Testimony, A Tribute to Charlie Parker. Yusef Komunyakaa

went off to war

      & got one of his legs

      Shot off & she wanted

      To divorce him for that.

       Crazy as a bessy bug.

       Jack wasn’t cold

       In his grave before

       She gone up & gave all

       The insurance money

       To some young pigeon

       Who never hit a lick

       At work in his life.

       He cleaned her out & left

       With Donna Faye’s girl.

      Honey, hush. You don’t

      Say. Her sister,

      Charlene, was silly

      Too. Jump into bed

      With anything that wore

      Pants. White, black,

      Chinese, crazy, or old.

      Some woman in Chicago

      Hooked a blade into her.

      Remember? Now don’t say

      You done forgot Charlene.

       Her face a little blurred

       But she coming back now.

       Loud & clear. With those

       Real big, sad, gray eyes.

       A natural-born hell raiser,

       & lose as persimmon pie.

      You said it, honey.

      Miss High Yellow.

      I heard she’s the reason

      Frank shot down Otis Lee

      Like a dog in The Blue

      Moon. She was a blood-

      Sucker. I hate to say this,

      But she had Arthur

      On a short leash too.

      Your Arthur, Mary.

       She was only a girl

       When Arthur closed his eyes.

       Thirteen at most.

      She was doing what women do

      Even then. I saw them

      With my own two eyes,

      & promised God Almighty

      I wouldn’t mention it.

      But it don’t hurt

      To mention it now, not

      After all these years.

       Right Column

      Heat lighting jumpstarts the slow

      afternoon & a syncopated rainfall

      peppers the tin roof like Philly Joe

      Jones’ brushes reaching for a dusky

      backbeat across the high hat. Rhythm

      like cells multiplying … language &

      notes made flesh. Accents & stresses,

      almost sexual. Pleasure’s knot; to wrestle

      the mind down to unrelenting white space,

      to fill each room with spring’s contagious

      changes. Words & music. “Ruby, My Dear”

      turned down on the cassette payer,

      pulsates underneath rustic voices

      waltzing out the kitchen—my grandmama

      & an old friend of hers from childhood

      talking B-flat blues. Time & space,

      painful notes, the whole thing wrung

      out of silence. Changes. Caesuras.

      Nina Simone’s down-home cry echoes

      theirs—Mister Backlash, Mister Backlash—

      as a southern breeze herds wild, blood-

      red roses along the barbed-wire fence.

      There’s something in this house, maybe

      those two voices & Satchmo’s gold horn,

      refracting time & making the Harlem

      Renaissance live inside my head.

      I can hear Hughes like a river

      of fingers over Willie ‘The Lion” Smith’s

      piano, & some naked spiritual releases

      a shadow in a reverie of robes & crosses.

      Oriflamme & Judgment Day … undulant waves

      bring in cries from Sharpeville & Soweto,

      dragging up moans from shark-infested

      seas as a blood moon rises. A shock

      of sunlight breaks the mood & I hear

      my father’s voice growing young again,

      as he says, “The devil’s beating

      his wife”: One side of the road’s rainy

      & the other side’s sunny. Imagination—

      driftwood from a spring flood, stockpiled

      by Furies. Changes. Pinetop’s boogiewoogie

      keys stack against each other like syllables

      in tongue-tripped elegies for Lady Day

      & Duke. Don’t try to make any sense

      out of this; just let it take you

      like Prez’s tenor & keep you human.

      Voices of school girls rush & surge

      through the windows, returning

      with the late March wind; the same need

      pushing my pen across the page.

      Their dresses lyrical against the day’s

      sharp edges. Dark harmonies. Bright

      as lamentations behind a spasm band

      from New Orleans. A throng of boys

      are throwing at a bloodhound barking

      near a blaze of witch hazel at the corner

      of the fence. Mister Backlash.

      I close my eyes & feel castanetted

      fingers on the spine, slow as Monk’s

      “Misterioso”; a man can hurt for years

      before words flow into a pattern

      so woman-smooth, soft as a pine-scented

      breeze off the river Lethe. Satori-blue

      changes. Syntax. Each naked string

      tied to eternity—the backbone

      strung like a bass. Magnolia

      blossoms fall in the thick tremble

      of Mingus’s “Love Chant”;