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An ongoing series designed to share the quality of jazz poetry continuously submitted to Jerry Jazz Musician.
In this edition…An array of poetic styles communicate personal reverence for and experiences with jazz music, and its cherished musicians.
As always, thanks to the poets who participate in this growing community…
Enjoy!
Joe Maita
Editor/Publisher
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photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Shelly Manne, 1947
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No Security in Maturity
I thought that I was impervious to temptation
But encountering jazz, there was a fascination
It is not just music, but almost a conversation
A clear focused mind, my left brain in charge
But gave way to emotion, as if it was sabotage
A parallel life, as music came to dominate me
There were melodies, but also strange chords
Causing disharmony like clashing steel swords
And then a rush of notes like invading hordes
Always with a resolution to pain that it offers
That is just what jazz has hidden in its coffers
What sounds like a mess has a deeper purity
Growing older, yet no more resilience I fear
With no defence to sounds of jazz in my ear
It pushes my boundaries, and that is so clear
As a musical genre , it takes me by the hand
And still, it has a power I do not understand
As I realised, there is no security in maturity
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by Howard Osborne
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The First Time I Heard My Heart Scream
The first time
I heard a buttery
trumpet moaning, it
was like a blurry moon glowing
behind a blanket of Smoky Mountain fog.
At seven
I didn’t think of
songs as beautiful things
like a few of My Favorite Things.
They were nearing a sentience of
commonality in creative expression, flared
apprehension, spreading stardust in return for tributes.
The sweeping arrest
of certain tunes made new
(or new to me), like the summertime I
echoed in Symphony Hall. Not quite Catfish Row,
where Porgy took-in Bess. It was more like the resilience of
edelweiss surviving the cold resistance of a promise from the sun at noon.
Go Clifford, thank you Lee, oh Chet, sometimes elusive,
sometimes stunning, with your schizophrenic
technique. Like you, I wondered whether
my music could mourn or scream for
joy to witnesses of family and
friends. Though I did believe
after a confession that
came 50 years
late.
My intense intent could
announce a dance of two hearts around
one soul. A caress and pause, the
hooah of a tango enclosed the
sadness in a barrio of my
imagining, a long,
rising wail, just
off-stage, the
song of a
ringing
silver
bell.
Those were the calls
I prayed for alone,
the first time I
heard my
beating
heart.
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by Kenneth Boyd
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Second Nature
We practiced “Never on Sunday” in the backyard.
Even the crabapples on the gnarly tree develop muscle memory.
Now, standing behind the heavy velvet stage curtains,
I staccato What note do I start on?
My trumpet duet friend cannot look at me.
I don’t know.
It was the E above middle C, knew it before and even today,
sixty years later.
I hear the methodical sweep of the curtain,
the measured, mechanical sound of the pulley.
The accompanist starts.
As if the flag of the E eighth note
catches and lifts the veil,
we play.
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by Larry Porter
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Saltana the Singer in Porto, Portugal
They can’t help moving their feet
to his music. A microphone
and a reverb machine
and there is magic in motion.
Obrigado. Thank you.
A child puts his ear to the speaker.
A woman in a wheelchair
spins circles around the singing man.
They are an orchestra
of belonging, here on the sun-slick pavement.
Everyone in this water-side restaurant
lifts their glass of Porto wine.
Applause rattles the limestone cobblestones.
No one can keep from singing.
Leonard Cohen’s Halleluiah
in Portuguese. Communication
across oceans, across where the river bends.
A man wearing a fedora asks me,
Where are you from?
I raise my glass and say:
Here. I am from here.
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by Marianne Peel
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Levitation
Not like rabbits from a top hat
Or sleight of hand & picking a card —
Any card
It’s jazz on a Sunday morning
When I should be in church
But I’m layin’ up with you
“Who’s the guy on bass?”
“Who’s the guy on vibraphone?”
Being with you is better
Than being alone
……….It’s jazz on a Sunday
The zig & the zig zaggery
The jazz metamorphosis
I need more of this
Come watch me float
……….My love
Come see me
Levitate
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by Connie Johnson
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The Great Bop Walk
—Morning sun
yellow rise in major mode
blue notes… C Jam roam
striding movement
great bounds
all ways around
in a key
with soft harmony
vocalese bird song free
pond waves lap
changing pitch of
croaking frogs
leaves autumn trees
jazz riff
in the breeze
if Bird was bird song plural
and Monk was fish
rhythm underwater
Diz a rat a tat
woodpecker expounding
caravan chorus resounding
steps of vibrations aural
soles (soul) shuffling
tomorrow and tomorrow—.
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by Daniel Warren Brown
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Sonny Leaves The East
saddled up & tenor mounted
Rollins on Selmer
his trusty steed
roams wild in the West
an independent old cowhand
scaling deep canyon solos
rim top to bottom ground
wide arroyo octave harmony
under a broad brimmed ten gallon
in neatly stitched boots gone heels
firing open range arpeggios
for festooned frontier impresarios
with his klook-bop chord-less sidekicks
herding to corral all manner
of prairie livestock notes
……………Giddy-up!
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by Terrance Underwood
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Mr. Davis
he expanded jazz horizons
by miles and miles and miles
but if I’d ever met him
I would’ve called him Mr. Davis
my first record was Cookin’
scored in the Branford Record Shop
in Newark in the summer of ‘57,
me a white fifteen-year-old fledgling jazz freak,
Mr. Davis twice that but in music time,
in Black soul time,
at least a thousand years old
took that sucker home
and man, oh man,
did I ever learn
about the joys of cooking
whenever lights were low
I’d lie in bed
and be moved by those sounds,
by Nigeria spelled backwards
by blues by five brothers —
and oh, brother, oh brother
over and over again
I’d drop the needle
on the tenderest valentine,
on Mr. Davis and Mr. Garland
making love to that song —
nothin’ funny about it
and I’d get lost in the black lines
drawn by Phil Hays,
tracing them with my eyes
as they caressed fingers and valves
and a suggestion of the horn’s bell curves —
truly a perfect album cover
and that title so fitting,
even affirmed by Mr. Davis:
“After all,” the man himself said,
“that’s what we did—came in and cooked.”
A mere five tunes and thirty-four minutes
to make a classic record
but then when you have
Mr. Jones and Mr. Chambers
as the engine of the car,
well, it went from zero to sixty
in just two bars,
a virtual Ferrari then,
with no wasted notes
from the trumpeter at the wheel
wearing night shades
though a few extra notes
from Mr. Coltrane
in the passenger seat
who had a definite tendency
to talk a blues streak
tuned up indeed, tuned up and lubed up
and firing on all cylinders,
heating up that engine block
to the point you could indeed
cook a meal on it
a jazz feast
my first record
think I paid four bucks for it
and if I had four dollars
for every time I’ve played it
in the sixty-nine years since that day
why, I might be nearly as rich as Mr. Davis
for a quick minute
I believed they’d all be that good
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by Bob Hecht
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Jazz Pianist
………………(for Dave Brubeck)
The jazz man in a blue coat
sits at the piano, fingers spread
wide over ivory keys—
As the dark city sweeps over his
head, dream-like
with purple streets and countryside.
The shining keys are alive
curving into waves of black
strokes surfing the evening’s tide.
Away in the cold distance a factory’s
turban spins,
inside of which workers are dreaming:
They dream of brandy, soda water,
and wine;
they hear jazz, clear as a whistle
…………….like a break-line
taking them back to the cellar club
where the pianist plays “Take Five”
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by DH Jenkins
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A Brubeck Landscape
all day a light breeze baptizes the landscape
gentle and captivating as a Paul Desmond solo
bushes rap windows and walls with rhythms
unusual and unexpected that Joe Morello would
approve would groove to and trees sway with
the steady grace of Eugene Wright on bass
while the sun gazes with the profound majesty
of Brubeck esteeming all he observes as
he constantly shifts levels of warmth and finally
fades coolly away at end of day all participants
in day’s concert barely visible and audible in dusk
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by Michael L. Newell
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Elegant
A prodigious list
Forty odd
Laureates
Sing
From the pages
Of a single hymnal
A Prelude to a Kiss
The Duke
And Billy Strayhorn
Swing
In A Melotone
From a spinning disk
In a monotone
A Mood Indigo
Robert Frost is lost
In earnest thoughts
Kindly, Conrad Aiken
Takes me down
A road
Not taken
A calculated risk
An unexpected twist
It seems
I’ve swapped
My twenty bucks
For a day
So elegant as this
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by David Nemerov
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Briefly, Considering Royalty
An Ellington Continuation
quiet and idle
a piano awaits occupation
to break down this empty moment
hands extend beginning a smooth ivory pressing
downed hammers strike tensioned wire strings
sublime sound rises in a tuned clean seduction
………………………………………..to those so inclined
with purpose combining note by chord
a nutritive reinforcement to existing DNA
an uplift to those acids away from the current
as only a regal music can do
a music embraced with a long lasting love
lessening the dread going forth
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by Terrance Underwood
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Manne-Hole Memories
1.
Shelly’s Manne-hole was a magical place
For me at that time in my life
I was 15, should not have got in
Never asked, thank god for that!
Friends from school stuck at home
Not allowed out on their own
Lacking supervision from the parental side
Meant I was the one who got to decide
The only place I wanted to go
Was Hollywood and Shelly’s Manne-Hole
How did I get there? I can’t recall
As for getting home, no idea at all
2.
Growing up in a jazz night club
Its sights and sounds my school
Music real hot, but same time cool
Dizzy Gillespie to MJQ
Hipsters sitting on hard-backed chairs
Only the wooden tables were square
Two-drinks per person min per set
Beer was cheapest, so that’s what we’d get
Non-stop stream of sweat and vibes
Jazz came close as inhaled smoke
Muscular, strong, intense
Musical incense
Carried off on waves of blues
Returned radiant through and through
Made me feel I was alive
Branded forever from the inside
As long ago as that memory was
I’ve still got that loving jazz buzz
What I wouldn’t give to be there yet
Getting ready for the second set
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by Joy Al-Sofi
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7th Chords
smooth as silk and a sweet Merlot
a hollow body, slow vibrations
echo endlessly in my metronome
I will spend the night listening to your song
embracing the curvature and the harmony
what more can be told, what more to behold
of the middle part, the part that sings
breathing poetry into waiting lungs
booming and lost at the deep dark bottom
I stole this dance and then bragged about it
the street was wet, but the room was warm
the night I plucked 7th chords for you
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by Joe Kidd
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A Tempo for Life
From awakening
…..Refrains
Jazz reflects
…..Entertains
Give a listen
…..Cares diminish
Mood relaxing
…..Easy finish
Sultry ballads
…..Haunting blues
Turning dancers
…..Whirling shoes
Vigil keep
…..Soul’s allure
Spirits raise
…..Nostalgia cure
Cleansing pulses
…..Calming strife
Feelin’ UPbeat
…..A tempo for life
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by Mike Mignano
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Love Supreme
Bucatini a la carbonara disagrees
with the beast, holding his paunch
at the kitchen table, listening to a jazz
tune that pulls on his nerves.
He rises and fills a glass with water
then dissolves in it granules of Brioschi
and downs the effervescence in one go.
John Coltrane aside, the saxophone
reminds him of dancing tango with his
ex-wife, who slid out of his life
a year ago and never looked back.
It happens to the best of us, he tried
to convince himself for the longest time
but concluded at last that he did not
represent the best of anything and that
his wife had good reason to leave him.
Now bent over his knees, he regrets
eating more bucatini than would feed
a family, but how delizioso it was.
And he knows too well he will
never know love again
never know love again
that doesn’t end with fork.
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by Sal DiFalco
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EXQUISITE
Xs
rounded mouth quizzes
kisses of hisses
ending
in
it
EXQUISITE
Lady Day
lost
in her solitude
Passion and desire
in tangoed turns
of first touches
From minarets
melody of prayers
for the seeker
Choruses of whispered
inter connected ness
everyone everything
Xs
rounded mouth quizzes
kisses of hisses
ending
in
it
EXQUISITE
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by Frank Papia
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Solace
When I discovered Joplin
my stubby fumbling tweenage fingers
strove to reach and ragtime
ride his carousel of chords.
Instinctively I sensed
the tug between restraint and piping
riffs that whirl-bop-skipped
like butterflies beneath a sky
about to break. Clouds lingered
as my enchanted fingers soared
in giddy counterpoint—
the brass calliope of joy.
What could I know back then
of grown-folk grief and sustained relief,
mustered melodies
composed of heartache, performed on bone?
Such struggles we sing together,
before each of us dies alone.
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by Felicia Sanzari Chernesky
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Maiden Voyage
Stories do get deferred
like letters …..stuck in the trees
containing progressions that
……………..melt
slowly enough that you can remember
what compelled you,
……………..branches
……………..that instill clarity.
So many assumptions we make
on this Maiden Voyage,
thinking that what
……………..I think you think,
and then you don’t,
then you won’t.
so Freddie plays a windy theme
and out we blow onto the lake,
composing new jazz …..as we go
trying, like a precocious Herbie
to invent, drift
……………..through the uncertainty,
glide to the other side,
where new letters will bloom in the trees,
ready for the saturation
……………..that experience brings.
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by Michel Krug
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Don’t Blame Me
Because I jump to conclusions
I have a messy past / I’d write out
My confession but watch you squint
At my illegible signature.
All of my conclusions are forgone
As I sing for you four octaves of love!
I ask Coltrane to accompany me;
I invite you to my rent party
In which the rent is
Always due.
I toss off some blues:
“…& if I can’t pay you what I owe you, baby,
I don’t know what I’m going to do“
Don’t blame my unmade bed
My subtle sax! / my slide trombone
I was all alone when I wrote this;
I know you won’t decipher any
Of what I meant to say.
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by Connie Johnson
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Basement Blues
I didn’t find the Blues
until that night
in the ‘60s
when Freddie Brown
invited me to tag along
to a basement apartment
in an old brownstone
off Dudley Street.
the music spoke to me.
sad songs about
beautiful women,
love lost, betrayal.
one guy, wrapped
around his guitar,
lamented, being
“born under a bad sign.”
the music was hard
and that night
I felt the pain
and beneath
the pain —
hope.
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by Russell Dupont
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Joy Al-Sofi’s work in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry has been published in the USA, Hong Kong, and Portugal. She most recently was awarded a prize in poetry by the 2025 Proverse International Poetry Competition, and it is included in their anthology, “Mingled Voices 10.” She began her lifelong love of live jazz with a trip to Santa Monica’s Deauville Beach Club to see Cal Tjader in the late 1950s. She has lived in Hong Kong, and currently resides in Portugal.
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Kenneth Boyd, winner of a Royal Palm Literary Award and judge for the 2025 awards, is a neurodivergent poet and former jazz musician. His poetry appears in Wayfarer Magazine, Unlost, Viewless Wings, Flora Fiction, The Ekphrastic Review, The Debut Review, and elsewhere. His collection, Grasshopper Dreams, was published in 2023. Kenneth is a graduate of the UCLA Extension Creative Writing Program and an Assistant Editor of Poetry at Southland Alibi magazine. He enjoys life in Northeast Florida with his wife and dog, Stella. He can be found on social media (@BardoPoetry).
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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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Felicia Sanzari Chernesky is a retired editor, picture book author, and modestly published poet. Her books include From Apple Trees to Cider, Please! and The Boy Who Said Nonsense (Albert Whitman). Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best Microfiction, and she has a poem waiting to be read on the Moon. The kids are grown. She and her husband live with two fascinating cats in Flemington, New Jersey.
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Poet and storyteller Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of five books including Black Rabbit & Other Stories (Anvil Press). Recent journal appearances include Cafe Irreal, Fictive Dream, and E-ratio. His short story “Bluesette” was the winning entry in the 67th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction contest, which you can read by clicking here.
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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.
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Bob Hecht frequently contributes his essays, photographs, interviews, playlists and personal stories to Jerry Jazz Musician. His poetry has been published in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, bottle rockets, Red Moon Anthology, Simply Haiku, Contemporary Haibun and others. His photographs have been published in LensWork, The Sun, Black & White and others. His photographs may be seen at www.roberthecht.com or on Instagram @roberthechtphotography2.0.
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DH Jenkins’ poems have appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician, Kinds of Cool—an interactive collection of Jazz Poetry 2025 (Unsolicited Press), The Ekphrastic Review and The Wave, Kelp Journal, as well as in Ocean Poetry Anthology 2024 (Kelp Books), Ocean Poetry Anthology 2025(Kelp Books). For many years he was a professor of Speech and Writing for UMUC-Asia, living and working in Japan and Korea. While in residence there, he received the Bylee Massey Award for a project in the Humanities, as well as the Drazek Excellence in Teaching Award. He now lives in New Zealand.
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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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Joe Kidd is a published poet and songwriter. In 2015 he released the CD titled Everybody Has A Purpose, and in 2020 published The Invisible Waterhole, a collection of spiritual and sensual verse. Joe is a member of the National & International Beat Poet Foundation (USA), Angora Poets (Paris France), The Society of Classical Poets, and 100,000 Poets For Change International. In 2022 he was appointed Beat Poet Laureate of the State of Michigan 2022-2024. He was recently recognized as an Official Poet of the Government of Birdland. Joe was inducted into the Michigan Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in June 2017.
Click here to visit his website.
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Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and he litigates. His poems have appeared in New Verse News, Poetica Publishing, Liquid Imagination, Blue Mountain Review, Portside, and many others.
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Mike Mignano, retired Ocala, FL. Hometown Ithaca, NY. Interests include: history, travel, guitar, choral singing, nature walking, viewing sports, theatre and poetry.
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David Nemerov, 75, has been writing poems for a little over three 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.
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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. Click here to read “What is this Path” – a collection of his poems published on Jerry Jazz Musician
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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.
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Frank Papia’s poems have most recently appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician – ‘Poetry Written in the Midst of Our Time’ vol. 2. Other publications include: Dream Machine – Tarantula #’s 4&6 issues 1&2
L’Hoxa International Art Magazine #88 poetry issue. His two books can be found at Blurb.com
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After having taught middle and high school English for 32 years, Marianne Peel is now nurturing her own creative spirit. She has spent three summers in Guizhou Province, teaching best practices to teachers in China. She received Fulbright-Hays Awards to Nepal (2003) and Turkey (2009). She participated in Marge Piercy’s Juried Intensive Poetry Workshop (2016), and her poetry appears in Muddy River Poetry Review, Belle Reve Literary Journal, Jelly Bucket Journal, among others. She is also a veteran musician, playing flute/sax and singing in various orchestras, bands, choirs, and jazz bands her whole life. She has published three full length poetry collections; No Distance Between Us, and Singing is Praying Twice are from Shadelandhouse Modern Press, and her latest collection, Untamed Arabesque, is from Act of Power Press
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A colleague of his once noted that if he asked Larry Porter what time it was, he’d likely tell him how to build a clock. As a microbial molecular biologist and educator, he is steeped in the what lies beneath. Now, a rudimentary writer and poet, Larry has begun to uncover detail of what has inspired him in music.
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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. 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”
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Click for:
Previous collections of “21 jazz poems on the 21st”
Information about Kinds of Cool: An Interactive Collection of Jazz Poetry, Vol. II (featuring women poets)
More poetry on Jerry Jazz Musician
War. Remembrance. Walls. The High Price of Authoritarianism – by editor/publisher Joe Maita
“Where the Music Wasn’t Allowed,” Jane McCarthy’s winning story in the 71st 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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Jerry Jazz Musician…human produced since 1999
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