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Poem: Michael Danso’s Dino’s George’s

    One evening a long time ago, I took two of my daughters on a ‘daddy daughter(s) date’ to a jazz club in downtown Toronto.  The club was owned, I suppose, by a fellow named George, but the head waiter, who really looked like he ran the place, was named Dino.  Well, I think my two oldest daughters were around 13 or 14 at the time, and one of them (Lisa) played the flute.  I knew that the jazz ensemble, which was playing that evening, had a fairly well-known flute player with them, so I thought that my daughter would relate to that and so that’s why we picked this place.

    We ate dinner very leisurely, listened to the music, talked, and laughed throughout the evening. We were totally absorbed in the atmosphere drinking one Shirley Temple after another until about midnight.  Then, my ‘sophisticated ladies’ and me went home with a wonderful memory.  Then, a long time after that, when the girls had grown older, I went back there on my own to perhaps re-kindle the memory of that wonderful evening.  The flute player, Moe Kaufman, wasn’t there that night, but this jazz singer, Michael Danso, was performing with a back-up band of three musicians I named, “Plinkety Flew (the guitarist), Boom Soon (the drummer), Brown Moon (the bass fiddler), and Tune After Tune (Michael Danso, the vocalist).  And so, while sitting at a table, drinking one Shirley Temple after another, I took out a pen and wrote on a napkin:


Michael Danso’s Jazz at Dino’s Georges


Like the old days weddings:
                                             the swooze
                                             the booze
fighting
            the snooze
                              in a fishbowl

of

birds --
Sat—ur—day—night market

of

feather flapping fowls
clucking their necks
beneath
ball socket sacks
                            and jowls
eyeing
the swealy swell
                           slop pop

of

the unk-unk
                    oinky trade

of

the dainty quainty
                            earring
                                        man-maid
the plinkity sink me
                               monkey man
                                                     tinkly
                                                              piany songs

of

four men in a kazoo:
                                 Plinkety Flew
                                 Boom Soon
                                 Brown Moon
                                 and
                                 Tune After Tune
                                                           all
                                                                through the late
                                                                                          late afternoon.



Copyright © 1988 Paul Anthony Belfiglio