ERROLL GARNER AT CARL'S CORNER (raw verse paragraph # 70.907) Concrete: the American cover-up
Two teenagers in the deputy
sheriff's limousine
Visible humidity colors the lowlands
of the imagination for the cow-persons
drinking diesel and coffee at Carl's Fina
where nothing is funny
and the people are bad-looking
where young cowboys say howdy
and skip elementary education--
the deputy sheriff feels
right at home and the cashier
is fond of men in uniforms.
She thinks: "All my Lovers are You."
"Erroll Garner had two brains,"
said the waitress.
The cowboy asked,
"Who IS Erroll Garner,
I've always wanted to know?"
The waitress lit a cigarette:
"A great black dead pianist
from the 1950's."
A truck driver, tennis-ball sized wad
of masticated steak, ketchup and potatoes
tumerously distending his right cheek, intoned,
"He was great, but he's had little influence.
He was too innovative."
The waitress agreed,
"He couldn't be copied."
The man with the cowboy hat
poured another cup of coffee
and replied,
"I'm a string man, myself,
I prefer pastoral settings
and rustic music."
On the misty horizon ten miles away
a herd of dinosaurs, dormant
these past few years
awoke to the discussion of Erroll Garner.
Among themselves they pondered
evolution and asked these questions:
Was Erroll Garner a Creationist?
Or did his music evolve?
What happened to the two handed counter-point?
He kept rhythm with large left-handed chords
then placed hundreds of small notes
around a melody that was never stated.
Erroll Garner is as dead as a dinosaur
on the banks of the creeks
which drain the sewers
of Carl's corner USA,
where concrete thought, itself,
sinks into the misty haze
and creation science
looks for ancient shards of human industry
among the stone bones
of double brained creatures
while Erroll Garner sleeps
in the noon day sun.
Jeff Woodruff1994, 1999Austin, Texas
