Jazz Is

Jazz Is

by Moe Seager

Jazz Is

A way in to a way out

Way up down deep inside

In the feel, of the thought
Where the pulse resides
 
Jazz is an audio odyssey

A jet stream blowing in from Ghana

Belted out in Congo Square

A round trip ticket round

The world of Africa and Africa touched

Jazz is

A man down and out in Chicago

Jamming and trancing beyond tomorrow

Jazz is a cat in a Pittsburgh club
A Fury in passion, melodious love
A Diva in Detroit baring her soul
Bring down the house
In turns hot and cool 
Jazz is a child with a sense complex

A feel for a world beyond that given

Jazz is Havana throwing off heat

Blaze of a trumpet, bodies in beat

Jazz is a Jew on a clarinet

No hold back, he lets it rip

Jazz is a Gypsy on a wagon stoop

Strumming new found sounds in his finger tips

Jazz does a duo with Mozart and Bach

A spoon in tune with Cafe Vienna

And Jazz is a niche on a back-street in Paris

Rendezvous lovers, loners and Poets.

Jazz doesn't know solitary confinement

Be big band, be bop,

Slow motion shuffle

Be ballad, be blue,

Lay back and be cool

Be riding the groove
Come in and go out

Each time unique

Like the last time

Jazz is
A cargo the trade winds sail

To the door of the depot of the lost and found

To ring your ears and throb your heart

Stormy Monday turning sunny

Feel the blues depart

Jazz is
A riff that walks me home

Is a bass line I climb to the top of the stairs

Is the hand holding mine when nobody cares

Jazz softly whispers - I know how you feel

Jazz is

Chump change and scratch

Is chewing through the gristle

To suck on the bone

Jazz is a holler, a cat call, a hymn

Jazz is singing saxophone in the shower

Jazz goes uptown to get down

Calls night time the right time

And the right time is now

Jazz Is

An instrument of fingers and tongues

A vessel of muscle and breath

Body and mind in sync with itself

Jazz time tics free off the clock

A serpentine march out of formation

Jazz can leap to the end of the line

Make every stop along the block

A teller of history, a history maker

Jazz is forgiveness and Jazz is a bitch!

She's the mother load

Jazz is

Sweet smells of incense, of Jasmin, of hormones

Deep note moans, high pitch groans, twists and turns

Sharps that burn, flats that howl

Guitar licks that sparkle

Drum beats driven off the four corner map

Jazz is
A gas, a liquid
A solid mass of essence
A floating island centered
In the infinite sea
So vast is Jazz
So deep and wide
How the Middle Passage
Placed us side by side

Jazz is a family
A fraternity of man
Whose taproot is the music of the Af-ri-can
Poly-rhythmic pollination from the talking drum

Graced in gospel, rolls of ragtime

Tears and laughter of the blues

The gifts of many makers

Freely given me, freely given you

Jazz Is

A way in to a way out

Way up down deep inside

A way to, a path through

The mindless rubble,

The poison propaganda

Cross you over to another side

Jazz Is
No papers, no passports,
No human claims denied

No charges pressed, no back-seat guests

Welcome to a dynasty of open borders

Jazz is

A Free Country

I Wanna Make Jazz to You

I Wanna Make Jazz to You 

                                                      

                          Moe Seager

We started out on a walk

In step, in time

We found a lot

To share, to find

The two of us

So smooth our groove

I wanna make jazz with you

I wanna make jazz to you 

Pretty soon we got the beat and key

Trading notes in melody

Right away we found the stroke, didn't we

We took the count way out, yes we

I wanna make jazz with you

I wanna make jazz to you 

Through the night we learned to play, okay

We got it on, on and and on, got it off our way

We found our song, our harmony

We carried on from dusk til dawn, oh please

I wanna make jazz with you

I wanna make jazz to you 

You pluck the strings

I'll blow the horn

We gotta song to sing 

Baby, this child's born 

Our repertoire, it amazes me 

So deep and down, our possibilities

Include a take I never dreamed was there

I never felt so rich, so rare 

We took the risk, we beat the dare 

Dare I say 

I wanna make jazz with you

I wanna make jazz to you 

Let's make this riff our last tune tonight

A private encore, so, cut the light

I wanna be bop all the pitch you got

I wanna jam it till you wail and drop

I wanna play it, I gotta say it

Baby please don't stop 

I wanna make with you

I wanna make jazz to you

You pluck the strings

I'll blow the horn

We gotta song to sing

Baby, this child's born

I wanna make jazz with you

I wanna make jazz to you 

Sylvia's Song

Sylvia's Song
by Moe Seager


January, 2009

Dear Sylvia,

I wish you to know: how many evenings, slipping into nocturne, twilight dusk, a gray shadow merging into violet, I trek to the club, to hear my favorite singer. I seek more than entertainment, more than art for arts sake. I come looking, listening for consummate satisfaction. Jazz!

I need raucous laughs and then some. I fill with glee generated by one who feels the funny side of blue, who bares from inside out, a genuine smile. A woman whose giggle and chuckle is what we emit as breath of life. Nobody laughing at each other, but, with each other. Call it medicinal. Call it vitamin vivant. Your jokes, relaxing. Your smile, intoxicating. Bring it home.

You, a stunning example of a beautiful woman of a beautiful voice. Elegant. Eloquent. I need to hear you sing the songs of my restless mind, my troubled soul, stir my soft, so tender center. Songs of Love and Love lost. Songs conveying a message. A beacon of hope. Resolve in the face of despair. We stay in the game against the odds. Beauty is stubborn.

You're a woman whose charisma is forged from the fires of trials and try again. I need to hear - night time is the right time and right time is now! This is musical Zen. Elixir.

I thrive on testimony. Redemption transmitted on voice waves, amplified calls of my scattered family. Me, a stranger in a strange land, no longer estranged. Born again, birthed in the sweet and bitter sweet notes of the ancestors whose legacies flow on the melodic phrase of your wail and coo. Spellbinder, your moans and groans trigger a simultaneous release relief throughout the crowd. You belt out notes from the primal code of the human race. Harmony.

I need to bare up. Immerse into community because no man is an island and all too often it takes the naked impulse of a woman to recall that which I might put aside for the seemingly pressing calls to transparent routines, anemic rituals. I need to scrap compulsions to list my short comings before a condemning judge - my deranged consciousness. I need to exit the suffocating quagmire of dollar down - dollar a month - never enough. Never enough to quiet the ceaseless demands of the uphill climb against downward winds just to find myself one brick shy of a load. I need to witness. The call and response that binds us. You and I, all those present, all who would be...

I want it known, I walk toward dawn through empty nights, full of vigor, humming phrases you have sung hours earlier. You were here and I was present then, now. Sing lady sing, "In the Dark".

I glide home on weightless twin hued lights of silver and onyx. Against menacing cold your songs wrap me warm. I kiss your lips, imagination enough. Human Being Human. I carry these little things in the pockets of my day, and nights. Charms.

This poet realizes this state precedes language. It being murmurs of heart, beat of the the soul in step with a turning planet shuffling its way through the cosmos of mysteries and wonders. What could this moment be named? Magic.

You are a gift. In exchange for your value I offer the currency of my immeasurable admiration.

Baby, you shake the diamonds from the diamond dust.

In the spirit,
Moe Seager

Sylvia Howard is a jazz vocalist. Our Paris Diva, she is renowned to audiences, her legion of fans,  in Paris, the United States and Asia.
www.sylvia-howard.com

Mantilla

(mantilla: a silk or lace head scarf clipped to a comb on the back of a woman's head  so as to drape her shoulders and back. Traditionally worn by Spanish and Latin American women.)

Mantilla

                   Moe Seager

Isabel came to dinner
All in black and feline gray
Her Spanish accent thick and wet
A glass of wine, dark bordeaux
The color of her lips

Isabel came to dinner
She lit a pink cigarette
I watched the ashes fall
In a porcelain cup
I watched her brush her teeth
With a sweep of her tongue

Isabel came to dinner
Alone
She wandered through the room
Those chestnut eyes, slits half closed
Low fires burning, those eyes
Moonlight under water

Isabel came to dinner
She stayed late
Tossing our voices back and forth
We mixed our words
Uhm...in the key of G'
Tango in the sitting room

Isabel came to dinner
She rose in midnight leather boots
I expected a mantilla
She laughed in my face
Taunted, I whispered, shall we go?
Later, a candle burning
The sleeping rose

Your Kiss

            Your Kiss
                               
                        Moe Seager

Your kiss shot through me like
A heat seeking missile fixed on pleasure
Your breath fanned my flame
The blood in my tongue caught fire
Your kiss put back the light in my eyes
I am shining and bright
I saw the road home in the centuries of stone
A thousand years has passed
And still I know you by touch, taste, smell

Our embrace pleased fickle Paris such
She paused to star light smile
She blew a perfumed breeze
And filled the air with wind song

Your kiss solved mysteries
Stirred in my vague dreams
Of exile across sands of time
And a sea of solitude
Under midnight skies
I sang your song in the darkness

Your kiss is ageless
Its taste of herbs and oils
A balm to my lips
Salve to my soul

Your kiss was brief
And you soon gone
I stand alone
Upon the rock of ages
Where river spills into her ocean
Spellbound, still, I let go
The dam of my desires
Bursts of bittersweet streams
Waltz upon the waves

I love you so this Sunday night
A fool enlightened, a poet driven
To the brink of beautiful sorrow

The coming dawn shall feel the sun
Gently press his lips upon
The quiet nocturne surrenders all
Your kiss
              Your kiss 
                            Your kiss...

Joni's Comeback

Joni's Comeback

                                 Moe Seager

She poured a black cup of coffee

I sipped on the rim of the mug

At the one spot left unchipped

"Gimme one of yours would ya

I'm tired of rolling my own"

I passed her a Camel

We shared on the match

Ten years since high school

She looked like a yard sale item
Dust covered, cracked

The item nobody buys

Five of us once call her

To go to the same dance!

"Glad you stopped by

Never figured I'd see you

Back here in the neighborhood

Landlord promised to fix this place up

Ya know what?

I'm up shit creek without a paddle"

The little boy looks a lot like you

The girl takes a shine to her daddy

How's a, Vinnie doing?

"You mean Suitcase Simpson?"

You two ever talk?

"Not since the child support checks stopped coming"

"He lost his job and hit the booze

Said he got cabin fever

You know, when a man feels caged

Too long with the same woman"

How are you taking it?

"Now I got cabin fever"

Oh yeah, with who?

"With nobody. See, for a woman it's different

It's about locking yourself indoors

For months on end

Two sickly kids, t.v. on the blink

And watching the dog die

'Cause you ain't got money to send him to the vet"

"Can I bum another smoke?"

Help yourself. I gotta another pack in the car

She lit up off the burner on the stove

"Okay, he was here and made Noel hell

Showed up drunk on Christmas eve, 11:30 at night

Two gifts for the kids

One was broken

Last of the big time spenders"

"I put the kids to bed at midnight

He tried to make me on the couch

I finally slapped the bastard across the face

He got up, called me a slut

Stumbled into the Christmas tree

Knockin' it to the floor"

It must have been horrible!

"Yeah, broke my favorite ornament

Saint Brigid's cross"

I meant your eye

"Oh, it took thirteen stitches and heeled right up

But I couldn't put that cross back together

It was my grandmother's and my mother's

Meant to pass it on to Katie "

I'll trade you a smoke for another cup of coffee

"I'm all out. Will Kool Aid do?"

Just a glass of water please.

I drank it down in a peanut butter jar.

"Don't worry it's clean.

I sprayed for bugs"

I choked, she laughed

Like old times

Getting out lately?

"Don't ask"

Sorry.

"Okay, I met this guy at the Laundromat last summer

He wants to go out dancin'.

Remember how much I liked to dance"?

How can I forget.

"He takes me to a suburban disco on the mall

He wore three cheap chains

'Round his sweaty fat neck

His breath smelled like Pine Sol

The man coulda stopped a Mac truck

Tryin' to do the Gene Kelly

More like the polyester stretch"

What happened?

"I told him I was on my period.

He whisked me home like a three alarm fire"

Too bad

"Not really. I saved a few bucks on the baby sitter"

Well, there's more fish in the sea

"You mean the sewer system"

You need a nice guy type

"Cut it with that cute shit"

Right

"Yeah, I met a nice guy type

In the super market last month

He starts flirtin', asks for my number.

Says he wants to take me to poetry reading

I figure, what the hell, why not?

There we were in the check out line

Like a couple of kids, funnin' and smilin' "

Okay, and what?

"When he sees me buy baby bottles with food stamps

The man almost shit himself "

She reached for another cigarette

I reached for her

She backed away

Tossing the cigarette into the ash tray.

Good shot, I barked.

"Be glad I know you"

So, what are you doing Saturday night?

"I'm goin' out. My sister's watchin' the kids"

Where you going?

"To the Amazon club"

Ain't that a lesbian joint?

"That's right. Any more questions"?

Just one more.

"Shoot"

If you give me that cross of yours

I'll take it home and put it back together for you.

She turned and walked toward the bedroom

I rose to follow

"Freeze" she quipped

I sat still

She returned to the kitchen

The broken cross in a box.

She looked side to side and eyed the flies

Buzzing 'round the bulb on the ceiling

 "Here, keep it"