His first single, at 17, was so advanced,
Too sophisticated for even the Doo Wop residue
That hung over steak Philly like cheese,
The twist had twistered from this town
Never to be seen again
Except in the hair
But it was in the air, the Romeos,
Kenny's dream, there at the start,
Use the radio for good,
The good of love in all its otherworldly glory,
Of peace through listening,
Making even the expressway a heart.
A lion knows when to pounce
And when to look, and Kenny
Knew both, transmuted the Bachs
Near Wayne State to the
South Philadelphia streets,
The most hopeless of places.
Where better to give hope
Of a love train mothers fathers sisters brothers
House band, love its message?
Only an orchestra was worthy of this Philly.
The arrangements he commissioned
Felt as real as the Freedom Theatre,
As the natter on the French horn stoops
And the lips on pizzicato rooftops,
The words, Kenny's sword, cut so deep
In love you only could fall right in
To a hole so sweet you could ride the air
Swirl of Philly Free to World B
Before it became the symbol of America
Before it became crystalized as disco
Before it became the 70s themselves.
There was an actual business plan
With all that infused the Jersey breezes,
To clean up the ghetto in fact
Which meant in fact to face the fact
You're not a victim if you do not
Choose to be.
The sun shone kindly
Even on his indiscretions,
How valuable they were to the cause
Of saving the black male
By the strength of his grace,
How much he could bend
To those stringent strings
Yet stay strong as the streets.
Even tho
The traffic lights in North Philly
Are the only light
Down a long street
And the pleasures of musical flesh
Smelled like so much peddling
When the cocaine turned serious
Heat up on the girls who wanted to be 3 degrees
Unhooked in that long coke binge 1980s
When Michael showed he listened to Kenny
Like few before him, how the rose
Of music can burn right through the thorns
To the glorious pools
Where we bathe each other
With golden water
Under columns of brotherly love.
But the world could not contain
The heaven of music
And Kenny turned to the children
Of his children, offering school
With a non-misinformed education,
One that stresses, you guessed it, love
And graduates based on standards
Of peace and brotherhood.
And even when that loophole was tightened
By the crack bank, he stayed a lion,
Pleaded for money otherwise thrown to graft
To build houses, grow children,
Serve communities, find opportunities
In the blackened shell of the one last church.
He gambles there still, with the lost
Who always had a voice
He never failed
To hear.
