A whap, whap, whap and a brush, brush, brush, and a thump, thump, thump go the drums...it is another Tuesday night in the ultra cool jazz club and the badger is on his game…as always...he is the best drummer in the city if not the entire universe and all the universes...he lays down a beat to end all beats...everybody else is just there for decoration and to pay homage to the master...he keeps a low profile of course being a badger and all...and he’s not easy to get to know...but, all the other musicians in the city want to play with him...he’s played with some of the greats like Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and others...Chicago, New York, Los Angeles...they just want to be part of his scene...and the young ones who play...they’re looking for greatness by osmosis...he owns the scene...if he isn’t there, there is no scene...one thing is for sure, he is to be seen...as you can probably tell now, this isn’t no ordinary badger...it’s hard to find badgers who are into jazz...I find most of them gravitate more toward rock and roll...I knew some badgers who put together a grunge band in Seattle, but this badger, he is fluent in the many languages of jazz and every night he can be found with the other hipsters putting down a groove late into the hours in some bar somewhere...this badger is one cool cat with his shades and his groove on...he don’t care where he plays, he’s just got to play...not only is he a jazz master, he is also adept at writing some mean poetry...Keats and Browning and Frost have got nothing on him when it comes to writing...I mean, they couldn’t hold his pen Jack...when he does one of his readings, the place is packed and there is total and complete silence; I mean everybody is hanging on every word that comes out of that little mouth...he out beats the beats...he has one of those deep voices that demands respect and his readings are always overflowing with his loyal admirers...half the stuff he says don’t make no sense to me but I don’t know much about poetry and besides, if he wrote it, they must make some sense to somebody...after he finishes, everybody snaps their fingers as they pledge allegiance to his brand of cool...sometimes, he even breaks out the bongos and plays a little while he is reading, just for dramatic effect...when he plays the bongos, the beads go flying back and forth as he rocks from side to side...people run up and down the aisles to collect money to buy some wine for the readings and everything is real mellow...when he reads with other poets, he is always the star of the show...he was once named one of the up and coming poets in some national magazine, but he blew off the photo shoot...he was too cool, he was so cool, he said he didn’t care about that...the important thing man was the poetry...nobody knows where he lives, or where he goes, or much else about him...he just comes out of the shadows late into the night and gets behind those drums and starts doing his thing...there’s a whole harmonic heaven going on there; a whole rhapsody of the spirit...the next time you’re in town, go to one of the jazz clubs on Rush Street in Chicago, look for the coolest, darkest, place you can find and you’ll find the hippest badger ever playing a smooth groove, and maybe he can lay some poetry on you too.
