A Grey Day

Today.  The streets are wet, puddles lingering waiting for a tire to splash them away.  The wind is blowing through ripping off the last few remaining yellow leaves clinging on to the branches.  Determined little leaves having made it through the winter.  A slow day.  A day for refection.  A day for writing.  No words of wisdom from me. 


I leave you with the slow, whiskey soaked words of my favorite poem written by Langston Hughes.  You can feel the heat of the South.  The sweat sliding down your neck.  Smell the cigarette smoke swirling around your head.  Eyes closed, you sway back and forth, listening to the thick, raspy baritone of pain and sadness.   

The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,  Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,  I heard a Negro play.  Down on Lenox Avenue the other night  By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light  He did a lazy sway ....  He did a lazy sway ....  To the tune o' those Weary Blues.  With his ebony hands on each ivory key  He made that poor piano moan with melody.  O Blues!  Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool  He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.  Sweet Blues!  Coming from a black man's soul.  O Blues!  In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone  I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--  "Ain't got nobody in all this world,  Ain't got nobody but ma self.  I's gwine to quit ma frownin'  And put ma troubles on the shelf."  Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.  He played a few chords then he sang some more--  "I got the Weary Blues  And I can't be satisfied.  Got the Weary Blues  And can't be satisfied--  I ain't happy no mo'  And I wish that I had died."  And far into the night he crooned that tune.  The stars went out and so did the moon.  The singer stopped playing and went to bed  While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.  He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.