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An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician.
Thanks to the poets…and enjoy!
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photo by Joe Maita*
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On Streets of Cerulean Blue
I’ve come to walk
with you on these streets of poetry.
your metaphors of understanding
come in shades of cerulean
bleu de france / & merlot.
your soul is quotable.
& I see you as a unicorn
of azure blue / & sapphire blue.
I listen to the sounds of burgundy
wine and Egyptian blue.
I get drunk on you!
my blues are indigo / pigments
of antiquity / atmospheric longing
as Cecile McLorin Salvant sings the
Easy Come, Easy Go Blues.
and I don’t know
what I’m to do with you!
walk with me down these
poetry streets of cerulean blue.
I need inspiration. I’ve come
to depend on you.
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by Connie Johnson
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Warmth & Prayer
He huddles himself into a corner –
you know, that niche where
the dumpster doesn’t quite meet the wall –
and finds comfort, convincing himself that
the wind is actually a Wynton trumpet solo.
by Dan Franch
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Feelin’ the cicada spirit
The drone of cicadas seems
part of the soundscape, like air
or light or an ethereal essence
that we take for granted. The
background hum of the universe
reminds us every seventeen years
that we’re still clueless when it
comes to the larger scale, still
little kids in the sandbox, pushing our
Tonka trucks around, building things,
acting oh so profound. I cue up
Grant Green’s Feelin’ the Spirit,
and soon the cicadas’ song
melds with Grant’s gospel guitar,
Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho,
sweet, swinging soul chiming
right in with the cicadas, tying
everything together. The air
is alive, the melodies magical.
Go Down, Moses,
Go down.
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by Gene Hyde
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Gumbo Dance
At Sweetnin’s
on fri-day
people bring all they got;
themselves, dry and raw
they dance
stir up heat
(all through the night)
eyes hot
tight and oily
like black-eyed peas
golden, greasy thighs
pop and simmer-
in spicy sweat
toes turn to okra
the music’s beat,
like a spoon
stirs and scrapes
against the walls
(all through the night)
the people bite
their sausage lips
lick out tongues
curled at the end like shrimp
at the corners of mouths
spit swells into rice
(all through the night)
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by J. Stephen Whitney
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Ghost Drum
………….(for Howard Hart)
it was of the other world
he played
phrases engraved
in stone
the sound of sound
turned inside out
coming from the sun
behind the sun
the black sun
alchemical sun
ghost drums
long lines of ashes
pyramids of bones
inside a cathedral of snow
jaguar diablo
blood of the lamb
the black sun
alchemical sun
sun behind the sun
tender lips kissing lips
around midnight
long stretches of silence
promethean love affair
in an eagle’s nest
luminous wings
open & close
antiphonal rhythms
time a zoo
absolute freedom of the imagination
in the cottonwood drum
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by John Knoll
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Within Sight
To prevent the sound of a door’s closure
A window shuts unable
Rough suede shoes are unmoving
On the stiffened feet fronting the ambient glass reflection
A longing face remains standing endurant
Though not the one preference wants to see
Then the first notes of Desmond’s alto lament are cast
Dwelling on the vagaries bewitching Love’s determined
Permanence before becoming bothered and bewildered
A bane only to the negligent
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by Terrance Underwood
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Even the Beard Had Soul
Music listening started
hot 100 charted &
earful snap, crackle, pop
till “Timex All Star Jazz Show”
1959
Vocalists, musicians
heartfelt renditions
casual sophistication
standards melding cool
TV entertained
Among the fine array
celestial jazz cadre
sloping horn, fuzzy lip,
puffy cheeks — “Dizzy G”
my attention gained
Bravely “Diz” parried
Mr. Armstrong legendary
“Umbrella Man” melody
idyllic ♪notes♪ dueling
*bursting* in between
Youthful curiosity
manifest epiphany
takeaway impressions
burgeoning life lessons
hummed since ‘59
Serenity essence hip
soul patch under Dizzy’s lip
skyward trumpet still surprises
caressing heaven
the need arises
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by Mike Mignano
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Running with Fire
It’s the
dark corners
where shadowy
spirits live
from distant places
forming words
jazz words
smoked over fires
penned on paper,
sleeves and napkins
stories of struggle
passion and lust
labor without gain
while pressing
and pushing
out and away
through horns
and bass
making sense
of it all
,
Roger Singer
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Frantic Antic
In The Black Olive
Bluejay
Be bop
Clever
Feather
Hip hop
among these
leaves a
lone
Squirrel
Rollicks same
Shakin’ that
Bushtail
Refrain
while
Mockingbird
Mimicry
Jams
Yardbird
Virtuosity
Ignited
I’m delighted
By such
Soliloquy
Abjure this
Mild fealty
Only if
Necessary
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by Terrance Underwood
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A New Memorial Day
I’m standing at the cemetery gates in awe
…………….and esteem
unlike the white stones at Arlington these flags wave
…………….as blue notes
the epitaphs go unspoken, those that love the music
…………….know their names
these are not tombs of the unknown but tombs of should
…………….be better praised
the graves are from before my time and those I’ve
…………….seen live,
trumpet fanfares and saxophone choruses should play
…………….twenty-one notes
in respect of America’s true art form that each
…………….strived for
maybe a parade throughout the land music joined
…………….hand to hand–
my only answer, is to listen closely as I walk
…………….among them
before I join the field of stones of those that truly
…………….loved them
knowing it will take my lifetime to build a small
…………….stone cairn
for every stela I’ve had the privilege to hear
…………….and honor.
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by Daniel Warren Brown
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Just Memories
late night alleyway
echoes with a tenor sax
a cat passes by
heels click
on the gravel
coffee steam curls
to the tune of smoky keys
the slow river flows
pretending he’s happy
just like me
old Coltrane
crackles from a radio
memories return
mama’s stew melts
in the pot
a voice like dusk
fills the crowded bar
red dress in the dark
the bartender
flirts
old man at the keys
playing what he can’t forget
jazz in the veins
taking a slow stroll
home tonight
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by Andrew Brindle and Christina Chin (italics)
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Tempo
In those dear early hours
Late at night
My mind mingles with the melody
Settling old scores I had with myself
Biding my time for moments like this
When I can just sound down
To the bare minimum
Listening to ghosts
Through haunting harmonics
That encapsulate my spirit
Like forgotten memories remembered again
Falling into the brown water stain on the ceiling
Where I find myself returning
To that carefree adolescence
Out of this careworn senescence.
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by Anthony Ward
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Mr Magic
living room rendezvous
in the nude & in love with you
doin’ da bump to a mellow groove
Grover Washington’s Mr Magic
before I even knew what jazz could do
easy laughter / your smile
& sunlight
through venetian blinds
you’ve claimed my body
& my mind!
was it really the music
or was it magic?
or was it just
being young
& in love?
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by Connie Johnson
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A Sunday Kind of Love
The first time I heard Etta James it was at a small
club somewhere in southern California, late ’60’s.
Small, petite, a voice as big as the Grand Canyon.
She opened her mouth; out came magic.
Words of longing flowed from her lips as easy
as a man’s hand on her silk skin. She hoped
to find her man, though many left her standing
alone.
Until, at last, he came along. The one she
waited for; blue skies above, heart beating
with dreams woven into desires that lasted
past Saturday nights. A Sunday kind of love.
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by Judith Vaughn
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Wings
the worker bee doesn’t need wings
unlike most angels, just give her a
jazz groove and she will soar
on its own momentum, like a tune
getting stronger. Like wildflowers,
her beauty brings out the brightness
in a room, every time she walks by
i am overwhelmed by her light.
I am always enchanted by angel
wings, her saxophone always leaves
her mark when she swings…
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by Erren Kelly
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Lonesome Blues
Etta sings.
The drummer thumps
a steady beat
and the Blues flow
like the rain outside.
I sit here alone,
no one to hold,
no one to ease the pain.
The Blues
cut through,
like a knife
and my heart aches
with every note.
The rain keeps fallin’ —
I’m lost in an endless
sea of thoughts
and love is to blame.
Time to move on,
time to leave
the Blues behind.
Maybe tomorrow
I’ll love again.
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Time flies
Not like an airplane
gliding with force
through the sky.
Not like the baller
launching his taut torso
toward the hoop.
Not quite like
the irretrievable curlicue dip
and dart of a quiet butterfly.
None of these
though irretrievability
quietly becomes time.
When time flies
it has a funkiness
to the way it flies.
Like the night you show
for a one-band open mic
at Sharpshooters Grille
and they jam
like true rock journeymen
with Austerlitz adding
the jolt of a jazz titan
his sax whistling to our souls,
his backwards cap
pointing us to the future
and the well from which it springs.
You realize
when your head clears
that only the five or ten
fellow grey hairs
who were there
can say they saw it.
Only they can say
they heard it.
Only we can produce
a true word about it
if we can remember it hence.
That’s how time flies
like that.
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by Gary Ciocco
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Dreams of Kerouac on a Soho Night
Those Bloomsbury evenings would often throw
Me out of their gilded doors with a zeal & desire
To go & investigate a life that lingered just a little
Bit under…
Tales of the road, of eating lunch as nature intended
& howling at the will of the establishment all got
Me very excited & as the nights wore on I’d stalk
The streets of Soho looking…
I’d look for the worst bars where I’d go & sit &
Slowly drown myself in Kerouacian dreams of
Run-down bars & jazz-soaked bums until eventually
The words started pouring out…
& it ain’t changed since as now I look back on
Those times of youthful exhuberance from the
Distance of middle-age but even after the bars
Have died the jazz has always remained…
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Toots Thielemans Through Earbuds Saturday Morning
………………….(for Michael Newell)
After three days of thunder,
back pain and punctuality,
I arrive on this side street
walled by billowing trees.
Branches heap up leafage
in buoyant mounds.
Clouds tower above,
with pan-flat bottoms.
They are eruptive, seductive
in their curded, wind-sculpted heights.
I am here because wasting time
is what the one-eyed Jack-of-diamonds
does best. Here to watch, witness
how clouds rise graded from a murky dark
to incandescent in their cathedral vaults.
Between the cumulus, sapphire expanses
exhale, vast and open
as phrases off the jazz-man’s harp.
As he works a rubato through nodes and swells
birds appear, wing between green sprigs.
That is when Toots lifts these oaks up
to balloon toward the clouds. Tree roots
dangle, loose as tentacles swilled
and awash in a swollen sea.
It is that easy for a Jazz God
to flick, then press his tongue
against a harmonica’s small openings
so his voluminous breaths roll
and billow while light arcs and vaults
over houses, streets and cars.
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by Ed Ruzicka
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As Day Ends
Clark Terry’s horn unleashes
a silvery note
…………………………that ascends
……………………………………….ever higher
…………………………………………………to join a golden full moon
………………………………………………………………..rising into early evening orbit.
When the note ends, listeners
discover they have forgotten
…………………………to breathe,
……………………………………….and slowly rejoin
………………………………………………………………..their quiet neighborhood
and prepare for sleep
……………….where they will drift
down a midnight river filled
……………….with remembrance of music
and the unspooling of life.
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by Michael L. Newell
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Jazzman
Riffin’ on the cool life under hot lights
on one-night stands in funky bands
livin’ fast and loud like the licks
you’re blarin’ across the room
settlin’ quickly on the gloom
you lay it down real good
showin’ lotsa swagger and ‘tude
for the cats and chicks to groove
takin’ ‘em on a far-out trip
where everyone’s hip
to midnight revels and sleep at noon
to smack and weed and booze and broads
and seein’ dawn from another point of view
but while we hear what you’re sayin’
and wanna believe
watchin’ those bloodshot eyes
and seein’ those deep lines in your face
and that suit hanging so slack
on your wasted frame
we gotta ask, dude, like,
in your heart of hearts
you know, like way down deep
is it really so cool, jazzman?
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by Tim Maloney
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*Photo is of Ro Gebhardt (guitar); Jean-Marc Robin (drums); Jan von Klewitz (saxophone) at Jazzclub Nordhausen.
Nordhausen, Germany. April 5, 2025
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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.
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Malaysian artist Christina Chin is a widely published haiku poet. She is a four-time recipient of top 100 in the mDAC Summit Art Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center. She is the sole haiku contributor for MusArt book of Randall Vemer’s paintings. 1st prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest. 1st prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photo-haiku Contest.
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Gary Ciocco facilitates philosophy, writes poetry, and reads print material. He has performed his poetry while jazz great Paul Austerlitz played his saxophone. He lives south of Pittsburgh and teaches for Carlow University and WVU. He has published poetry in several journals, and reviews poetry and philosophy books for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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Russell duPont is an artist and an author whose artwork is included in a number of public and private collections. He has published three novels, King & Train, Waiting for the Turk and Movin’ On, the sequel to King & Train; two books of poetry; and two non-fiction chapbooks. His essay, “The Corner,” is included in the anthology Streets of Echoes. His work has been published in various newspapers and literary magazines. He was the founder & publisher of the literary magazine, the albatross.
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After spending nine years in Estonia, Dan Franch now lives in Luxembourg.
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Gene Hyde lives near Asheville, North Carolina where he spends his days archiving Appalachia in all its diverse wonder. His writing and photography have appeared in Valley Voices; Tiny Seed Literary Journal; The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture; Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry; Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis; and Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene.
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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.
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Erren Kelly is a three-time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston whose work has appeared in 300 publications (print and online), including Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine, Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, and Poetry Salzburg.
Click here to read “Under Quarantine” — COVID-era poetry of Erren Kelly, published by Jerry Jazz Musician
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John Knoll’s poetry books include The Magic Vessel, Wrestling the Wheel, Ghosting America, Elevator Music for the Dead, Opera of Virus, Hummingbird Graffiti and Black Mesa Blues. Knoll has performed with jazz and rock bands. John Macker and Knoll collaborated on Black Wing, a CD. Joe Speer and Knoll co-wrote and performed two plays: Palm Sunday and Central Casting.
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Tim Maloney is a musician, author, and retired arts administrator living in the Hudson Valley, whose poetry has been published in Bare Root Review, Fortunate Traveller, Ilya’s Honey, Leaflets, Muskeg Review, Poetry On and Off the Wall, Red River Review, Silver Birch Press, Syncopation Literary Journal, and The Talking Stick.
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Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton on England’s south coast. Recent poems have been published at Mad Swirl, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Blotter Rag, Dear Booze, Fixator Press and in the Acid Bath anthology ‘Night Terrors’. His most recent book came out last year from the Alien Buddha Press.
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Mike Mignano, retired Ocala, FL.
Hometown Ithaca, NY. Interests
include: history, travel, guitar,
choral singing, viewing sports
attending theatre and reading
poetry.
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Michael L. Newell lives on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. His most recent book of poems is Passage of a Heart.
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The lightning-cracked pages of Ed Ruzicka’s third, full-length book of poems, Squalls (Kelsay Books), was released in March. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary and many other literary publications. Ed, who is also the president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana, lives with his wife, Renee, in Baton Rouge.
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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.
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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.
Click here to read Proceeding From Behind: A collection of poems grounded in the rhythmic, relating to the remarkable, by Terrance Underwood
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Judith Vaughn lives in Sonoma, California. She is a member of PoeticLicenseSonoma, who read their poetry the 4th Tuesday of each quarter at Sebastopol Center for the Arts in Sebastopol, CA; and Redwood Writers’, A branch of the California Writers Club.
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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.
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Stephen Whitney is a Portland, Oregon writer who takes a strong approach to his creativity and has a genuine desire to write. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. He looks to the spontaneity of jazz for creative inspiration.
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Click for:
Information about Kinds of Cool: An Interactive Collection of Jazz Poetry
More poetry on Jerry Jazz Musician
“Saharan Blues on the Seine,” Aishatu Ado’s winning story in the 68th 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!)
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