About Bob Kaufman

I know that he’s beat

            down into the smoky basements of screaming

            jazz

            and groove groveling bodies under the tar foundations of a haunted city’s streets.

I know he’s been beat

            into the unappreciated patriarch of a fatherless generation

looking for enlightenment

in the furrow of a jazzman’s brow.

I know his beat

            when he’s walking with Parker

in and out of shadows

through the 4 am alleyways of a poetic North Beach fog.

And I feel his beat

            coexisting in the holy middle

            of a round world

            shaped by hands for consumption.