Buford's Blues

image found over at caseresblues.es

Buford’s Blues

“I find in my poetry & prose the rhythms & imagery

& mystery of the blues.”--Maya Angelou.

Buford Brown bopped his way downtown backwards,

                       finding first the finite, then the festive finish;

            just being an old black man that was too boisterous,

                                                                too brave,

                                                         too belligerent,

                                                     too much the brawny blues man;

            whining, yowling, yodeling, yelling & yelping--

            whether for a white audience 

            wild for his weathered soulfulness,

                                    or divers faces burnished black

                                    while busking for bucks on Beale Street,

he would strum, stutter, sing & strut,

his lyrics sonorous,

his message singular-- dangling his diaphanous damnations

                       of all the dangerous delusions

               he felt were afoot, while

                    fingering falsehoods  &

                    fighting injustice--his accent thick, twanging

              three strings at once, his tongue tangled with terrible regrets;

         his voice stentorian while revealing

the verdigris pallor on his visitor’s brass vibes;

                    freaked out furtive tones

         frantically mourning freedom’s frailty,

                                                democracy’s diminishment,

                                                         demonstrator’s demise,

                                                 the dirge of constabulary’s demons,

                                                         & the death of hope;

condemning the KKK cowards that could kill a king,

                        rather than allowing freedom to ring--

                   & of course you could bet your balls there was

              banal ballads about bad women, bright booze

        in brown bottles, nagging bitches, fist banging

& luscious love bruises.

They caught him one manic midnight

while pissing powerfully on the tagged wall

of the juicy juke joint he was working,

          used aluminum baseball bats on him,

                                   broke both of his legs, &

                                   busted his fingers, but in his case

          tragedy led to lionization & living legend

as the multitudes of white fans showered him

with learned love, deep devotion,

sacks of silver FDR dimes, & bountiful baskets

of beautiful devil’s food doughnuts,

bought all his albums while brandishing

Buford Brown Rules

on their collective chests, kept him fit, fed & fiddling

until his funeral at 97,

& then they proudly erected & set up

a seven foot statue of him in Seattle

in a hilltop park near Puget Sound. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted proudly over at dVerse Poets MTB/FFA

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