Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Yusef Lateef, The Rebel Who Revels Reveals

 

Blue Yusef blows reeds
signifying grace and uplift
pharonic blues 

to rock the river Nile

make a woman smile
 

slow drag smoky room

an astral-terrestial flag

hum a gospel tune

slow tambourine jangle

helps untangle the times

we've been undermined


strings sing of fields

Delta and Elysian

felt in Euphratean hearts

leaping like Lateef

under the moonlight
blue with the tattoo

of so much longing


true to the belief

in the splendor of coral reefs

and recumbent seas that speak
in sparkling dawn 

colorful blinks of light


Yusef Lateef
the rebel who revels
revealed

peels back centuries

of decrepit thuggery 

unseals the dignity
and scenery of unheard music

green area of a higher plane

caught a slow train

like Coltrane

fans the flames of the furnace 

of higher mind or cools down 

the eternal sine and co-sine

for minds to unwind
 

insisting on fat riffs

drum beats like shape shifts

through estuaries of song
drift fragments of ghost ships

transformed into haiku bliss



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