.
.
An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician. This edition features poets – several new to readers of this website – writing about their appreciation for the music, how it shows up in their daily lives, and displaying their reverence for the likes of Billy Strayhorn, Joe Henderson, Ernestine Anderson, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Red Garland.
As always, thanks to the poets…and enjoy!
Joe Maita
Editor/Publisher
.
.
_____
.
.
photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Henry “Red” Allen, 1946
.
_____
.
What Songs Do
And in the time it takes
for the bud to fully bloom
lone piano notes edge towards such
from brief chords to arpeggio
continue to glissando
before a Joe Henderson
saxophone fulfills Lotus Blossom
a flower’s aural radiance completed
.
by Terrance Underwood
.
___
.
Little Paradise
like the jazz we heard in Santa Barbara
blue ocean waves / avenues of wonder
………………………………………..& time
the entity that brought us here.
“was it you or me who chose this bogus cannabis?”
a $35 blue dream when red wine / next time / in a little bar
with stringed lights ‘cross the door would do the trick.
……………a beckoning elixir
the wine flows / the jazz
does, too.
how ‘bout some change for the jukebox?
Eliane Elias floats thru “Little Paradise”
a bossa nova sway / what do ya say?
“I should feel sad but I choose
not to be.”
…………..my dreams are blue;
………………my memories, too.
but this Brazilian jazz in
Santa Barbara is so easy breezy.
I feel like just maybe
we could be / reborn
in a seaside hotel
on a bouncy
water bed.
“do you remember?”
“I do. It was little
paradise.”
.
by Connie Johnson
.
___
.
Woman in Blue
A muted trumpet almost wails, yet reflecting the tune
The melody touches me in a corner of my open mind
That, until this eerie sound began to play, was hidden
But now, following along in synchrony with the mood
Embracing an image, half-portrayed and out of focus
A woman sidling nearer, with an odd thoughtful look
She shimmers, as if the intent all along was to confuse
And, just for that one moment, she stops and smiles
As the delicacy and all harmony edge toward collapse
Accompaniments with an initial sense of randomness
Almost as a distraction from the underlying message
Yet underneath, minor chords tug softly at the heart
That are a tincture of hope, sadness and desperation
But that woman in blue remains there in my memory
And shares an open question, even as the music dies
.
by Howard Osborne
.
___
.
Music
……………………….…for Ernestine Anderson,
………………………………………………and for Karen
Does music make us over
or make up for all we’ve
missed, or all endured?
Yes, perhaps, sometimes
yet when Ernestine steps
down from the bandstand
after her last set while
half the crowd makes for
the door, the other half
lingers, muttering praise
vaguely in her direction,
and a few brave, flush souls
who bought her tape at the bar
sidle up for an autograph and
when your turn comes she looks
at you–this woman it would be
hard to say exactly how old,
beautiful maybe but hard, hard
times carved like hieroglyphs
at the corners of sleepy eyes–
looks at you, then the man
you’re with, a younger man,
then back at you, and smiles
a knowing, saying smile saying
I know where you been, honey,
it wasn’t easy for you and me
to meet here tonight, been
a long, long road, and you
got yourself a young thing,
good for you, and you think,
well, but Ernestine, you got
the music, smiling too, saying
nothing, proffering a pen and
she sighs and signs and says
to one of her handlers, “Honey,
get me a drink, will you, please”
and heads for a table and sinks
down onto the chair, you can see
the music’s all gone for tonight
and she’s left with the knowing,
the years, and the smile fading
to blankness, and you know, don’t
want to know but know the music
is only the music while it lasts,
leaving her when it leaves with
all the rest to face, too tired
to dance, and your heart sinks
down with her there even though
you wouldn’t have wanted, not
for the world, to miss a note.
.
by John Menaghan
.
___
.
Have You Forgotten
My Telephone Number?
I thought that if I told you
About a foliage of leaves / the aftertaste of jazz
The veins of memory & my vocalic technique
That we could reach a new understanding
One in which I wouldn’t over-step / I’d glide on
Blue notes / Billy Strayhorn in my blood stream
I try to focus!
On cinematic notes of utopia
This nightlife feels iconic —
O Billy, won’t you speak to me?
In an impromptu jazz session
In a claustrophobic
Reverie
Can’t you see
You’re too tethered to reality?
Your droll remarks won’t deter me
You’re flippin’ / you’re flippin’
But I still aspire
To be your
Satin doll
.
by Connie Johnson
.
___
.
Both Directions at Once: the Lost Album
Title of a jazz recording and simultaneously
an apt phrase to characterize the recent rise
in conflicting impulses in my journey toward me:
east toward the snow and ice of my infancy and
west in the direction of sun-drenched re-location;
north as in the true original national configuration,
south as in the origin of dual parents of rebel states;
up as in the upwards motion of this drive to thrive,
down as in the downfall of ambition and achievement;
backwards as in the regression to serial transgression,
forward as in the four words needed to spell success.
.
by Charles A. Perrone
.
___
.
Lush Life
Jazz and cocktails
Brushes and mallets
Tux and bow tie
A hint of art deco in the air
The mood is set
We embark
On Billy Strayhorn’s
Mysterious
Masterpiece
The light touch
Of every delicious note
The blues disguised
In the heart of a ballad
Where once
The Duke
And Ella
Spun their magic
And told a sad story
We retrace the steps
As if drawn into its’ sultry lament
The perils of drink
The utter futility of love
The lush life
Played out
In entrancing melodies
Dreamlike chords
Changes unexpected
At all the right moments
A bold flourish rewards the end
Billy, it had to be you
As if Cole Porter and Scott Fitzgerald
Had shared a piano bench
I can’t help but feel
If played just right
It’s as lush as this life can get
.
by David Nemerov
.
___
.
Night and Day
Visiting Jazz clubs on sweltering summer nights
Skipping the darkness outside
The latent result of all those late at night
Early hours life styles
Out on the tiles
Down the basement of side alley bars
Their reluctant neon signs syncopating our vices with virtues
Our learned lungs taking in the atmosphere of the joint
Where the saxophone soars
Letting it all out
As we sink into our seats until only the seats are left standing
Then we stumble upon the morning where its already light
And we fall over ourselves onto the pavement
The stale smoke of our jackets
Congealing with the scent of freshly baked bread
Hearing the raising of the shutters
As the city prepares for the day
While we call it a night.
.
by Anthony Ward
.
___
.
Returning to Satchmo’s Sanctuary
……..a blues poem (with apologies to Langston Hughes)
Vinyl-shaped rainbow mosaics cascade across Gennett’s arc
to honor legendary men and women who left a musical mark—
…………notes that bleed onto an Indiana staff.
I felt Bix and Fats Waller and Jelly Roll watching me;
I admired their achievements, and I listened to their plea—
…………and then I heard Pops laugh …
…………and then I heard Pops laugh …
and his echo covered me with bewitched blues.
Duke Ellington rapped his fingers on ivory teeth;
Gene Autry and Big Bill Broonzy strummed a wooden leaf—
…………and Hoagy whistled a tune for Bogey’s queen.
“Don’t let people forget us,” whispered Oliver the King;
and in that quiet, Blind Lemon Jefferson began to sing:
…………“See that my grave is kept clean …”
…………“See that my grave is kept clean …”
and his echo covered me with bothered blues.
Stars began to scatter, but Artie Shaw struck up his band;
Welk danced with bubbles, but Lombardo raised his hand
…………to encourage cups of kindness and goodwill drink refrains.
Sidney Bechet blew his clarinet, and everyone stayed.
Hawkins again sat in with Henderson, and everyone swayed—
…………and we poured our bewildered blues down cosmic drains.
.
by Christopher Stolle
.
___
.
Detached By A Piano
A leaf unsteady descends
by a force unfamiliar to it
wafting to Earth
on an unfelt breath of air
having outlived its attachment
with its nurturing bark
………………………………………….Yet
its airborne finish goes unseen
the slow falling rhythm stimulates
bringing to mind Red Garland’s
trinkle opening to “Hey Now”
forsaking further favor
noticed to this leaf’s descent
.
by Terrance Underwood
.
___
.
Jalapeño Jazz Poem
I crave those jalapeño peppers!
Glossy green and red ones, so
sleek, crisp, and sassy, like the jazz I love.
They make Satchmo music in my mouth,
slide down fiery like Dizzy, Train, and Fats,
all jamming in my gullet tube together.
I grow jalapeños in my garden every summer,
eat ‘em on most everything or other,
hotter the better, love to feel that sting,
like the Dukes of Dixieland
driving Tiger Rag in double time.
Jalapeños actually aid digestion,
calm your groaning gastro like
Django and Grappelli grooving sweet and slow.
Hollow them out and fill with cheese for
jalapeño poppers to go with Miles’ boppers.
Rub raw jalapeños on chigger itches,
helps quell the pain, unless you get the juice
from your fingers to your face. Then,
you might feel like Armstrong’s Hot Five
and Jelly Roll’s Red Hot Peppers
are frying in your eyes ~ caramba!
Try some jalapeño jelly;
it will sit easy in your belly,
on some hot homemade bread,
like Ella or Lady Day soothing
your lonely evening blues with
comfort food for a jazz-starved soul.
Buy those jalapeños chipotle-smoked,
strew in soup, stew, or what-have-you.
Baby, there’s no wilder, sweet-hot
flavor for feeling Thelonious,
Bill Evans, Cannonball, or the MJQ,
cooking cool jazz with hot jalapeños;
they are oh so jazz-a-licious!
.
by Michael Baldwin
.
___
.
The Beat Man
sweaty faces
feet tapping
shadows wavering
the drummer
works the pain
beating the beat
starting a fire
as the high hat
stings the air
promising
the dust of
bright stars
as the jazz
runs the night
.
by Roger Singer
.
___
.
Jazz Pick-Me-Up
Classic standards
………………Modern blends
S p o n t a n e i t y
Subtle solos
………………Sorrows loosed
Rusty § shackles § free
Rhythmic changes
………………Quicksilver
Ripp~ling onward stream
O’er the baseline
………………♪♪ notes ♪♪ awash
Whisk soul fully clean
Jazz elations
………………Pick-me-up
=Balanced= life sustain
Hear me humming
………………Hear me sing
In what time remain
.
by Mike Mignano
.
___
.
Rim Shot
If one’s intention
Is to gain attention
A little intervention
Holds great appeal
It’s at the crest
Before the rest
It’s in the feel
A good swift kick
A one note lick
Of stick
On steel
In its’ wake
It leaves a space
Time stands still
A silent fill
Like the sound of a gun
It gets it done
A stout report
Without retort
For a few quiet moments
Waiting for the one
And off we go again
Two and four
As it was before
It’s in the pace
It has its’ place
It’s in the space
It’s in the silence
It creates
.
by David Nemerov
.
___
.
Tocolytic Haze
Contractions comin’
But it’s not time
Gotta slow things down
Gotta hang fire
Help me
Oh, no, not yet
Tell the child to wait
Breathe and be still
Tiri-Tiri Tiri-Tiri Ta Ta
Ta Ta Ti-Ti Ta
Ta Ta Ta Ta
Too Too
Feel what’s expected
Delay delivery
Hold up the beat
Back-phrase for your life
Please help me
Tocolytic haze
No, no, no
Oh, oh, no
Stop the momentum
Relax the smooth muscle
Of the myometrium
Need to improvise
What a
What a wonderful
What a wonderful world
.
……….originally published by Thimble Literary Magazine
.
by Lara Dolphin
.
___
.
So What
…………………………………………….Miles got them going —
……………….one damn great quIntet —
………………………Cannonball, BilL Evans,
…………………………..Paul ChambErs and, of course, ‘trane.
……..And, Man, that double baSs intro,
…………………………..the jarring, soaring flight from be-bop
…………to a harmony based on Scale..
……………………………….Davis’ sOlo — jazz history in the making —
….affirming an epiphany in his Work —
……………………………………always aHead of his time,
………………………………………..so whAt
………………………………if we’re lefT kind of blue
.
by Russell Dupont
.
___
.
Thank you Clifford
when jazz rains on the windowpane
blue black
wet notes hitting a flat sound
trumpet
black tar road
and in between the tall-tall buildings
where a woman closes the drapes quickly
a voice over could or should start here
a detective
a dick
or Kerouac
not talking fast dick
not stuttering
when your woman knocks on your door
only she’s not your woman
but she wants to be
asking you for some cat food or something
and the radio glows
takes up the whole living room
she steps in to see
to hear
and the night just goes on from there
and i love that word
AND
it’s an unawkward word,
said to be for the unintelligent
but it too is jazz
AND
the rain is on the windowpane
beating faster now
close together
it’s love baby
it’s the night
an hour where the following day
doesn’t matter
Miles and Clifford Brown
they have saved you man
it’s a world that needs to no words
because the trumpet is speechless
it needs no fancy words
it has everything else
You give the lady
your lady the cat food
but tell her to move her cat in here
with you
AND
the jazz is in the background now
the rain is black
shoes are slapping off a sidewalk
a sidewalk you’re no longer on
an empty sidewalk
without umbrellas
without cars
AND you
close the drapes
.
by Martin Durkin
.
___
.
Kansas City
……………for Muddy’s little women
Jazzman say with a little toss of blue bass and hit of spiky sound that he coming to TOWN. My town. KC. Thank, gawd!
Kansas City, 12th and Vine, he gonna sit there waiting for me with a ton of fresh wine I done never seen.
And he might take a train or a plane or something like that but it will be his lovely legs coming to me and he calls me one of his crazy little women, but I’m gonna be his only One. Crazy too. Watch me! Oof. I been playing this part single so long, I’ll play any number of strings for ol’ Jazzman. When that guitar smashes against my body it cracks open something so keen to the imagination I can only wail.
Care for me, guitar. Tell me your nastiest secrets, strings. Let’s go back to Kansas City while the sax screams its ugliest stories and the harmonica sizzles me alive.
.
by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
.
___
.
Three Musicians In Sense Of Place
Paris 1921
With singular imagination
like a key modulation
Picasso transposed three cafe musicians
into cubist cutout images
of
(a Mime
a Harlequin
a Monk)
just as I
with my imagination
transpose three musicians
(a Bird
a Duke
a Monk)
to a sense of place, an identity space
(Minton’s
The Cotton Club
The Five Spot)
as if I can collage them
to these hallowed places
with my ears. Like a memory
I don’t possess
they are everlasting residents
and they must never leave.
.
by Daniel Warren Brown
.
___
.
Faded Music
the photo bleeds the past
faces dimmed and buildings
distant and muddied by time
your smile breaks my heart
with its tentative beauty its askew
embrace of pain anticipated
and due to arrive sooner than
even you realized and I wonder
who is that standing behind you
arms enfolding your shoulders
looking content and totally unaware
of the years to come
why does this image of you and me
and our friends and acquaintances
overwhelm my senses as though
I were listening to a blues lament
sung and played by Muddy Waters
B B King and John Lee Hooker
while jazz dancers enact love
and its inevitable loss
all those decades past
whisper their faint faded
music through photo and memory
and I would ask forgiveness
for what was and what wasn’t
except I do not know the words to say
or who would listen and I lift my eyes
to a sliver of moon sailing
behind storm clouds its silvery promise
sailing away with love’s abandoned cadences
.
by Michael L. Newell
.
___
.
Sentimental Journey
My parents weren’t the sentimental type
and so I’ll never know what yearning
they may have felt as I left home
to seek my fortune
Were they relieved to be rid
of that damn trombone I was always practicing?
Or did they come to regret
the musty silence of their declining years?
Me, I’m keenly aware
of my evanescent privilege of live music
as my son pounds on the piano
Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk.”
Melancholy overtakes me
to think he’ll soon be out.
After that, the only jazz
in our home will be recorded.
.
by Charles Albert
.
.
_____
.
.
Charles Joseph Albert works as a metallurgist and writes poetry and prose while the slag is cooling. His most recent poems are collected in vvvA Feel for the Waterv (2022) and his short-story collection A Horde of Cossacks was published in 2023.
.
.
_____
.
.
Michael Baldwin is a retired library administrator and professor of American Government. He has published 7 volumes of poetry, two novels, and five volumes of science-fiction short stories. He is also a former amateur jazz clarinetist. His novel, Murder Music, follows several jazz musicians on a quest to solve the mystery of why one of them is a target for murder. Baldwin’s website is www.jmbaldwin.com
.
.
_____
.
.
Daniel Warren Brown has loved jazz (and music in general) ever since he delved into his parents’ 78 collection as a child. He is a retired special education teacher who began writing as a senior. He always appreciates being published in journals and anthologies. At age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. Daniel writes daily about music, art and whatever else catches his imagination.
.
.
_____
.
.
A descendant of immigrants, Lara Dolphin lives with her family among the Allegheny Mountains of Central Pennsylvania on the ancestral land of the Susquehannock/Iroquois people. She has written three chapbooks; In Search Of The Wondrous Whole, Chronicle Of Lost Moments, and At Last a Valley. She, like countless others, hopes for a world filled with greater peace.
.
.
_____
.
.
Russell Dupont, poet, artist, novelist, has published in the albatross, Spectrum, The I, For Poets Only, The Anthology of South Shore Poets, Re-Side, Oddball, Jerry Jazz Musician, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, the new post-literate, DADAKU, One Sentence, Verse-Virtual, Lothlorien Journal, Pick-Me-Up Poetry, Poetry Porch, Concrete Formalist Poetry and the Northern New England Review. He is the author of three novels: King & Train, Waiting for the Turk, Movin’ On; a collection of short stories, Norman Mailer Walks Into a Bar; four collections of poetry: Winter, 1948, Establishing Home Plate, Jazz at the Point and One Foot in Front of the Other.
.
.
_____
.
.
Martin Durkin is a writer currently living in Plymouth MA. To date he has published three books of poetry, and has been included in dozens of anthologies. In 2025 his work will be found in Massachusetts Bards, Otherwise Engaged, and an upcoming anthology entitled, I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis, by Roseway Publishing. Durkin has had several pieces of his work turned into videos, and art prints for various universities and colleges have been part of a video series entitled, SPEAK IT!, where he delivered poetry about being a military spouse.
.
.
_____
.
.
.
Connie Johnson has multiple Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry. A California-based writer, she has authored Everything is Distant Now (Blue Horse Press) and I Have Almost Everything (Boats Against the Current). In a Place of Dreams, her digital chapbook (containing audio readings/personal narrative), was published by Jerry Jazz Musician. Click here to view it.
.
.
_____
.
.
Dr. Jennifer Maritza McCauley is the author of Scar On/Scar Off, When Trying to Return Home, Kinds of Grace and Neon Steel (2/26). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio and CantoMundo and her work has been a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Best Fiction Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a Must-Read by Elle, Latinx in Publishing, Ms. Magazine and Southern Review of Books. She has been published recently in Boston Review, Columbia Journal, Vassar Review, Acentos Review, Zone 3, Obsidian and The BreakBeat Poets: Latinext (HayMarket Press). She is fiction editor at Pleiades and an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
.
.
_____
.
.
Winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize and other awards, John Menaghan has published 4 books with Salmon Poetry–All the Money in the World (1999), She Alone (2006), What Vanishes (2009), and Here and Gone (2014)—as well as poems and articles in Irish, British, American, and Canadian journals, and given poetry readings in Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Hungary, Canada, and across the U.S. from New York to Honolulu. A fifth volume, composed entirely of his jazz-related poems, is forthcoming from Salmon.
.
.
_____
.
.
Mike Mignano, retired Ocala, FL.
Hometown Ithaca, NY. Interests
include: history, travel, guitar,
choral singing, viewing sports
attending theatre and reading
poetry.
.
.
_____
.
.
David Nemerov, 75, has been writing poems for a little over 3 years. His subjects are whatever comes to mind. Along with the poetry he moonlights as drummer with an affinity for Jazz, Blues, Zydeco, and whatever catches his fancy.
.
.
_____
.
.
Michael L. Newell lives on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. His most recent book of poems is Passage of a Heart. Click here to read “What is this Path” – a collection of poems published on Jerry Jazz Musician
.
.
_____
.
.
Howard Osborne has written poetry and short stories, also a novel and several scripts. With poems published online and in print, he is a published author of a non-fiction reference book and several scientific papers many years ago. He is a UK citizen, retired, with interests in writing, music and travel.
.
.
_____
.
.
Charles A. Perrone is a jazz/world music programmer at KSQD FM in Santa Cruz, CA. He retired from the University of Florida in 2017. In addition to books, articles and chapters on Brazilian literature and popular music, he has translated numerous contemporary Brazilian writers. He participates in writers’ groups up and down the West Coast.
.
.
_____
.
.
Dr. Roger Singer was in private chiropractic practice for 38 years in upstate New York, and served as a medical technician during the Vietnam era. Dr. Singer is the Poet Laureate of Old Lyme, Connecticut, and has had over 1,070 poems published on the Internet, magazines and in books, and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize Award Nominee. He is also the President of the Shoreline Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society.
.
.
_____
.
.
Christopher Stolle has many roles: writer, uncle, partner, music aficionado, and baseball enthusiast. His writing has been published by Indiana University Press, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Coaches Choice, Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, and Plath Poetry Project, among many others. He lives in Richmond, Indiana, the cradle of recorded jazz.
.
.
_____
.
.
Terrance Underwood is a retired Gas Turbine Package Engineer whose career offered opportunities to work all over the world. A devoted jazz enthusiast, his first memory operating a mechanical devise was a 4-speed spindle drop record changer for his father’s collection of 78s. In 2024, he was nominated by Jerry Jazz Musician for a Pushcart Prize.
Click here to read Proceeding From Behind: A collection of poems grounded in the rhythmic, relating to the remarkable, by Terrance Underwood
Click here to read his collection of poems “With Ease in Mind”
.
.
_____
.
.
Anthony Ward chooses to write because he has no choice. He writes to get rid of himself and lay his thoughts to rest. He derives most of his inspiration from listening to classical music and jazz since it is often the mood which inspires him. He has recently been published in Jerry Jazz Musician, Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, Mad Swirl, Shot Glass Journal and Ariel Chart.
.
.
_____
.
.
Click for:
Previous collections of “21 jazz poems on the 21st”
More poetry on Jerry Jazz Musician
Poems on Charlie “Bird” Parker (inspired by a painting by Al Summ) – an ekphrastic poetry collection
War. Remembrance. Walls. The High Price of Authoritarianism – by editor/publisher Joe Maita
“My Vertical Landscape,” Felicia A. Rivers’ winning story in the 69th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
More short fiction on Jerry Jazz Musician
Information about how to submit your poetry or short fiction
Subscribe to the (free) Jerry Jazz Musician quarterly newsletter
Helping to support the ongoing publication of Jerry Jazz Musician, and to keep it commercial-free (thank you!)
.
___
.
.
Jerry Jazz Musician…human produced since 1999
.
.
.
