The Legend of "Cope With Cops"

By that time Krupp had “trained” his band
to react absolutely to his solo blowings
with lush shifting impressionistic soundscapes
swept by the gusts of his horn.
He would sculpt their vaporous atmospheres
with a velvety groan blown with the band
behind him tracing his trails, steering them
through seas of mesmerizing smoke.

Fatherproud, he invited other bigshots to “try them out.”

Most were amazed by the way
the band bent to their phrases,
and tended to blow slowly,
savoring the billowy twilit fogs
that curled to the command of their cries.

The exception was Cope. He blew fast gasps
at the band (he faced them when he played)
and forced them to guess his next gambit
in a whirling vertigo that shuddered
and shrieked like a train in an underground tunnel
beneath the black waters of the bay—the same train
they rode home every night after they played. The subway.

To Cope it felt ultimate, like a last music,
and he asked Krupp if he could “borrow” the band
to record a disc that after his last drug bust
he wanted to call Cope With Cops.
(He had a vision for the cover already:
the band trapped in cop clothes and Cope
up front fingering his horn in handcuffs.)

But Krupp sniffed doom and said nix.
And never again spoke with Cope.
Then the band blamed Krupp for stealing their spark
and left him, each down his own lone road.

The experiment was never attempted again.
By any of them.



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