TWO JAZZ POEMS by Carl Wendell Hines Jr.

#1
Yeah here am I am standing at the crest of a tallest hill with a trumpet in my hand & dark glasses on.
Bearded & bereted I proudly stand! but there are no eyes to see me. I send down cool sounds! but there are no ears to hear me. My lips they quiver in aether-emptiness! there are no hearts to love me.
Surely though through night’s gray fog mist of delusion & dream & the rivers of tears that flow like gelatin soul-juice some apathetic bearer of paranoid-ic peyote vision (or some other source of inspiration) shall hear the song I play.
Shall see the beard & beret shall become inflamed beyond all hope with emotion’s everlasting fire & join me in eternal Peace. & but yet well who knows?
#2
There he stands. see? like a black Ancient Mariner his wrinkled old face so full of the wearies of living is turned downward with closed eyes.
His frayed collar faded blue old shirt turns dark with sweat & the old necktie undone drops loosely about the worn old jacket see?
Just barely holding his sagging stomach in. yeah. his run-down shoes have paper in them & his rough unshaven face shows the tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet; The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity…