SUBJECT>Re: ** At Rudy's Place POSTER>geoff EMAIL>geoffleone@hotmail.com DATE>1109442058 IP_ADDRESS>uhall-backlab-242t.fdu.edu PASSWORD>aa3znsx.4y15U PREVIOUS>83922 NEXT> 83964 83975 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

** AT RUDY'S PLACE

For David Halitsky.

I see the prose police have raided again. To fiddle popeyed with our formatting. Drat!

See here, when voices object that a subject is not poetic enough, their real nostalgia is for nothing more serious than laughing lyrics and inspiring odes to the first daffodil. The best of strength to them!

Best,

Geoff

*

: Things happen might never happen
: in a business where everyone
: wants to make it but seldom does.
: Not far from where I lie (on my side,
: on a bed, the single furnishing
: of this rented room)
: throughout the Hackensack Fifties
: the cream of bebop jazz was recorded,
: preserved for a wondering world.

: Some of the finest proofs
: of a shortlived form, Miles
: and his incomparable Quartet,
: two Sonnies, Brothers John and Thelonius
: taxied in the same cab
: across the Washington Bridge
: hotly discussing starvation contracts
: with the Prestige label.

: In Hackensack, county seat of Bergen,
: one of the smallest counties
: in one of the smallest states,
: within a room in the Van Gelder household
: the student son converted to a studio,
: a flock of distant black men,
: working for cash down, no royalties,
: barged into this lily white neighborhood
: causing neighbors to start sweating.

: After two to three hours
: a taxi carried them back
: across the lordly Hudson to 52d Street
: and their connections,
: leaving a wonderful treasury on tape
: for saints and sinners alike.
: Soon they would all be passe: unemployed,
: unrecorded. End
: of life, beginning of survival.

: .
: .

: Geoff Leone