Category Archives: Poetry

You’d be so nice to come home to

Performed by Chet Baker, Tokyo, June 14, 1987

Again, YouTube comes through with a fine example of rare jazz footage. This was video only available in the Japanese market until 2006, and only on long out-of-print Laserdisc. Now that 9 videos of the 13 performances have been made available again on DVD from Impro-Jazz, they also can be seen online (albeit low-fi) anytime. Amazing.

Tip of the hat to reader A for the link.

Something about watching Chet perform in his final year just makes me want to really think hard about what it means to take risks in life…and brings back to mind the story of violent assault in San Francisco (Chet was attacked in the city in 1966 and, like one of singers in recent news, suffered permanent facial damage that almost ruined his career).

BeforeAfter

If I Have My Ticket Can I Ride?

How would these Jubilee Song lyrics change in today’s world of RFID passports and ID theft?

If I have my ticket, Lord, can I ride?
If I have my ticket, Lord, can I ride?
If I have my ticket, Lord, can I ride?
Ride away to Heaven in that mornin’.

This is what we Christians ought to do;
Be certain an’ sure that we are livin’ true.
For bye an’ bye, without a doubt,
Jehovah’s gonna order his Angels out.
They will clean out the world an’ leave no sin,
Now tell me, hypocrite, where you been?

I heard the sound of the Gospel train,
Don’t you want to get on? Yes, that’s my aim.
I’ll stand at the station an’ patiently wait
For the train that’s comin’, an’ she’s never late.
You must have you ticket stamped bright an’ clear,
Train is comin’, she’s drawin’ near.

Hope to be ready when the train do come,
My ticket all right an’ my work all done.
She’s so long comin’ till she worries my mind,
Seems to be late, but she’s just on time.

It keeps me always in a move an’ strain,
Tryin’ to be ready for the Gospel train.
Ever now an’ then, either day or night,
I examine my ticket to see if I’m right.
If the Son grant my tickit the Holy Ghost sighn.
Then there is no way to be left behind.

There’s a great deal of talk ‘bout the Judgment Day,
You have no time for to trifle away.
I’ll tell you one thing certain an’ sho’,
Judgment Day’s comin’ when you don’t know.
I hope to be ready when I’m called to go,
If anything’s lackin’, Lord, let me know.

Martin Luther King Day

Celebrating the man and his wisdom, through a restricted lens…

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

Complete text available here, although strangely it says the copyright status of his speech is…”restricted”.

The Free at Last spiritual can be found here

Plane Crash Poetry

Security and risk managers always talk about plane crashes and the fear we should have about flying. Doing a little searching, I stumbled across a poem by Steve Wilson on The Catholic National Weekly that perhaps raises as many questions as it answers:

…trees. A handbag. Sunglasses.
A crystal vase. An Italian shoe beside

the road. The villagers remember
with calm faces. And of the days to follow,
that burgeoned winter-white, hesitant,
detached—what do they think?

They resign themselves like a scarf
to the will of the chill and ragged air.


5 a.m., outside Bucharest, Romania, 1995

Resign themselves to the will of the air? Touching imagery to mourn the tragic loss of life, but it hardly fits the definition of giant jets using forced air and thousands of gallons of fuel, as well as ultra-light carbon and aluminum construction, to fight the elements and boldly embrace science and challenge the laws of gravity.