Dizzy (for the late jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie).

They called him Dizzy but the man had plenty sense. Pumping that trumpet like he had full moons in his jaws. A whole solar system of soul rhythms coming at ya through a brass rocket.

They called him Dizzy for clowning and frowning on stage and gusting up a musical hurricane with bebop lightning bolts thrown into the mix. His jaws looked like air pockets holding two fat ladies from the Planet Jazz doing musical somersaults. How else could he handle that tornado busting through his lungs except with comic timing, crooked trumpet and turbocharged cheeks.

They called him Dizzy but the man had plenty sense. The life expectancy for a black man is 64.2 years. Sammy Davis Miles Davis Harold Washington died on schedule. But Dizzy kept his own time a syncopated jazz man's time 75 years young and the horn blows on . . .

They called him Dizzy - Gimme some more of that Dizzy wisdom that musician's precision that comic intuition those jazzy Dizzy-isms. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you - John Birks Gillespie - Better known as Known better as Dizzy! Dizzy! Diz . . .

Joy Jones is a performance poet with The Spoken Word. Her poems have appeared in the WPFW Poetry Anthology, the SHE Anthology, and Bad Beats, Sacred Rhythms.