Jazz Fest Saturday May 6, 2017

Morning trip to two libraries for returns

Phone call in from Dad’s cell

Asks about if I still want to build a shed

In my back courtyard like we talked about two years ago

He starts an argument over the way walls

Are supposed to be built

Yells me, “Well you just know fucking everything.

Enjoy your day at jazz fest.” Dial tone.

I had a moment two weeks ago

I thought maybe I got through to him

Like maybe he heard me for the first time in my god damn life

Arrive and walk to a bench by a lagoon in City Park

Meditate for ten minutes yogic sunglasses on eyes closed

Passers-by, fish bite mosquitoes, acorn plummets

Pace listening to Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

When the flow is high climb the mountain, when low keep your head down, patience

Alone, see a black family unfolding a card table to sell lemonade

Some white kid holding his shitty art picture asking if anybody wants to pay ten bucks

Forty-dollar parking at St. Frances Xavier Cabrini High School is full

Jazz Tent seated with a white NOCA grad clarinetist bragging about his former black teacher

Reading Cornel West’s Democracy Matters in chair, taking notes

I write a page to my dad I probably won’t share.

Blues Tent Glen David Andrews gospel crucifix

Plays Prince’s This is what it sounds like “When doves cry”

Maybe I’m just like my father, too bold

A blue ink pen explodes in my right pocket, smears everywhere

West says, “In Plato’s Republic Thrasymachus argued, ‘Might makes right.’”

Maybe I’m different. Got to go marching with the Socrates team

Go protest Confederate monuments tomorrow while my dad oils his guns

Gentilly Stage, see a yoga friend playing a Clash song on a Cajun fiddle

Then a solo that looks like it took more generations than

She could possibly have in that small body to play, Bhakti magic

Tank and the Bangas, Team SNO, triple colored-bodysuits

Hipster beat slam hip hop African soul jazz rainbow

Poet spits mid set, put my hand in the air snapping

Jason Marsalis jazz, meet a drummer named Jua in an old school Padres jersey 

NOCA and UNO grad, Marsalis’ cousin

Says Irvin Mayfield’s always been a cocky asshole

Reminds me the way New Orleans has less than six degrees of separation

I tell him I am a writer.

He asks me why white people hate black people so much

I say, “Man is at war with nature.

Black woman is the closest in the human spectrum to nature. We all come from Africa.

Black man’s voice and strength is criminalized and muted as the defender of black woman. White man is trying to both kill and use nature and can’t look in the mirror of genocide and self-hatred.”

I make a Freudian slip and say the words white sin, as I point at my arm

This white skin

Walk far side to Acura stage to prep for Stevie Wonder

Remember a year ago being out here with my best friend 

Stevie only got to sing Purple Rain with a bullhorn

Lightning canceled set, his Creole mother died this spring

Had to use up all his work leave, could not be here

I brought his mother’s Psalm 23 prayer card as my bookmark today

Stevie started with a prayer-speech

“A lot has changed since I last saw you. You can tell him, Mr. 45, tell him I said you gave him the power for unifying people, not diving them. Be a united people of these United States.”

Higher Ground, Living For The City, You Haven’t Done Nothin’

Love’s In Need of Love Today Stevie starts crying
Slow, the crowd is distracted, starts separate conversations 
I have my eyes closed, meditate with mudra fingers to cut everything but song 

Sway and it is god-like a capsule of the most beautiful 
I start to cry open my eyes to a couple with faces in text-phones 

Stevie stops says, “It’s not about the religion. It’s about the relationship.”

"Love Everybody"

Finale Superstition, walking home towards the field's herd funnel

Smell the waft of port o-let shit over the mud

A quartet of white folks keep seated in fold-out chairs

As the masses have to divide around them to cross the exit bridge to Mystery Street

Thinking about my dad this box outside of which he does not get

Thinking about some couple dancing to Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)

Thinking about this war for consciousness, wanting to find a partner one day

Who does not have to play catchup on the 10,000 layers of why I’ll be at a march tomorrow or why today went the way it did, someone who has been fighting for consciousness this whole time before we met and plans to continue

  

Vagabond walk

Have to hold my left hand up to block the setting orange sun

Feet ache from standing

Go home and make a protest sign and write for that sunshine in my life

And the war