Button, Button(48)

Right off he grabbed a platter, stuck it down

"Heebie-Jeebies; Armstrong

"First, I'll play the record by itself," he said

Any other time I'd bust my conk on Satchmo's scatting

But I had the crawling heavies in me

And I couldn't even loosen up a grin

While Daddy-O was tromping down the English tongue Rip-bip-dee-doo-dee-doot-doo!

The Satch recited in his Model T baritone Then white man threw a switch In one hot second all the crazy scat was nixed Instead, all pounding in my head

There came a sound like bottled blowtops scuffling up a jamboree

Like twenty tongue-tied hipsters in the next apartment

Having them a ball

Something frosted up my spine

I felt the shakes do get-off chorus in my gut

And even though I knew that Mister Pink was smiling at me

I couldn't look him back

My heart was set to knock a doorway through my chest Before he cut his jazz machine "You see?" he asked.

I couldn't talk. He had the up on me "Electrically, I've caught the secret heart of jazz "Oh, I could play you many records "That would illustrate the many moods "Which generate this complicated tongue "But I would like for you to play in my machine

"Record a minute's worth of solo "Then we'll play the record through the other speaker "And we'll hear exactly what you're feeling "Stripped of every sonic superficial. Right?"

I had to know

I couldn't leave that place no more than fly So, while white man set his record maker up,

I unsacked my trumpet, limbering up my lip

All the time the heebies rising in my craw

Like ice cubes piling

Then I blew it out again

The weight

The dragging misery

The bringdown blues that hung inside me

Like twenty irons on a string

And the string stuck to my guts with twenty hooks

That kept on slicing me away

I played for Rone, my brother

Rone who could have died a hundred different times and ways Rone who died, instead, down in the Murder Belt Where he was born

Rone who thought he didn't have to take that same old stuff

Rone who forgot and rumbled back as if he was a man

Rone who died without a single word

Underneath the boots of Mississippi peckerwoods

Who hated him for thinking he was human

And kicked his brains out for it

That's what I played for

I blew it hard and right

And when I finished and it all came rushing back on me Like screaming in a black-walled pit I felt a coat of evil on my back

With every scream a button that held the dark coat closer

Till I couldn't get the air

That's when I crashed my horn on his machine

That's when I knocked it on the floor

And craunched it down and kicked it to a thousand pieces

"You fool!" That's what he called me

"You damned black fool!"

All the time until I left I didn't know it then

I thought that I was kicking back for every kick

That took away my only brother

But now it's done and I can get off all the words

I should have given Mister Pink

Listen, white man; listen to me good

Buddy ghee, it wasn't you

I didn't have no hate for you

Even though it was your kind that put my brother

In his final place

I'll knock it to you why I broke your jazz machine

I broke it 'cause I had to

'Cause it did just what you said it did

And, if I let it stand,

It would have robbed us of the only thing we have

That's ours alone

The thing no boot can kick away

Or rope can choke

You cruel us and you kill us

But listen, white man,

These are only needles in our skin

But if I'd let you keep on working your machine

You'd know all our secrets

And you'd steal the last of us

And we'd blow away and never be again

You will because you have

But don't come scuffling for our souls.





'Tis the Season to Be Jelly


Pa's nose fell off at breakfast. It fell right into Ma's coffee and displaced it. Prunella's wheeze blew out the gut lamp.

"Land o' goshen, Dad," Ma said, in the gloom, "if ya know'd it was ready t'plop, whyn't ya tap it off y'self?"

"Didn't know," said Pa.

"That's what ya said the last time, Paw," said Luke, choking on his bark bread. Uncle Rock snapped his fingers beside the lamp. Prunella's wheezing shot the flicker out.

"Shet off ya laughin', gal," scolded Ma. Prunella toppled off her rock in a flurry of stumps, spilling liverwort mush.

"Tarnation take it!" said Uncle Eyes.

"Well, combust the wick, combust the wick!" demanded Grampa, who was reading when the light went out. Prunella wheezed, thrashing on the dirt.

Uncle Rock got sparks again and lit the lamp.

"Where was I now?" said Grampa.

"Git back up here," Ma said. Prunella scrabbled back onto her rock, eye streaming tears of laughter. "Giddy chile," said Ma. She slung another scoop of mush on Prunella's board. "Go to," she said. She picked Pa's nose out of her corn coffee and pitched it at him.