William is one of my very favorite musicians (a fellow double-bassist).  His compositions run the gamut from sweet, melodic and accessible, to dark and stormy.  William writes and plays like Mother Nature. 

His poems are inspired and inspiring.  On William's record, "Raining On The Moon", singer Leena Conquest delivers Parker poems like, "James Baldwin To The Rescue", and "My Name Is Hope" over melodic grooves.  On "Zen Mountains, Zen Streets", William accompanies Vermont poet David Budbill playing instruments ranging from bass to shakuhachi and pocket trumpet.  David's poems are very human and often funny, while William sets the stage in fits and spurts of sounds.  Sometimes a quiet vamp, at other times a few squawking notes to punctuate the moment.

The below Parker poem was found at Renaissance Universal.

Music Is
by William Parker

Music is the abysmal rainbow that bridges endless galaxies. It is the waterfall flowing through the desert, the mother, the offspring, the ointment, the foot and hand of the wind. All of nature is music: the many colored skies, space and planets.

Music is every wondrous canyon in a miracle’s dream. Music is evolution, the seed of change. Music existed and exists with or without human beings.

No race invented music.

Music is a form of energy, like the sun. Music is the voice through which spirits speak, using a language that is beyond words, a music that is beyond notes. Music informs us with a reality that is scented with the eternal. Music is the tireless swan knitting landscapes of hope. Music is the cry of life and death at birth and conception, the heart beat, the pulse, the healer and the healed, the color portrait, the magical stone and the magical mists living side by side. Music is the chirping of birds; is the grass beneath the cracked shells.

Music is dance and the dancer. It is poetry and the poet. Music is all children. Music is hot cornbread. Music is the kindness one finds in a crayon drawing. Music is wood touching word. Imagine a doorbell made of light. Imagine the house that we would enter if we rang that bell.

Music is the rhythm of butterflies. Music is hungry stomachs being filled. Music is justice. Music is blue water, blue whales, and blue cornmeal.

Music passes through some while others reject the image. The best music teacher is an oak tree. Music cannot be taught. Music is alive. Music is a pasture of yellow grass 6-foot tall.

Music tolls from the earth and lands on the sky of another universe. Music is drone over the Ganges.

Music is a snowflake floating on the ocean.

Music is silence. There is no music in capitalism and imperialism. Music is the answer and the question. Particles of music cannot be measured by scientific instruments. Music vibrates. Not all music vibrates at the same rate. Music is radiant. The blessing, the understanding, the fundamental eye revealing the surrender in the realm of brightness. Music sometimes manifests itself as sound.

Music’s only wish is the well-being of all human beings. Music exists to feed the spirit. Music is no war, not ever, for any reason.

Music is the fertilizer and the seed. Every second we live, music is dying for us. Music will save the day. Music must save the day. Music is the mother to the motherless, father to the fatherless. Music is home to the homeless. Dance music, wedding music, funeral music, march music, waltz music, wood music, steel music, voice music, tree music, ocean music, soil music, baking bread music, pastoral music, union music, trance music, religious music, perpendicular music, circle music, square music, Zion music, Shinto music, Buddha music, Islamic music, Hindu music, Winti music, music for Damballah, Erzulie, Ogun, Ghede, Asacca music for Quetzalcoatl, for the Adena Hopewell, music for the Red Paint people, music to make the moon laugh and cause the sun to turn blue. Music is the incubation of joy. A symbol of music is Kokopelli, the hump-back flute player...

Through music life is altered. This energy, if visible, might resemble bands of light stretched across fields of flowing ash going past layers of infinite habitation. The cry of praise, the memory, the entrance to the fire, oupas chanting. The effect pulls on gravity.

Music is the lasting response, the elixir. Music is nothing; music is everything. There is more music in a baby’s smile than in a thousand symphony orchestras. Music lives in the flute mountains that are made of melted diamonds. We drink them. Our eyes sparkle like petals of a black rose. Music to plant beans, to plant corn. Music the burning throne, the prodigal daughter, and rain cloud over the profound branches.

William Parker is one of the leading bass players, composers and group leaders in jazz and free music today. He can be heard on CD’s with his groups "In Order to Survive" and "Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra", and on dozens of CD’s with other musicians. "Music Is" is taken from Sound Journal a collection of writings by William Parker. He lives in New York City.

 

Winter's hot sweat beneath heavy clothes
In a queue of tired commuters
The glint of an incandescent bulb on glass
The pulse of oily engines pushing cars on rails
A sturdy woman blocks my view of the soft-eyed Asian girl in brown boots,
loudly humming some pop radio melody
My hand in a woolen coat pocket fingers the lines of a cassette box
Elliot, the subway busker plays nylon string guitar - Villa Lobos -
wafting thick and bittersweet beneath distant brake squawk
and some loud panhandler
At the ticket window I push my change and a crumpled bill
towards a black woman in uniform
Thinking that I have shortchanged her, she says, "I don't make magic"

©2005 Jonathan Blakeslee

In an effort to get back in the saddle, I am digging up some older poems to post, even as I write new ones.  I have lost some over time as I have moved from coast to coast, converted from paper to electronic form, replaced computers.  I never really treated my own poems as anything worth archiving, but how many of us feel that way?

Thanks to the bold poets who put their lines out in the wind like prayer flags, a beacon for those of us who wish to follow..............................

a bone in a meadow
beneath a spray of vines by the old post road
a deer's femur showing no memory of flesh
a bony silver-white
the yellow of tobacco stain
a hairline crack and
dental impressions, canine or ursine
the marrow has gone and
the weight is uneven
a regiment of ants on the damp underside
returned to a nest of dead grass and earth
slowly moving towards renewal
counting hours as the spruce does its rings
aching through the seasons

a bone in a meadow
beneath a spray of vines by the old post road

©2005 Jonathan Blakeslee

For bents hearts and wild minds:

Satsuma mandarins (citrus reticulata)
fit in the palm with bright sun flesh
(hook the tine of a fork upward through
the peel and release a cloud)

Coltrane's A Love Supreme : Psalm
in a dark room, while laying on the floor in savasana

A small smooth stone that fits neatly between thumb and forefinger
for skipping or ruminating

Run full tilt and plunge into icy ocean water,
then say the first thing that comes to mind

Savor a knob of crystallized ginger
while mapping the skeleton of a poem

Nap with a cat tucked behind the knees

Write love letters to a secret crush
before introducing them to the paper shredder

A stoneware bowl of creamy yogurt with sliced ripe peach, walnuts and raw honey

Sevillian Tortas de Aceite with an afternoon cup of Darjeeling
or classic whoopie pie with smoky Lapsang Souchong

Write, "I am fu@#ing brilliant" one hundred times,
until you start laughing , or believe what you are writing

Tie dye your underwear and wear it to work
for an important meeting that you are dreading

Buy a cheap yardsale turntable and spend
a weekend listening to the box of free records
that came with it

Make a batch of stovetop popcorn with the pot lid off
and try to catch each kernelburst as it launches, steaming into the air

Lay silent in the lungs of the forest on the pine-needle floor,
looking up through the trees ~

©2007 Jonathan Blakeslee

Daily I walk the same rocky path,
winding and steep.
I am exhausted by nightfall.
When nothing seems to change,
I find my legs are growing stronger~

©1997 Jonathan Blakeslee

(Based on an actual dream)

We were escorted into the back of a woody wagon by a turbaned driver who spoke
only to Jim in some foriegn tongue.  Stopping at the foot of a green mountain lake,
we then pushed on through mountainous jungle over a dusty road.

We crossed a cherry red suspension bridge which overlooked a city block sized square
cut from the side of a hill.  Turning down the drive to approach the indented area, the wagon stopped.  Jim and the driver disappeared.

The perimeter was lined with large sand sculptures in curious patterns of azure and curry yellow.  Some looked like inverted flan custards, some cylinders, and at least one pair of statuesque feet.

The feet were the size of some sculpted bush at the front corner of a caretaken Nantucket lawn.  The various shapes favored a micro-checked pattern in vibrant blue and yellow, although striped and swirled combinations existed as well.

The center of the area was piled high with bright cabinets and armoires in reds, golds, greens and blues; some with mirrors.  A twenty foot path separated the sand sculptures from the cabinets.

Jim's voice drifted in, although he could not be seen.  I followed the direction of his voice through a maze of colors, shapes and aromas.  A particularly large stone table held earthen pitchers of warm green tea, honey, milk and bowls of ripe figs with goat cheese.

Being both tired and thirsty, I poured a bit of tea into a carved stone cup, and sat at the foot of a cabinet with a pair of sticky purple figs.  The warm fig juice ran in droplets down my fingers making stains on a rumpled white linen shirt.

The alcove was sun-filled and strikingly beautiful. 

I crawled into the shade of a blue, closet-sized armoire and fell asleep.

©2001 Jonathan Blakeslee

t h i s  i s  n o t  m y  h o l i d a y
as for churchgoers or the charged bloom of youth
late afternoon perched behind the wheel of the old wagon
spilling tailpipe apparitions across the st. john's bridge
the clouds have fallen low on forest park
white smoke of poemfablemysterymemoryecstacy
quiet drizzle streets hum past
refineries and steel plants
one speaker - poor radio reception
without an antenna bursts of talkradio
prick the silence
the bookstore lights on burnside
between aisle and page
between heart and tongue
a palpable iridescence
the shiny underside of a leaf before the rains
the perfume of tangerines
as fingers pry off the sticky peel
I walk in silence among the trees

©2005 Jonathan Blakeslee

(Late morning)

    Sitting low in an Adirondack chair,
        the pine boards damp with rain soak
    Sun pours down over the brim of a herringbone hat,
        spills over pages of a book,
            running down my leg
    A cold gust parts legions of tall, fading bee balm, budleia, rosehips
        Tickles windchimes
            Stirs grasses
                Combs through pine woods
                    Branches twist crackle hush like rainsticks
    Undulation roar of trees~brush~grass~ vines
        A deep cluster of notes from Cage's piano
            Twanging biwa strung from Takemitsu's core

    The season is unfolding
    Letting fly her long scarf.
    Counting coils of rouge ~

©2007 Jonathan Blakeslee