Let's Get Lost....For Chet Baker, Jazz Man

Again the ceiling thumped, through black
and whitened flickers of the old,
as step by step, each muted track,
hummed from his lips, to heavens gold

A coil of brass let loose and long.
He played this funny Valentine.
steeped up in drugs, too higher song
that felled so many from their climb.

Those books of substance wrote his dues,
and planes touched down, but barely him
three countries banned him from their news,
but Paris heroed, pretty slim.

Deep down inside Le Chat Qui Pêche
the devils heat cooked up a gas
He never knew which chord to wish,
but hell he’d hypnotised the mass,

The beat set, and its women drooled,
he built them stairways out of smoke
and walking down, each woman fooled,
on green, green grass of home (and coke).

Alfa Romeo, made his day,
unlike in broken sixty-eight,
when caught they knocked his teeth away.
#six months before he proper ate.

Khaki fatigues, pyjama stripes,
accounts from prison, laid no sin.
Outside his own career he swipes
at any way to get back in.

Then loads of Secanol delayed,
he crossed the age of fifty-eight,
and balconies just watched him fade,
out of that Paris jazz debate.

I’m deep in dream for you he’d say,
come let’s get lost, inside my head,
and slicked brown hair, brushed all away
now Dizzy, Miles and Bird are dead.

but when Chet blew, his notes curled up
in smokey blue where moonbeams hide.
And when he sang, all hearts stood still,
the ceiling thumped,
and angels cried.

Jerry Pike

For jazz trumpeter and singer, Chet Baker.