Satchelmouth

Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong by LeRoy Neiman

he was someone I wanted to be
jazz regimes couldn’t hold him
any more than did poverty
abandonment or bias
just two generations
descended from slaves
it was music that saved him
the dancehalls and brothels
of Storyville leaving their
belly-bounce imprints of sound
on his eager young mind

his cornet and trumpet
enlivened all genres
of popular taste
his affable life-loving spirit
endeared him to coalminers
cardsharps and kings
his incomparable
technical skills and
a tone clean as crystal
expressed a new spectrum
of human emotions

interpreting songs
with inflections of genius
he added his deep umber
gravelly voice like a poet
reciting in swoon of the jive
in a syncopate meter
ambassador carrying
unique American culture
around this good globe
the first and the best of his kind
he was someone I wanted to be

(for any of you who are close readers of mine, I replaced the phrase “inventions of style” with “inflections of genius” – afterthoughts can plague us poets)