Baltimore Jazz Freestyle
I’m pondering what it feels like to have your spine broken, the Days of Rage, and Flukey
Stokes. The mind segues to images of the South Chicago killer “Willie The Wimp,”
immortalized by the late Stevie Ray Vaughn and the souvenir hats that were sold at his funeral;
then bridges into my visions of my neighbor Mr. Serouski bleeding out in his blue silk suit and
pharmacist's smock next to his bullet riddled baby-blue Lincoln Continental. The Blue of that
Lincoln matched his dying eyes. Quinine to cut the Heroin and ninety-eight holes cut in that big
Detroit steel Continental in the quiet early morning 4800 block of Kimbark Avenue where I try
and walk my dog without his wife or bitch-ass son chasing me with a stickball bat. White
wrought iron fences and white tree trunks painted to match; now they are all flecked with tiny
freestyle splatters of red and glinting sharp diamonds of safety glass. The cop chalk won’t stick
to the asphalt because it oozes blood and oil. The Drive-By had not yet been invented but Fluky
was always an innovator, free turkey dinners on ghetto cold streets made him a Robin Hood hero
in the broken eyes of the very people he enslaved. A man far ahead of his time. Hollywood
imitation-after-death New Jack City ahead of his time. It came down that Flukey told Willie to
pull the triggers. I heard the three piece band tango, the MAC-10 playing staccato rhythm and the
MAC-11 weaving the lead part in and out of a steady 12-gauge base. I was always in love with
the music. I was a happy child of the South Side that day. Burn baby, Burn was what we heard,
and I walked with Apollo.
I’m pondering what it feels like to have your spine broken, the Days of Rage, and Flukey
Stokes. The mind segues to images of the South Chicago killer “Willie The Wimp,”
immortalized by the late Stevie Ray Vaughn and the souvenir hats that were sold at his funeral;
then bridges into my visions of my neighbor Mr. Serouski bleeding out in his blue silk suit and
pharmacist's smock next to his bullet riddled baby-blue Lincoln Continental. The Blue of that
Lincoln matched his dying eyes. Quinine to cut the Heroin and ninety-eight holes cut in that big
Detroit steel Continental in the quiet early morning 4800 block of Kimbark Avenue where I try
and walk my dog without his wife or bitch-ass son chasing me with a stickball bat. White
wrought iron fences and white tree trunks painted to match; now they are all flecked with tiny
freestyle splatters of red and glinting sharp diamonds of safety glass. The cop chalk won’t stick
to the asphalt because it oozes blood and oil. The Drive-By had not yet been invented but Fluky
was always an innovator, free turkey dinners on ghetto cold streets made him a Robin Hood hero
in the broken eyes of the very people he enslaved. A man far ahead of his time. Hollywood
imitation-after-death New Jack City ahead of his time. It came down that Flukey told Willie to
pull the triggers. I heard the three piece band tango, the MAC-10 playing staccato rhythm and the
MAC-11 weaving the lead part in and out of a steady 12-gauge base. I was always in love with
the music. I was a happy child of the South Side that day. Burn baby, Burn was what we heard,
and I walked with Apollo.
Jesse Sensibar’s work has appeared in such places as The Tishman Review, Stoneboat Journal, and Waxwing. Jesse's first full-length work, Blood in the Asphalt, is forthcoming from Tolsun Books. You can find him at jessesensibar.com.