WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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One last poem from The
Blues Don't Change.

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You would think the most
natural thing in the world

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would be for a Black poet
to write about the blues.

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Yet when I go to
blues festivals, or go

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to blues clubs, or go
to blues performances,

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I find myself to be just among
the handful of Black people

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who are there.

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And so you think about
this and you say, no,

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what is this all about?

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This is a description of a
very exceptional evening.

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James Cotton, he'd call
himself a harp player.

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Harp meaning mouth
harp, harmonica.

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It was just one
of those evenings

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where everything
fell into place and I

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was catching his band
at a place called

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Keystone up in the Bay Area.

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And it inspired
me to try to write

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a poem about the
blues really trying

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to explain at that moment
how I felt about it

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or what I had learned about it.

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To James Cotton
band at Keystone.

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And the blues I tell you
they blew up on target.

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Blew the roof right off
and went whistling skyward,

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starboard, stilling
every zooming one of us.

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Mojoed in the room that night
that instant that whenever

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it was, torn inside.

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At first we all got
turned out, twisting

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in a blooming space where
afternoon and evening fused

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like Adam with Eve.

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The joyful urge to cry
mushroomed into a blinding

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cloud burst of spirit wired
for sound then atomized

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into one long thunderous
cooling downpour.

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What ceased to be was
now and now and now.

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Time somehow was
what the blues froze

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tight like an underground
pipe before busting

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it loose and glad explosions,
a blast that shattered us, ice,

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flow, and all.

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The drift of what
we'd been began

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to shift dragging us neither
upstream nor down but lifting

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us safe and high
above the very storm

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that only flashing
moments ago we'd

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been huddling in for warmth.

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Melted at last, liquefied,
we became losers

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to the blues and victors, both.

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Now that he'd blown
us away with his shout

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this raining brown
skinned wizard

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wise to the ways of alchemy
squeezed new life back into us

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by breathing through cracks
in our broken hearts coaxing

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and choking while speaking
in tongues that fork

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and bend like the watery
peripheries of time.

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A crime no more punishable than
what the dreaming volcano does

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waking up from what it was.

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Believe me the blues
can be volatile too.

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But the blues don't
bruise they only renew.

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