Working It Out "A lot of people have died for this music...," Kenn Cox

— Melba Joyce Boyd

black keys
conversing
with ivory
like oblique
irony in
unrhymed
psalms
Chopin sonatas
confer with
Strayhorn symphonics
Monk disrupts
with tempos
linked like dominoes

this dialogue occurs
with Kenn Cox
composing jazz
suites on piano
without primacy
in Multidirection
or as Guerrilla Jams
engaging a dystrophic
democracy

as night falls
on dim streets
blue notes
stud starlight
at high altitudes

Kenn Cox
at the keys
channeling ebony
freely through
the integrity
of well-honed
ivory

ATC 139, March-April 2009