Mingus At The Showplace

I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeenand so I swung into action and wrote a poemand it was miserable, for that was how I thoughtpoetry worked: you digested experience shatliterature.  It was 1960 at The Showplace, long sincedefunct, on West 4th st., and I sat at the bar,casting beer money from a reel of ones,the kid in the city, big ears like a puppy.

And I knew Mingus was a genius.  I knew twoother things, but as it happens they were wrong.

So I made him look at this poem."There's a lot of that going around," he said,and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right.  He gloweredat me but didn't look as if he thoughtbad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.

If they were baseball executives they'd plotto destroy sandlots everywhere so that the gamecould be saved from children.  Of course laterthat night he fired his pianist in mid-numberand flurried him from the stand."We've suffered a diminuendo in personnel,"he explained, and the band played on.

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