Blues for Louis. From my CD - Mother.
Inside my room, single bed, sink and gas ring
I listened to the blues, black vinyl warm spinning heart wanting the sound in my mouth.
Outside a window open in the summer heat, the street below the rowdy - dow of Earls Court Road. 1965.
Saturday night down to Louis's subterranean home
made mystic with leaves, sticks, stones,
incense filling the air as he cooked fragrant food from Mauritius-new tastes for my tongue, his hands beating time on a drum - singing the songs I never forgotten.
He played me ska records, Calypso and Blues.
Seeking bohemian magic in Soho where Jazz is,
late afternoon the sun shooting lights - dusty smoke spirals,
setting fire to a golden brandy in my glass. My first brandy.
Sitting small in beatnik black, blue velvet, blue jeans taking in mind seeds, drinking the juice of truth hanging on to the threads of dreams - wanting love and more...
Bottling for Paris Nat in Piccadilly one spring - his accordion, squeezing out the songs of France and the war, lost love and more.
Down to the big river.
A mournful London lullaby of tugboat and train,
the evening rain on my face. Softly.
I remained at the riverside, mesmerised by the water, the tide and the flow of it, the comforting old of it
A raucous chorus of seagulls - winging in on the wind from the sea in the east,
hungry for the city’s feast.
Castles and elephants, bridges and spires, factories,
domes, a million little red brick homes. Back to back - - street by street.
Back to my home in The All Saints Road -
The Grove next to The Mangrove, a Caribbean Cafe.
Now I am in a Winter mean morning wind raw in Bethnal Green, grey London streets blood shot with buses.
A woman catches my eye, I smile, she curses,
her voice a sore sound in the air, howl and scowl.
I knew her once a long lifetime ago.
He droops over his big issues, near asleep underneath a
stooped back, outside Camden Town Tube. Heels clip clipping, cigarette tips glowing.
Underground sulphur smell, hot breath, bodies close and
souls apart, swaying in a metal tube, eyes avoiding eyes avoiding touch and mind the gap.
Behind newspapers roaring the words of war once more, I came in in War April 1944. Falklands. 1980s.
Glow burning sunset on the top of a hill, purple night inching in from the west. In the City below the Hill Primrose Hill, the Sirens wail, and headlights strobe flicker between the leaves on the trees; on the roadside a dog laughs...
A man barks and the breeze lifts the hem of a skirt, flowers low bowing to the earth as I look with older eyes through tears and a once-upon-a-time song.
I remember Louis and the drum and the song as I sing my blues............. Blues for Louis.
