A couple years ago I was lucky enough to interview Amiri Baraka.   During the interview he allowed me to film a reading of a poem that he wrote many years ago about Pres called Pres Spoke a Language.

Pres Spoke a Language

Pres spoke in a language“of his own.”

What did he say, between the horn lines,

pork pie hat tenor tilted

Pres once was a drummer but gave it up cause other dudes was getting the foxes

while he packed his tom toms

“Ding Dong,” pressd, meaning like a typewriter, its the end of this line

. “No Eyes,” pres would say, meaning I didn’t couldn’t dig it and what it was was lame,

Pres had a language and a life, like, all his own

But in the teeming whole of us he lived toooting on his sideways horn translating

Frankie trumbauer into Bird’s feathers Tranes sinewy tracks

the slickster walking through the crowd surviving on a terrifying wit

its the jungle the jungle the jungle we living in

and cats like pres could make it because they were clear they,

at least, had to, to do anything else.S ave all that comrades, we need it.