Jack Spratt

120720 1605 Madalyn Rand Duttra happy 15^th

I ain’t noting special to see, nothing special bout me, pardon me while I disappear –loose remembrance of a phrase from “Take The A Train to Harem” – Duke Ellington

. . . I hear music differently now that dad's dead and gone ashes divided between Spratt, Ohio & Old Greenwich, Connecticut, St. Saviors with Georgia Potterton Spratt both places . . . I think . . . ashes i'll soon be too but blowing in the wind no monument nothing to see or remember of me happy with the birds i'll be.

I think what's wrong with me was he wanted a Mozart of me, put me at four years-of-age atop all the telephone directories he could beg borrow or steal and I fell off playing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star; on my head over and again.

. . .Not Twinkle, Twinkle but Bach, Stravinsky, Via Lobos, Fats Waller, Miles Davis and on and on and on played Kenton's City of Glass until my skull shattered reformed and shattered again and later when I met Maynard Ferguson asking him to please play Yesterdays again he replied, Jack I ain’t got the chops no more.

Watch me carefully I ad lib words and amongst musicians it is not uncommon to mimic the other race; like terms of endearment kiss. And in infancy for a long long long time afterwards I was suffused actually drown in music of all kinds. Yet now I weep more freely alone and sing song croaking like a dog with laryngitis and laughing hysterically shaking the stars blessedly alone am I now.

My only audience Annie and the sound of one hand –God?

But then before he'd given my name to a cat who loved me unconditionally previously.

He, dad, not the guy upstairs high above, said; “Play it eight/nine times over and hear it differently that's genius. LP Records 33 1/3^rd. He was correct but had no right to so groom me to be his slave. Giving me a nickle for every voice I could identify; oboe from English Horn; viola from violin from cello

. . . or like the manacles in Rev. John Rankin House, Ripley, Ohio no longer shown not politically correct or decorous who knows? I still weep for Liza crossing the ice flows with her baby in arms and now know we are related from Adam & Eve.

We are family.

I am a member of a subspecies of Homo erectus the species of mankind a mammal because as an infant I should but was not nursed from a breast. I like the legion of us was abandoned, trashed, beaten by rules & rods, kicked, stomped and emasculated by mom . . . oh I've got the equipment all right it's simply that once raped twice shy and like this legion I speak of ashamed to be what I am. Accused of incest and put into Coventry; Brit term for banished by silence; seen to avoid and ignore but otherwise there but not there.

Tomorrow is my grand babies birthday and I'm getting older by the minute too soon to die. I've no legal way of sending her a birthday card hard copy snail mail or electronic quick. She's not my anything except I love her so as I did and do her momma who . . . well . . . you know -- we own no one not even ourselves.

I'm the steal driving John Henry working against the machine, the company store holding my mortgage and script enslaved digging coal so the boss can bury the world in airborne mercury . . . I'm the slave with his toes chopped off so's he won't run away looking for his wife, his girl pregnant with the bosses sperm . . . I digress . . . when holding a dictionary reading it front to back back to front I get off so distant that not even God can see me or hear me now.

I had backstage access The Newport Jazz festival and found Miles Davis resting he was my god then, Maynard two and Chet Baker still are always in Heaven Gabriel there.

U spooze I gott an allergy? I can't stop crying now the reams of toilet paper stacked around me not enough I'll need a trailer truck backed up and the neighbors will complain and Annie and me in the street will be naked dance; me on a string and she with the tambourine.

& he dad said I'll punch your teeth out when I said I wanted to be Chet or Miles.

Instead he wanted a merchant prince and I like Francis naked left and I'm still crazy after all these years.

I love me crazy.

That's me Grampy Jack wishing you Madalyn Rand Duttra happy 15^th somebody please let her know I love her so . . . she wept when told she wasn't white and I weep for The Strange Fruit and Why the Caged Bird Sings grats Maya & Nina

PS

Kiss your momma for me I love her still & drink lot'sa black coffee thats the way I like my girls – real black & sweet.

© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

It is brave to be involved

To be not fearful to be unresolved.

"do not be afraid of no" from Annie Allen (1949) --Gwendolyn Brooks