meter are controlled so carefully. I love the contrasts between the jazzman and the jazz auditor.
This speaks towards Jack Kerouac and the “Beatnik crap” that cheapened the memories of jazz icons..
Kerouac told David Amram about how the “Beatnik crap” that Kerouac and his friends reluctantly represented was “distorting everything,” and “cheapening the memories of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk.” – David Amram, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac
This speaks towards Jack Kerouac and the “Beatnik crap” that cheapened the memories of jazz icons..
Kerouac told David Amram about how the “Beatnik crap” that Kerouac and his friends reluctantly represented was “distorting everything,” and “cheapening the memories of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk.” – David Amram, Offbeat: Collaborating with Kerouac