A.D. Winans

Bob Kaufman had jazz running through his veins. The Black Hawk booked the best jazz musicians of the day. I met Bob in 1959 in North Beach. In 1963 I heard Miles Davis play at the Black Hawk and became hooked on jazz.

The Demise Of Jazz
(For Bob Kaufman)

No more jazz at the Black Hawk
No more jazz in the Fillmore
No more lost souls drown
In a sea of shipwrecked dreams
Gone the clinking of glasses
The waitress who always knew
When your glass was empty
Gone the black female crooner
Hitting the high note
Like a midnight train
Passing through Fargo
North Dakota breaking
The stillness of night
With its long wailing whistle

No cool cats blowing the horn
Feeding love starved Hipsters
In Reefer heaven
No more be-bop snapping fingers
No fallen angels spreading their legs
On the way home from
A conversation with God
No black cats improvising the blues
Riding the midnight express
No strung-out soul train musicians
Blowing mean clean notes
Crucified suffocating
In the smoking mirrors of the mind

 

A.D. Winans is an award-winning San Francisco poet and writer with over sixty books published. Awards include a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature, PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award and a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing.  He edited and published Second Coming Magazine/Press from 1972-1989.