“Black Coffee Blues” – a poem by Mary K O’Melveny

March 27th, 2024

Ali Yahya ayahya09, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Black Coffee Blues

I’m feelin’ mighty lonesome/Haven’t slept a wink/I walk the floor and watch the door/And in between I drink/Black coffee/Love’s a hand-me-down brew/I’ll never know a Sunday in this weekday room

Lyrics by Paul Francis Webster; sung by Sarah Vaughan

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Even if you never drank black coffee, that won’t stop you from drinking in the feelings that filter across a room whenever Sarah Vaughan sings Black Coffee. One could drown in that bottomless, inky liquid, that heartache-laden brew, choking on the smoke from a dozen stubbed out cigarettes, window shade askew from so much time spent staring streetside. Who knew if the phone would ring? Who knew if a knock on the door might lift that bottomless pit of a lonely night?

Black coffee – always badder than, meaner than booze. Heartbeat racing, fingers embracing some worn out pillow where, after all else failed, old memories could be briefly roused on an otherwise bare, sleepless night. The only sounds to be heard: s-s-s-strike of a match; clink of an old china cup against countertop, a clock tick. tick , tick. ticking way past the time of hope.

No reason to cloud rejection’s bitter taste with cream or sugar. Only the lonely, acrid funk of black coffee fills the void. Forget that moan of a lonely horn or the slow slide of melancholy guitar strings. Blues are best conjured by a well of dark, harsh black coffee, resting alone and cold near the window like the last passenger at the back of the midnight bus.

How slow can moments go? How long can a heartbeat last on wishful thinking? How much lower can one fall? These are the questions Sarah asked us to think about. Drink up. Talk to the shadows. Nobody’s ever gonna be here tonight but those shadows.

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Mary K O’Melveny, retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife near Woodstock, NY. Mary became a fan of Jazz as a very young girl listening to Louis Armstrong and Lester Young on her grandparents’ Victrola record player. Mary’s award-nominated poetry appears in many print and on-line literary journals, anthologies and national blog sites. Mary has authored three poetry collections. Her just-released fourth book, Flight Patterns, is available by clicking here

Click here to visit her web site

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Listen to Sarah Vaughan sing “Black Coffee” [Legacy Recordings]