—Moe Seager is one part jazzman, one part poet, one part journalist, and 100% beatific. In the final episode of 2016, Moe allows us a glimpse of his Parisian lifestyle while reading from his latest collection, We Want Everything. Original music by Cole Stone-Frisina.
Poem from We Want Everything
(will vary from what is heard, as the video is a “remixed” shortened version)
Jazz is
Jazz is
A way in to a way out
Way down deep inside
Jazz is an audio odyssey
A jet stream blowing in from Ghana
Belted out in Congo square
A round trip ticket round
The world of Africa and Africa touched
Jazz is
A man down and out in Chicago
Jamming and trancing beyond tomorrow
Jazz is a child with a sense complex
A feel for a world beyond that given
Jazz is Havana throwing off heat
Blaze of a trumpet, bodies in beat
Jazz is a jew on a clarinet
No hold back, he lets it rip
Jazz is a gypsy heeding the call
To sounds found hidden in his finger tips
Jazz is in duo with Mozart and Bach
A spoon in tune with Cafe Vienna
Jazz is a niche on a back-street in Paris
Rendezvous lovers, loners and poets.
Jazz doesn´t know solitary confinement
Be big band, be bop, slow motion shuffle
Be ballad, be blue.
Lay back and be cool
Come in and go out
Each time unique
Like the last time
Jazz is
A cargo the trade winds sail
To the door of the depot of the lost and found
To ring your ears and throb your heart
Stormy Monday turning sunny
Feel the blues depart
Jazz is
A riff that walks me home
Is a bass line I climb to the top of the stairs
Is the hand holding mine when nobody cares
Jazz softly whispers – I know how you feel
Jazz is
Chump change and scratch
Is chewing through the gristle
To suck on the bone
Jazz is a holler, a cat call, a hymn
Jazz is singing saxophone in the shower
Jazz goes uptown to get down
Calls night time the right time
And the right time is now
Jazz is
An instrument of fingers and tongues
A vessel of muscle and breath
Body and mind in sync with itself
Jazz time tics free off the clock
A serpentine march out of formation
Jazz can leap to the end of the line
Make every stop along the block
A teller of history, a history maker
Jazz is forgiveness and jazz is a bitch
She´s the mother load
Jazz is
Sweet smells of incense, of jasmine, of hormones
Deep note moans, high pitch groans, twists and turns
Sharps that burn, flats that howl
Guitar licks that sparkle
Drum beats driven off the four corner map
Jazz is
A gas, a liquid
A solid mass of substance
A floating island in the center
Of the infinite sea
So vast is jazz, so deep and wide
How the middle passage
Placed us side by side
A family, a family of man
Whose taproot is the music of the Af-ri-can
Poly-rhythmic pollination from the talking drum
Graced in gospel, rolls of rag time
Tears and laughter of the blues
The gifts of many makers
Freely given me, freely given you
Jazz is
A way in to a way out
Way up down deep inside
A way to, a path through
The mindless rubble,
The poison propaganda
Lies of the masters
Cross you over to another side
No papers, no passports, no human claims denied
No chares pressed, no back-seat guests
Welcome to a dynasty of open borders
Jazz is
A free country
Discover something new.
About the Poet
Moe Seager is a poet and jazz/blues vocalist who sings his poems on stages in Paris, New York, and elsewhere. He has recorded two jazz-poetry CDs and published two collections with Onslaught press: I Wanna Make Jazz With You, December, 2016 and We Want Everything, April, 2016. Additionally, Moe Poems was self published in 2014. Other poetry collections are issued from the French Ministry of Culture – Dream Bearers, 1990. One World, Cairo Press – in Arabic translation, 2004. Perhaps, La Maison de la Poesie, Grenoble, France, 2006. Fishermen and Pool Sharks Busking editions, London, 1992. Seager also won a Golden Quill Award (USA) for investigative journalism, 1989, and received an International Human Rights award from the Zepp foundation in 1990.