Miles

By Lee Meitzen Grue

I got so I like his back.

Few people

and some animals, elephants for instance,

prepare us for the appearance of aliens.

We get used to them . . . their difference,

their living in another place.

At the River Tent one year,

my son backstage

got us in to hear Miles free,

but he was so loud

everybody ran outside

to listen.

he was into some kind of electronic-fusion

funk. It hurts our ears, our def vision of ourselves.

Miles had moved on.

We swallowed it, didn't

gag much on the livers or the lights.

Walter Payton,

no mean jazz man himself,

was grateful to get his autograph.

Now how many autographs does Walter want?

And that auto-biopic: self-proclaimed

cocaine head, woman basher.

What arrogance. What bullshit,

What a life!

Imagine

playing with Charlie Parker and

Dizzy at eighteen,

and saying a few years back, 

young Wynton hadn't paid his dues.

Don't expect artists to be nice,

but didn't I feel the lights flicker,

get low,

an electric power drain

when Miles died.

"Miles" appeared in Brilliant Corners