Monday Night

This one came out of nowhere...just fell out of the air into my soul. This is a spoken piece, so when you read it, imagine the voice in your head to be an old black woman who has smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day for 50 years and drank nothing but whiskey. Her voice is barely a whisper....got it? Now read it...

blow…
blow baby
‘cuz you can’t keep it in
blow baby blow from down low
where it moans and growls and grumbles

thems who’s got the blues
they knows it,
they knows where it lives
they knows you got to let it loose
‘cuz it don’t got no place else to go but out
let it loose
let it loose like Ella, like Billie, like Etta

and you don’t even know when it’s a comin’
a comin’ down a ridge so fast,
so blue, so fierce it’ll blow the
the needles off a tree
so high, so strong, so forever
it’ll peel the red off the leaves

you sittin’ there a thinkin’ you is safe, but you aint
you don’t know it’s a comin’
but thems that’s had the blues
they know
they can feel it comin’
feel it buildin' in their bones
shriekin' in their brain down to their soul
oh yeah, it’s a comin’

Train knew it, Bird knew it, Dizzie knew it too
well…all they really knowed was they had to,
had to put that piece to their mouth and cry
cry that blue note
wail it out the end of their horn
‘cuz if they didn’t…they’d a’ died

you got a blue note in you
yeah you do
it’s in there
you just gotta let it out
let it rip outta yo belly
like a wind roarin’ over the ridge
bendin’ those mighty spines back so far
they think they’s a gonna snap…but they don’t
they just bend
bend
bend to the blue note
the bitter blue note of woe

oh! what a note...let it blow
let it bend you back
you won’t break
but if you keep it in, whoa!
that’s a bitter blue note of a pill that’ll kill ya
kill ya dead

blow
blow baby
blow that blue note low
make it growl
make it moan
let it shriek out the end of your horn

blow