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Long​-​Distant Lovin' Blues

from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems by Joshua Michael Stewart

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lyrics

LONG-DISTANT LOVIN’ BLUES


My dad met Bing Crosby on a beach
in California. My mother was born
in the same town as Rosemary Clooney.

We’d watch White Christmas religiously,
sometimes in summer. Even when jazz
was still a mystery, I longed to be the lost

grandson of Louis Armstrong despite
my pale complexion. I owe the first flurry
of notes I heard from Bird’s saxophone

to a Clint Eastwood movie. My passion
for poetry didn’t come from reading
Dickinson or Frost, but birthed from flatted

fifths that swung me towards the Beats
and the rhythms of Langston Hughes
and to the Mingus and Bud Powell poems

of William Matthews. So, believe this:
I’m a Coltrane solo that can barely contain
myself when you step off that Amtrak train,

and when it’s time for you to hop back on again,
I’m those cold-night melodies
Sonny Rollins played on that empty bridge.

credits

from All This Living: Selected Recorded Poems, released February 26, 2023

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Joshua Michael Stewart Massachusetts

Joshua Michael Stewart is a poet and musician living in Western Massachusetts.

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