I'll give you--
I'll read you a poem which I wrote,
which is a little more joyous about my daughter who's
almost a year old.
But right now I better read this poem on Coltrane,
because I wouldn't want to read it later.
Mostly of you know who John Coltrane is, was, is.
He's a great man.
He's a friend of mine.
I wrote the poem before he died.
I was very frightened by it.
And I've been listening to him play all night 4 or 5 o'clock
in the morning at The Half Note in New York City.
Coltrane died in 1967 in July.
And I was out of the country, I was in Mexico.
When I came back from Mexico, I landed in San Antonio.
And he had to get off to plane because you
had to clear customs.
And I walk through this door in about 120 degree heat
carrying my boy, and I saw a picture of Lyndon Johnson,
and a confederate flag, and a flag of Texas,
and I said, "I'm home."
In a plane, which was a brand of airline
plane with all those technicolor suits girls put on,
I went to Dallas.
I got off a plane again because it was too hot to stay in it,
and I walked around the airport and I saw these guys
with shotguns on their shoulders, about eight of them.
And I got in the plane again, next up Kansas City.
Stopped in Kansas City and as the plane was landing,
one of the tires blew.
Dang, one guy came on the intercom and said,
"no problem, I'll have it fixed in few minutes."
We waited a while, got on a plane,
went to Minneapolis, which is my destination.
I got off the plane having had this arduous trip,
and there was a great big poster of Wallace.
I said to myself, man, I just couldn't do it
any better if I tried.
And I said I'm home.
And I was deeply moved when I was in Mexico because I went
to the anthropological museum on a Sunday,
and many of the tourists who were there
warned me about bringing my son to this place where
all the peasants were, in this park.
Here's what they call, I think, one peso day.
I mean, it was two peso day.
Of course, I felt very comfortable.
You know, women came up, we were bored and played with them
and talked to him.
I thought it was very natural.
I was also struck in looking at these paintings,
many of the things which were represented on the wall
looked very much like some of my ancestors,
so I felt very much at home.
Then I came back to where I was born,
and didn't feel home at all.
Well, Coltrane was a great man and he
gave a great deal of his life.
If you've heard his music you know that.
Played an album called A Love Supreme.
And this poem recalls Coltrane, "Dear John, Dear Coltrane."
"A love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme,
a love supreme, a love supreme.
Sex, fingers, toes in the marketplace,
near your father's church in Hamlet,
North Carolina, witness to this love in this calm fallow
of these minds.
There is no substitute for pain, genitals gone or going,
seed burned out, you tucked the roots in the Earth,
turned back and move by river through the swamps singing,
a love supreme, a love supreme.
What does it all mean?
Loss so great each Black woman expects your failure in mute
change, the seed gone.
You plod up into the electric city, your song now crystal
and the blues, you pick up the horn with some will and blow
into the freezing night.
A love supreme, a love supreme.
Dawn comes and you cook up the thick sin between impotence
and death, fuel the tenor sax, cannibal heart, genitals,
and sweat that makes you clean.
A love supreme, a love supreme.
Why you so Black, cause I am.
Why you so funky, cause I am.
Why you so Black, cause I am.
Why you so sweet, cause I am.
Why you so Black, cause I am.
A love supreme, a love supreme.
So sick you couldn't play Naima, so flat
we ached for song you concealed with your own blood.
Your diseased liver gave out its purity.
The inflated heart pumps out the tender kiss, tender love.
A love supreme, love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme."