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Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film.
In this edition, his inspiration comes from the guitarist John Scofield’s 2013 EmArcy album Uberjam Deux, and specifically the track titled “Scotown.”
A recording of Mr. Cole reading his work is found at the conclusion of the poem, as well as another poem, “Liner Notes,” which is Doug’s poetic inspiration for each of the tracks that make up Uberjam Deux.
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The album cover of Uberjam Deux, by John Scofield [EmArcy]
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Bougainvillea Sutra
You know that feeling, broke down,
stranded on the side of the road,
rumors going ‘round of a motorcycle killer,
when every one on a motorcycle looks like a killer.
Imagine the amazement when that road hog
pulls up, Good Samaritan with snap tools
who works that engine over till we’re on
the run again, full speed ahead into mystery,
arriving at dusk in a town I’ve never seen.
Looks dry, old, with a lot of palm trees,
one lonely street to Oscar’s burger shack,
music, warm night glow, Virginia flowing
to that stucco triplex on Arch Street
that smells like a 1930s mobster den
with brittle linoleum peeling on the stairs,
and I know, going in, more than one
must have died here, so which room
will I lie in with my head embedded in
shadowy haunt-thoughts after putting
my few things on shelves and in drawers
and so calling it moved in?
Someone’s snapping fingers, clapping,
practicing a complicated syncopation
while I replay Rhinestone Cowboy
in my head, mining it for electric roots,
as if a simple sound could take us back
before the rupture, and what was music then?
Harmonica out the window, whatever’s on the radio?
Who knew it would be the glue and the nails
holding the house together and ringing
in with days of song and dreams to come.
Boogie on Reggae Woman all the way
down Cedar Street to Longfellow school
where the song was Which Side Are You On
and a two-month teacher strike. So, free wild
we explore every nook and cranny of PSR,
the rooftops, fire escapes, and sewer tunnels,
campus trails, creeks, sandstone gothic walls,
and overall at last I take a high tree branch
seat in the evening sway adrift and gazing
sun face coming through the Golden Gate.
When I watch you play Working Class Hero
and Rikki Don’t Lose That Number, I see
the mystery of chords, I see and memorize
and hold it over and over to get the strike,
the plant, and the calluses, and I don’t know how
I got this shabby guitar or piece of Bach music,
but something there in Benson’s Broadway
and Montgomery strumming, I’m hooked,
carry a handful of songs like a bag of gold.
KSOL was the rabbit hole, and it was through
Confunkshun, Funkadelic, Isley Brothers
I stumble onto James Brown, Maceo Parker,
and what it was I couldn’t tell you, but I saw it
in that slick walk only a few in school had,
a little dip-hitch hesitation in the long stride,
something tethered straight to the heart of cool.
So Johnny Got His Gun, a universe in his head,
with a rhythm you can tap your lifelong message to,
whatever it is, from the center of your hollow
cave place of residence on Dwight and Benvenue
across from People’s Park when night was laced
with rocket rides and psychic tents and band lights
and ever-flowing window-shivering beats.
Where did I catch a glimpse of the ox?
In the Grateful Dead all night concert jams
and smoke whiffs, or Miles Davis jazz threads
echo-rolling through the Berkeley hills?
Because it’s a warm jasmine August night
with kumquats falling ripe in the dirt
and Bobcat Goldthwait striding basement
church stages on Bancroft and College Avenue.
When there was a divide between the short
sharp talk of that gangster son rising and that
ever-loquacious southern fury bottled down
into a contemplation of the dust, a hint here,
Siddhartha walking the campus, mind-ablaze,
and the star gears turning overhead, locking in,
earth now nothing but a backpack full of air,
and that lizard clerk in Northside Books
can’t remember the plane he came from.
So it’s with a dub dub I part from thee
and childhood fascination with why it matters
I can still find the two grooves in the cement
on Seismograph Hill where the wheel came off
Allen’s bike and his front forks dug twin tracks
to a blood spot where he slid on his forehead.
Off to England, off with mind full of apprehension,
and fingerless gloves, and cold crunching frost
along Lasteridge Lane with the crime scene tape
around the murder house burnt to its timbers,
across the street from that first kiss under globe lights,
mystery cats shooting messages with their eyes.
Back to the states, back to the Bay, down to LA
hustle of freeways, rat walls of the Peanut Company,
nights out clubbing with Shonda and Jalal,
lines, worms, laughter and the agitated twilight
on that first day of work at the construction site
with a nail gun blazing and wall going up,
mouth dry as ash, and I barely got out alive.
I once fit everything I own in a car,
now a van, heading down to San Diego
with alleyway furniture from here to here,
and it’s Travelers and Bird of Prayer
with deep study of biography and raku pottery
and Highway 8 terminating in Sunset Cliffs,
armada waves, and Tory Pines mesquite trails
where lizards cling to the red canyon walls
and Black’s Beach opening bares us all.
The car that brought me here may not run,
but this truck does, with a cooler and a guitar,
and a long drive charge, Scotown filling the cab,
and this has to be the best bread I’ve ever had
as I sit on the flat bed hatch o’rlooking the valley,
hills dotted with ink-note cattle, heatwaves rolling
like Wurlitzer grooves in wind made of music.
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Listen to Douglas Cole read his poem, accompanied by the guitarist Chris Boberg
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Liner Notes
1. “Camelus”: Put this up against “Trans Island Skyway,” opening code telemetry, and see where the high points line up. There’s your message.
2. “Boogie Stupid”: Find a dash of Southern Comfort, especially when the guitar burrs.
3. “Endless Summer”: “Brazil,” can you hear it? And “Hill Street Blues,” and mystery of life at last…
4. “Dub Dub”: It’s a Sunday reggae stroll, so lively up yourself with haunting note-bending ghost echoes.
5. “Cracked Ice”: Mr. skank comes to dinner scratching and riffing and drinking your liquor, hinting at a teenage wasteland.
6. “Al Green Song”: Desperado on the dock of the brain watching the sky get it together again.
7. “Snake Dance”: Conjuring trick: if you feel like moving, it’s just your kundalini stirring from its sleep.
8. “Scotown”: You might stumble in, call it home; it’s so smooth it should come with a warning label.
9. “Torero”: More incoming transmissions, oye como va on celestial loop, picking up voices as it barrels through galaxies at lightspeed and always busting Friday at the end of the block on the first day of summer with its whisper chords, and could the bass get any lower than that?
10. “Curtis Knew:” Shaft—in the city picking sunflowers—never have these thoughts been so light, these steps so right, so throw your hand up and catch a ride home to anytime.
11. “Just Don’t Want to be Lonely”: Hang your lights, hang your hat, your head but not in dread: this is joy-strolling, day-glowing, showing forth happy-to-be alive Latin noodling from nine to five.
12. “C.P. Shuffle”: This last is first. Hear that little chromatic callback to track 1 going in, a snake biting its own tail, so who’s to say where it begins?
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photo by Jenn Merritt
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Douglas Cole has published two novels and eight poetry collections, including The Cabin at the End of the World, winner of the Best Book Award in Urban Poetry and the International Impact Book Award. The White Field won the 2021 American Fiction Award, and his screenplay of The White Field won Best Unproduced Screenplay award in the Elegant Film Festival. He has been nominated Eight times for a Pushcart and Nine times for Best of the Net. Click here to visit his website.
Douglas’ poem, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Kind of Blue,” published as part of his “Trading Fours” series, was nominated for the XLVIII Pushcart Prize
Click here to visit his website.
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The poet’s collection, The Blue Island
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Initially inspired by Texas bluesman Lightning Hopkins, Chris Broberg studied jazz guitar in San Diego, California and has been performing jazz , blues, and original music since the 1990s. He currently resides in Bellingham Washington.
Click here to visit his YouTube page
Click here to visit his Facebook page
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Click here to read previous editions of Trading Fours with Douglas Cole
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Click here to read The Sunday Poem
Click here to learn how to submit your poetry or short fiction
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