People vs. Dr. Chilledair: The Last Kind

Men, women, and girl singers -

of the three kinds of humans

you were the last. You loved jazz

and the smoky little rooms

where the tunes got played. They

took note of your crusade, your

scat without scatting, your

vibrato-less gee-whizzy Fifties cool,

plus this pluperfect female shape

even George Shearing could see.

But they kept listening because

of your uninhibited phrasing,

your mad human offerings

of punctuation: semicolons where

men could breathe, commas to

put women at ease, parentheses

that gave girl singers courage.

That you always sang haunted

was widely-felt, but the ghosts were

only known by a few. Born to

be blue was always more than

a song. Then rock-n-roll invaded

our land and the loud was too

much, so you made yourself silent,

an esoteric casualty of war.

There will never be another you

is more than a song.

People vs. Dr. Chilledair