Sterling Brings It - Dennis Vincent Brutus

From the blue and silver
fading to grey and darkness
over Chicago’s band shell
Sterling brings it
Sterling brings the blues
Muddy Waters’ blues
barreling into the groin
as tenderness, naked lust
gritty, guttural, gutbucket blues
Oh that potent half-inch swagger
of well-fleshed haunch
Sterling brings the blues.
                        For Sterling Plumpp
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Sterling brings the blues
out of the grey dusk
when the blue fades to silver
and into blackness
over Chicago’s band shell
Sterling brings the blues

All that sorrow
all that stubborn laughter
music beauty uncoiling

out of the dark the pain the stars
Smoky old Southside by the railroad tracks
where you hear the old men growling
in the lanes there are mongrels howling
where the EL rattles by

Muddy’s raucous lust
(Ol’ hoochie-coochie man!)
howling wolf’s plaintive wail
all the suggestive lurch
of a ten-inch swaggered haunch
all that music’s subtly uncoiling
Sterling brings them all!
Sterling swings the blues
Sterling hawks the news
Sterling blasts the blues
Sterling has a ball.


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Still they sing
sirens of insensate longing
driving us to shatter
on shoals of frustrate hope

Still they weave
patterns of disjunct design
stab pierce and slash
with random logicless shears

Still, blind fates,
they urge, awaken desire
for utopian dreams;
still we shipwreck on love.

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Dennis Vincent Brutus (1924 - 2009) South Africa