Nov 11, 2021
Fragment IV.
The only Jazz is just an elegant
ballroom dance somebody
danced one night when they
got overdressed.
The only Jazz is a standard
slow dance that stopped to fade
from 45 to 33 to 16
revolutions a century to just a
moment that a skipping needle
stopped to lift you up
off the ground,
The only Jazz is for be-bop
virtuosos
who play riffs with streams
like the waterfalls and then slip
and fall and brush it off like it
was all, you know…only the
melody,
And the only jazz Coltrane.
played he played once,
or maybe twice
when he heard it while he blew,
wondering where the jazz had
always been…
it’s the only Jazz nobody knew.
-Albert Turner Goins, Sr.