Lenny Baker Cole

Someone whispered to Lenny Baker Cole

Not quite a cry, not really a murmur

You're gonna turn out just like your father

Blowing on that trumpet for a poor man's dime

In every hole, dive, godless den of unforgivable riff-raff

Trampling home on a belly full of malt liquor.

Spectators hailed him as the second coming of Dizzy Gillespie

Lenny swaggering and jiving down Spook Street

A savior spared from the dung heap of Rag Town!

From the lips of a mere mortal! Notes from the divine!

The suit did not fit the man though

Lenny burnt holes in his pockets, and the sharks smelled blood

Owing more than his weight in silver

Forced to play for free or not play at all.

Lenny met his end with a knife in his back

An empty case by his side where a trumpet used to be

Laid to rest in a poor man's casket

I'm glad to have known the man patrons would say

His agonized mother had inscribed on his tombstone

This world should have done better by my boy.