the reason you no longer take me to catch some jazz

It distorts my observations:

The trumpet’s blow is out

and never in. Antonym

to our ears. Its funnel like a

mouth unwilling to listen.

Canals are a one-way route.

I wonder why the drums

don’t have a migraine. Even

with Art Blakey

on the kit. Even when the

cymbals send out

sonar like the bats.

I’m always talking baseball.

Before it went electric.

Charlie Mingus

homered in the single

time he swung. He made

more money then

than in a decade’s

worth of stand-up. I’m talking

the bass he played—

not the comedy.

I heard he caught

the biggest one on record,

there in the Hudson River,

someone junking the

wood but not the wire.

Why would you assume

I speak of fish?

Diamonds never float.

Ask the southpaw

if you will. There

on the tenor sax

between his breaths.

He moonlights

although neither

bring him cash.

The squall is not from

rage despite his race.

The one he finished last

though he was first

like Jesus said.

Everything was running

but his skin. He’ll tell you

Black is beauty

without words. In the

grinding of his teeth.

His pitch

from a latent tongue.

Andreas Gripp

February 26, 2026

Charles Mingus