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you don’t need eyes to see the world
you can feel it note by note, let the
melody move within you, let your
fingers play the keyboard, and discover
a highway, being blind doesn’t stop
you from seeing dreams, it allows
you to feel the music your way
July 18th, 2026
Adolescence in the 60’s
Conscience numbing news
Chaotic times mature
Officials fund
Crusades abroad
Civil strife endure
July 11th, 2026
So I’m listening to Diz tonight, the aftermath
of the May riots. The “Cyprus Question,” of course,
Greeks feeling the U.S. should help take
back Cyprus from the British.
July 4th, 2026
It’s not as if we’d never had fair warning,
hadn’t felt the rumble from down deep,
the anxious weather massing
somewhere far away, the menace
of those few fat drops, the rising growl
of wind among the empty branches,
June 27th, 2026
As the boat rises from the ocean
and hovers above the skyline,
the boy stands in the tide
as it goes back into the sea
to find the place
where the boat will drop
when he leaves the shore
June 19th, 2026
to wrest from the sear of this
cold flame
grief, the under thrum
of earth song
ever jostling joy’s bright,
rich riffs
shredding what was whole into
today’s tatters
June 13th, 2026
You’ll always find:
that used CD,
the one you bought on your 17th birthday,
sprouting up somewhere you didn’t expect—
sometime after you’d presumed it lost
at sea, with the original date
still puckered onto the inside flap
June 6th, 2026
with the soft mist of delta rain
intersecting time song and space
the baritone of your reminiscing
a story I’d waited for so long
May 30th, 2026
. . The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work. Christopher Stolle reads his poem at its conclusion. . . ___ . . photo by Jeffrey Beall/CC BY-SA 3.0/via Wikipedia The remains of the Karnofsky Tailor Shop and residence at 427-431 South Rampart Street; New Orleans, Louisiana . ___ … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem: “Hurricane Ida collapses historic New Orleans jazz shop, a Louis Armstrong landmark” by Christopher Stolle”
...May 23rd, 2026
The muted trumpet sound is cold
And sends shivers down my spine
I have a vision, black like the void
May 16th, 2026
Thelonious Monk paints a picture of Mama
with his piano, the way Monet or Matisse
would, with paint: loud, bright colorful
notes, that are a Rorschach test, screaming
on the page.
May 10th, 2026
Nassau Inn dedicated to providing unmatched hospitality
to all
unless, it’s 1937
and Marian Anderson wants to sleep over
May 2nd, 2026
I have never held a gun
Nor had one pointed at me,
But when I was 5, I heard
The phone ring, and when
I ran into the room, my mother
Turned to me and said,
April 25th, 2026
Long after setting off
on his Maiden Voyage,
those splendid dolphins
still dancing in his mind,
Herbie Hancock went down
the river—a warm dusk
drifting over the water—
to play Joni’s songs,
April 18th, 2026
He is Miles, this man
with trumpet in hand,
cheeks fill to land
each note with grace
to raucous this place.
April 11th, 2026
In a world of breaking news
fed by the oligarch’s will—stop!
Breathe—
close your eyes, zone out, and heal.
The collective is texting you—
the world is still worth saving.
April 4th, 2026
We hadn’t written in awhile
he liked a memory I shared about his Dad
a fine musician and record collector,
especially guitarists —
March 28th, 2026
When we are wounded & suffering
Feeling everything we shouldn’t be feeling:
Lost, spoken for, mistakenly mislead to believe
That we were the light
Leading you to a satisfied life- Yet
The only life-light you had left
Was yourself wrapped in neon
March 21st, 2026
Listening? Stow
away…
*
Rag against the
machine? This vital
group remember-
ing, it’s never
provided we
care
March 14th, 2026
Two men on a street corner,
playing nothing but jazz.
The stores close, the lights blue,
but they sit and strum
as their hat fills with frost
and the long day yawns.
March 7th, 2026
So you can play
So What, kid
Or so they say
Guess what, kid
So what, kid
Are you hip
Are you cool
Are you nobody’s fool
February 28th, 2026
When Ella sang under the stars,
her voice filled the atmosphere
as she transposed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Her range— incredible.
February 21st, 2026
Perhaps it was the way
their bodies wanted to touch
the way their hands glided
from shoulder to wrist
the tilt of his fedora
the way her leg caught the sea air
February 14th, 2026
we need you to sing Respect for us right now
not tomorrow, not 24 hours before the earth explodes
not 24 hours before the sun dies
not 24 hours before the moon erases itself
from the black skin of the sky
and the darkness of night leads us over a cliff
we need you to sing it right now
February 7th, 2026
Too much butter.
Not enough salt.
Discontinued hot sauce.
Was it heavy cream?
Milk?
January 31st, 2026
Unseasonably warm,
unable to sleep,
I slip out onto the terrace
overlooking a lush meadow
January 24th, 2026
O
no
I’ve
heard things
louder than Pharaoh’s
horn just can’t remember
when softer a second then
booming again hard not to pay
attention what hard bop hard to say
January 17th, 2026
What is the depth of time?
Rockets ricochet at height
Only to re-emphasise a void
They search confounded and revised
Yet there is such room (not large)
Within our own dimension for dimensions
January 10th, 2026
They were the best of times.
They were the worst of times.
Or so it is said.
January 4th, 2026
I thought I heard chimes
in the wind calling my name
I swear they claimed I had little time
to open my eyes to the universe
...December 28th, 2025
charlie brown tree foreshadows
my life, i leave the holiday to kids
but a jazz album plays on youtube
and i imagine dancing with someone
December 20th, 2025
Sitting inches from your piano
I was struck
by how you ceded
the spotlight to the four winds,
let them explore their cardinal
directions, while you, self-effacingly,
December 13th, 2025
In the photograph, I’m leaning against a lamppost.
The Bourbon Street sign above me. A young cliché,
sunburnt, smiling at my boyfriend behind the camera
until the jazz lulled us like tendrils of heat into smokey
bars where horns dipped and flared like my hips, his
December 6th, 2025
Watching Sarah Vaughan perform “Misty”
live in Sweden in ’64 must have
made some folks wonder about the failed cooling system onstage
that made her perspire so—
November 22nd, 2025
Let me be free in my moment,
free of sharps, free of pricks and dicks,
free of hysterics pulling out their hair
or setting it on fire. And I want to be free
of fifteen second advertisements
November 16th, 2025
The kiss of a cymbal, a whispered SH-BOOM/
A cobalt wing -rose smoked and bruised/
Golden riffs tossed across the sea/
Angel mouthed promises
November 8th, 2025
Our love is a jazz trio
in last-set energy
with expanded structures
and smoky-toned fusion.
November 2nd, 2025
Shakespeare wooed the moonlight
love with his sonnets.
Emily Dickinson took refuge and
inspiration from her gardens.
Rumi communed with poets,
drunks, and street sweepers.
October 25th, 2025
hush.
listen to the melody
the undulating voice of pain
too wide for hands to hold
too deep for hell’s own shadows
to mute, to resist
October 18th, 2025
A black orpheus, Charles Lloyd, calls
the sun to rise, to set; music her very breath.
She rises in the East, her eyes open the dawn
light, fanfare streams across the land.
October 11th, 2025
Going into my bedroom at 2 a.m. in 1970
Lost in the meditation of the
Bill Evans Sunday Vanguard trio
Obligato revelations of a trio
that transformed listening
Right before my ears
October 4th, 2025
It’s a stew of New Orleans, Kansas City, Memphis,
St. Louis, and the little river towns in between.
There’s a peppering of marching bands, swing,
call and response, and gospel, with a mix of Latin
and Afro-Cuban flavors. Salt has been rubbed into
September 27th, 2025
“What’s in a name?”
she asked,
the first
four syllables
slipping off
her tongue,
September 20th, 2025
Flute fragrant & pointing the way with his instrument in 1967
Herbie Mann arrives to a Village
in a sidecar
September 13th, 2025
Hear this sonic siege,
improvised vibrations sent
soaring through veins and
shivers as if a rift in a junkie’s
jubilee.
September 6th, 2025
The ubiquitous eye of
God
Cloud jumping
island hopping
crossing rivers
or
separating them?
August 30th, 2025
Man, this Quarter sure does sizzle:
in the silky Delta night a gigantic palette burst,
friendly toot of brass, sweet birdsong of reed,
one-up duels of rock guitars, funky zydeco mix,
August 23rd, 2025
I go to the basement for the splendor
of bare dirt floor finally someone has
made order of the mess and I don’t believe
I prefer it here I can be alone with thousands
August 16th, 2025
Coltrane was one of the first Americans
to visit Nagasaki
in a way to commiserate shared
International Pain, mixed with shame.
August 9th, 2025
outsider iconography / intentional complexity
what she creates is not done privately
she demands visibility
of her hand / art by Nellie Mae Rowe!
late-in-life-revelations / self-taught creations
August 2nd, 2025
the pencil clouds
the page (to follow the
shadow’s glissando graffiti):
thronged streets – before the
lockdown? – so many un-
befriended dreams… all
these years, scared to
open silence’s note-
book
?
July 26th, 2025
Maybe it happened this way. Jayne Cortez
sitting at the Five Spot, scribbling in her notebook.
July 19th, 2025
Even as another purpled sunset curtains
this bistro’s leaded windows, letting
dinner talk turn to hush while we pour
red wine with a burble, none of us can recall
when our glass-eyed piano man became
the lucky piece we fist bump at the threshold.
July 12th, 2025
sound
to a place
where tomorrow
is too
am
arrow
like
pain
from
brain chatter
July 5th, 2025
“She is a constellation,” I thought
listening to Ella Fitzgerald.
The magic spell has been cast,
and time has been stopped. OK,
June 26th, 2025
a veined leaf
shriveling
into a soft tune
of ‘Leaving’
...June 21st, 2025
My parents had this big Crosley
and a stack of albums —
Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers —
and some nights I’d get up from bed
and peek into the living room
where my mother and father
slowly waltzed in place.
June 14th, 2025
1. Morning light pours into my mind
driving out the blur of last night’s
torrential rain that sketched today’s agenda.
June 8th, 2025
& I only know how to do it
with Sonny Clark in my ear
classic jazz iconography
shrouded in mystery
May 31st, 2025
as if it were a standard you could scat
at a jam session and any cat with a horn
could blow over the changes,
but as he continues to boast
about his friend’s playing,
May 24th, 2025
Touchdown or Something,
back to you: crisping, lighted place
my swift escape, humble
glitz, jazz’d instrument
blowing quavers, shaking, from the cave
of your trumpet sounding like
all of my loving memories
May 10th, 2025
I no longer roll my r’s.
I get nasal,
lost as I am in learning a new language.
Portuguese always held a special mystique.
This begins to wane
as I enter its world,
May 3rd, 2025
Let’s celebrate that Contemporary Cat
and his celestial trumpet! Each day his
musical genius vibrates, accelerates, elevates.
Raised by his dad to listen to opera. Played
piano and trumpet at eight years old.
April 25th, 2025
I didn’t take the call of inquiry
I don’t much care who did
I reckon’ you wouldn’t either
I know it changed the world.
Some say Miles Davis should get the credit.
I don’t think Max Roach is in that Chorus.
Matter of fact Miles would take the ‘big up’ with glee but for one cold fact
Miles Davis was dead.
April 19th, 2025
On a scratched record Saturday,
I learned the blues
in a water-stained Pittsburgh basement
where my mother’s records hid,
her handwritten name inked on each sleeve,
signed off like a confession.
April 12th, 2025
Look at that dude!
BEEP!
Look at his horn!
BOP!
Look at those cheeks!
Salt Peanuts!
POP!
April 5th, 2025
Billy Wilder loved voice-over & the velocity
it gives a script. He loved to jump ahead trusting
the audience to stay with him. What’s more,
the satirist in him liked to comment.
March 29th, 2025
I’m listening to the Köln Concert
and it is déjà vu. It’s Keith Jarrett playing
the music I always knew but never listened to.
It is every night at midnight putting away the violin
and sitting alone somewhere on the Kansas prairie
March 22nd, 2025
He was born too early
for a shot or magical sugar cube
that could have prevented
the polio virus that found him
at the age of three.
March 16th, 2025
scales peel from your swollen cheeks
snakes slip into the shade
your fingers webbed with silk
run swift as rivers
over the silver pistons
March 8th, 2025
1. In the distance
a small blackbird
with red guitar epiphone wings—-
sings a far flung song, basic basie, cushioning
rushing winds and young spring crickets
March 1st, 2025
Derelict dark and smoke ghosts
coagulate expectancy
among struggling silences.
Dumb dark sucks glances
of silver and gold
from yet mute metal.
February 22nd, 2025
and everything was evergreen
the light was so strong
we didn’t realize we were burning-
We were angels
and angels fly forever
February 15th, 2025
Three days since this baby’s birth,
there’s nothin’ cuter on this earth. But
the crib can’t seem to hold him, tight
cottony swaddling meant to enfold him.
He thunders electric, skyscraping wails,
ear-piercing notes atop a chromatic scale.
February 8th, 2025
Pretty eyes are in a meditation retreat
seeing everything as it’s meant to be:
dazzling leaves in October’s ghost dance,
birds diving, birds hovering—a romance.
February 1st, 2025
her eyes carry oceans
like her hair carries
sunlight
and bells ring in her
hips
January 26th, 2025
Thelonious Monk tune
borrowed
Epistrophe
A bit of a mystery
A turn that twists
and turns
Yeah
fly right
fly bright
love in sight.
January 18th, 2025
Have you ever listened to your father,
Jackie Wilson’s rendition of “Tenderly”?
Several times? Well, that’s good.
The last I listened, it came through the dash
of my Wrangler at a busy intersection,
January 12th, 2025
Spanish & flourish
Intricacies of ‘Pablo’ & ‘A Future Retrospective’
Of ziggurat / Giralda …architecture
Polyphony – bebop & free
January 4th, 2025
. . © Marsha Hammel . . Don’t Worry About the Labels Quintessentially American Scores of differing mood Even named by temperature Hot and cool include Categories unmemorizable Don’t worry about the labels On your listening journey “Giant Steps” “Slow Freight” “Big Train” May take Endless destinations This sprawling Jazz landscape . Listen to … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem: “Don’t Worry About the Labels” by Mike Mignano”
...December 30th, 2024
Listening recently to Chet Baker play and sing
“I’ve Never Been in Love Before”
on the local public radio jazz stream in Sacramento
sends me, thrills me, saddens me, deepens me
I want to jump in
I want to be there
the trumpet solo
the wondrous sound of notes.
December 21st, 2024
Mingus howling, his bass rumbling in their faces,
Shouting yeah! Yeah, oh yeah! The insistent barking growl.
Their chains beat loose by the savage blues that chases.
December 14th, 2024
The vast and beautiful quiet of the weekend,
a weak dawn bleeds over the skyline’s edge.
She gropes her pockets to find a single cigarette
as she waits for that moment
December 7th, 2024
For speed and power, use the pick.
One side of the mountain,
Then jump to the other side.
Open mike nights I learned in real time,
Rehearsal studios we never wanted to leave, still young.
But time left, and everyone left me.
November 30th, 2024
Lauren, my high school sweetheart, and I
drive down Fifth Avenue in NYC, not in my
mother’s blue 1967 Cadilac, but in my polished
silver Caddy. This is after our group, The Kansas
City Soul Association, makes it big and I, their
drummer, can afford such a ride.
November 23rd, 2024
I cranked the Woody Shaw Jr.
“Every Time I See You”
Marveling at the range
Authentic modal with a hint
November 16th, 2024
I am the sound,
the spontaneous voice you hear
beyond the melodic trance,
an array of multi-timbred,
fragmented, impetuous harmonies and rhythms
to carry you into an alternate dimension,
November 10th, 2024
He jazzed his way into my heart
with pulsing beats that have surpassed
the resounding rhythm of the jungle drums.
November 2nd, 2024
I present you with a disgusting floor,
covered with ocher lumps of puke,
piles of paper refuse, cigarette butts,
all swimming in a sea of black water.
October 26th, 2024
A raggedy man lived for music and Nina Simone,
called himself “Mr. Bojangles,”
played jazz on his secondhand sax,
tap-danced for tips and smiles.
October 19th, 2024
Jazz is a journey. The
listening keeps us
envisioning how creativity
is transformative. Jazz is a
journey, a sound, a tune, a note,
October 12th, 2024
Antonio, steal me away from him
with a mango slice
on the tip of your knife
October 6th, 2024
When he entered a club ‘round midnight,
all 88 keys would break into a grin
and the stool would slide out from under
to invite him to sit down and play.
September 28th, 2024
Prisms resound, glow dissonant—
refracted word-dyes salvaged from malaise.
A bleeding swatch of rainbow,
cordless stains on muslin,
stacks of frightened tightropes,
my slippers thin and worn –
September 21st, 2024
When that first rumbling bass line
Tells me I’m listening to Gordon Goodwin’s
Big Phat Band playing “Jazz Police,”
I can’t help it, I always see an LAPD squad car
swinging out of the station
flipping on that groovy trumpet siren
as they join a pursuit with the whole horn section.
September 14th, 2024
If ever
I am subjected to
Further medical exploration
& something
Identified as Bio
Is discovered
September 7th, 2024
Hurrying to a dental appointment
I didn’t want to go to in the first place
an interminable red light and honking traffic
and the curve where people merge
20 MPH faster than necessary
four lanes into two
not a good day overall
though Sonny Rollins is playing loud;
August 31st, 2024
Sheets of music laid across a checkered table cloth
spread out like streets across the city.
Like the quarter notes on page one, a crescent moon
is seen rising in the ink dark sky.
August 24th, 2024
cohen says there are major falls
and minor lifts that come before
the fourths and fifths and i suppose
he’s probably right, most likely right
but this is not about some hallelujah
August 17th, 2024
Woke up this morning to the Bugle Call Rag,
Straight no chasers made my head real bad.
Nothing left for breakfast … goodbye pork pie hat,
Dressed with chilies (ah um) – never hotter than that!
August 10th, 2024
During a brief respite from the hard rain,
I heard a music born of spring and sunsets
coming from spinning black platters.
Their weighty cadence, their spry
crackling fireworks
August 3rd, 2024
On the Cape in P-town
August ‘55
Billie, Eartha, Ella vocals
Filled shoreline evening skies
Entrancing soaring seagulls
With jazzy siren song
July 27th, 2024
because Jupiter is 1300 times the volume of the Earth
because milkweeds in the yard are as beautiful as
“Hushabye”
because on clear nights the moon pours in my window
like a spotlight and makes me think
.Paul Simon’s in the room
July 20th, 2024
When he plays he wears invisible glasses
picks his keys with patience and purpose
a tornado with time on his hands
while in walks light
July 13th, 2024
Surely Sonny still gets blue at times
I mean he’s a human being after all
isn’t he although sometimes he
seems more superhuman celestial
take now for instance as he bends
nearly all the way to the stage in
his 80s and plays and plays
and plays and plays and plays
July 6th, 2024
Stripped down standards
ache the air. Keith Jarrett
with chronic fatigue
recorded “I Got It Bad
(And That Ain’t Good)”
in sessions so short
he sometimes ended
before the song.
June 29th, 2024
Mingus flipped the kitchen switch,
flooding the room with light,
just as, seeking purchase in the slippery sink,
I tumbled through the unlocked window.
June 22nd, 2024
He often remembered
how it used to be with her,
his former lover,
who would sing him a song
every night before bed
then teach him each line
June 8th, 2024
Entertain us, entertain us all
Give, give, give with your sassy voice, your young body
Despite the migraines…
At 11, on a North Philly street, gang raped
By three creeps
It starts there, the cracks
The headache
June 1st, 2024
My high school girlfriend’s older brother
lived in a garret in the Village, like something
out of La Boheme, and she said maybe if we
went there, he’d leave us alone and we could
…well, you know
May 25th, 2024
She was four, just waking to the world.
Aware of rain and blue air, of singsong words,
of a low trill as she drifted into night. Abruptly
she was lifted
into unfamiliar voices
May 19th, 2024
We’ll have a little brunch for you —
pecan-crusted French toast,
oysters, smoked salmon,
a charcuterie board.
May 11th, 2024
I was preparing to make my exit from Heaven back to Earth,
And it was late March, so the lounge had transitioned
To their hot jazz band after playing the cool for months.
May 4th, 2024
A woman sits in a window frame
of old carved birds, listening to her
grandson in his jeans playing fig leaf music
in her home in Koshidekha,
a village in Nepal.
April 27th, 2024
You punched him in his chin
Jimmy not her kin
can’t let a bully
do her in.
April 21st, 2024
At the bar of the
Towne Tavern, once
Toronto’s finest jazz club,
stage facing me,
sipping my one beer,
knowing even then
in my twenty-third year
I was witness to
a never forgotten gig.
April 13th, 2024
The pollen is flying like mad –
frantic, crazy, amorphously Daliesque –
sort of like our trio the other day,
rollicking and lollygagging through Monk’s
Brilliant Corners, losing it so completely
that when Marty flung a stick at my head
April 6th, 2024
washes up
on the keyboard.
Bill Evans’ glasses too.
I put Monk’s hat on
and suddenly feel
like the captain of a ship.
March 30th, 2024
Soultrane came out when Ike governed.
1958. Before our nation
Would build up its war machine to invade
Viet Nam, training its Green Berets
March 23rd, 2024
My friend is a Blues singer,
I am a Jazz drinker,
boozing shots after shots,
I never get drunk with Jazz.
March 16th, 2024
I admit I’d never heard of “Watermelon Man” before Harry Reid came to my kids’ elementary school to put together a concert band. He wasn’t a salaried teacher, but a part-time outsider brought in by the PTA.
...March 10th, 2024
Evergreens and pink lawn
chairs sang through my windowpane
until silenced by grime
and retinal leakage.
I pass my good eye
back and forth;
February 24th, 2024
Your father and I admonished you
for walking ahead on the craggy mountain ridge.
You defended your eager steps,
saying you were musing
on the musical styles
of Mingus, Parker, and Shorter,
February 17th, 2024
Morning is dream time—
inns, strip clubs, and shops
are all eye-closed,
a hobo huddles
under a gray blanket
at a storefront,
neon signs illuminating
the strip all night long
February 10th, 2024
Both of them put up with fools
until they didn’t
and the sea that men parted
collapsed under their stares.
February 3rd, 2024
shouts and dances in church
and thumbs its nose at shame
covers its body in brand names
and doesn’t worry about the future
holds hands and kiss shameslessly
in public; they call it p.d.a
January 28th, 2024
Take tonight, for instance.
I can’t ask you for the moon
the way Sinatra commands it
with his first-class confidence.
Let alone Jupiter or Mars.
January 21st, 2024
Sensational
Largely unsung
Dorothy Donegan
Known by jazz insiders as
The female Art Tatum
His protégé
The one who made him say:
“She is the only woman who can
Make me practice.”
January 14th, 2024
I jammed
with the Afro-American Jazz Band
in the old Off Plaza on McAllister,
and with the blind Black pianist whose name I can’t remember
in the club we knew as The Question Mark
whose sign on Haight Street was just a neon ?,
when the club was straight and featured jazz
January 7th, 2024
Your chair is a kitten chasing a bird.
Hans Brinker skates across
your living room.
December 31st, 2023
Each year offered
a little blue box.
Trinket from a window.
December 24th, 2023
I take my daughter to the ballet studio
at a former convent in Marin.
She will be dancing for hours.
At the edge of the church’s property
is an old gymnasium.
December 17th, 2023
Her first note wails amber
smoke near overhead pipes above
the guitars. It wavers
and rolls r’s better than spring.
December 10th, 2023
Yours is the sound of smoke
I love to inhale
the sound of a humid
summer night
its cool breeze
December 3rd, 2023
Mamacita
with round brown
hips
roll and sway
sway and roll
slow that stroll
she sings
to ease
her sticky soul
November 26th, 2023
. . The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work. Bryan Franco reads his poem at its conclusion. . . ___ . . . . How I Achieved Levitation They all lived in the Walnut Building. Satchmo blew the roof off the house. Fats Waller tickled ivories. … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem: “How I Achieved Levitation” by Bryan Franco”
...November 19th, 2023
Hearing Rahsaan Roland Kirk recordings
you could likely miss
the pleasure of that reedman’s kisser,
import of his so unique technique.
November 12th, 2023
The Young Turk disregarded the old trumpeter
labeled him a vaudevillian minstrel
because he shucked and grinned,
having no privy to old man’s roiling anger within
fueled by slights and shames endured for years
despite his lauded, storied career.
November 5th, 2023
La La Love,
even when the cold raindrops
pounded against the window,
we snuggled close like fuzzy cats,
purring with Thelonious Monk
as we drank our Guinness.
October 29th, 2023
My eyes were faster dreaming
a drum kit in bed with me
Rapid Eye Movement Disorder
disturbing my sleep and my wife
moving away with her cellphone
camera watch my arms begin to move
October 22nd, 2023
I blame Chet Baker
For opening a window into my past
Sensing that phantom trumpet in my capable hands
The smooth curves of the hard brass, the cold
Mouthpiece against my buzzing lips
Bright melodies blaring
From carefree days of my youth
October 15th, 2023
Ce soir l’anniversaire
we defeat the oppressor
with our horns, our magic
here to bury us or set us free
October 8th, 2023
The woodshed was the hunting ground for wings of notes.
Black suits and ties, hipster hats and smoke rings of notes.
Was Robert Johnson alone, hellhound on his trail?
Was a deal made? Was Bird Satan’s plaything of notes.
October 1st, 2023
I’m whistling a tune about
a woman’s broken heart,
down a long and empty
hallway, just to hear it
move itself along,
September 24th, 2023
From a third floor window I imagine
I can almost see the cracked black
& white tile welcoming Penn Avenue
to the long-closed Kappel’s Jewelers.
September 17th, 2023
Strains of Charlie Parker’s alto sax fill
the empty apartment song-after-song –
“Dancing in the Dark,” “Loverman,”
“Embraceable You.”
Between every note I wish.
September 10th, 2023
Coltrane said a prayer to his musical God
Straight through the horn of his saxophone.
Not a metaphor; he spoke the words
Through the reed and the music into the air.
September 3rd, 2023
The shadow from the brick facade
of Central High School did not seem
to spread much shade on the streets
of our Little Rock neighborhood.
August 27th, 2023
once said I’d marry a man
Who could hum the first four bars
Of Cal Tjader’s “Doxy.”
We say these foolish things
When we’re young and
Still learning the ways of the world.
August 20th, 2023
Shrouded in smoke and cigarette spheres
Jazzy speakeasy on a summer slog of a night
Where hips ramble in tandem,
Slide and slip in an out of rhythm
Juke Joint shifting with an uneven floor
Naked feet shuffling and colliding
August 13th, 2023
free
what
bars?
intra-
views,
posit-
ions
o-
pen.
August 6th, 2023
Smooth. Jazz. Chill.
Write. Think. Build.
Listen. Vibe. Poetically
design.
Spend time with jazzy
sounds elevating the
mind. Jazz is smooth.
Jazz is chill.
July 30th, 2023
The light aspires to be equatorial
but each eroded moment quiets otherwise.
The twilight Superior shore fills
with pine smoke from fire pits
just as Coltrane played in the
smoldering light at the Village Vanguard.
July 23rd, 2023
During that electric dawn
when I first heard
a bracelet of notes
which traced a subtle rhythm
within an hourglass of music
and sharpened the silence with sound,
July 16th, 2023
It’s one of those moments.
She only has ears for Miles Davis.
Reflecting on things that never came to be—
July 9th, 2023
he was/
a flightless bird/
bright as sky/
full of natural lies/
and sweet conflict/
when speaking the/
jazz
July 2nd, 2023
Naturally, his lyrics are cued a cappella./“I’m home” slips from his lips,/sizzles like the taste of what I’m baking in the oven,/as he unwinds his day.
...June 25th, 2023
The poet Alan Yount and son Arlan write about a live 1964 performance by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
...June 18th, 2023
All damn day/
talk — talk — talk/
I told him, son/
why not fit those fingers/
down that damn gullet/
and make it a proper/
squawk squawk squawk —/
June 11th, 2023
The poet recalls a live performance he witnessed by the Timeless All Stars
...June 4th, 2023
When the water and sand dance, whence (whence?)/their music? What is that music? What /jazz, what syncopation surfs itself in?
...May 28th, 2023
That feeling when everything makes you sad/Nothing you can think of would make you glad/No matter how hard you try to remove yourself/From this blue funk
...May 21st, 2023
. . The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work. Ms. Baptiste reads her poem at its conclusion. . . ___ . . David Dellepiane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons . . Jazz Within Me I like Jazz playing within me. ……………….Record that never skips. Since age sixteen, … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem: “Jazz Within Me” by Jerrice Baptiste”
...May 13th, 2023
The poet describes the clear, crisp sound of listening to jazz music on vinyl
...May 7th, 2023
The poet recalls an encounter with Carmen McRae at a Hollywood shoe store
...April 30th, 2023
The poet writes about the depth of the trumpeter’s playing, and the connections to many of the great trumpeters before him
...April 23rd, 2023
The poet reflects on loss, fate, remembrance, and hopefulness
...April 16th, 2023
The poet recalls her early-life friendship with the pianist/composer Dave Frishberg
...April 9th, 2023
This narrative poem is informed by quotes and stories in What Happened, Miss Simone? the 2015 Netflix biographical documentary about the singer/artist’s life and art
...April 2nd, 2023
The poet profiles the larger-than-life figure of the legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus
...March 26th, 2023
The poet writes of youthful memories conjured up from listening to Chick Corea and Return to Forever’s 1973 album, “Light as a Feather.”
...March 19th, 2023
The poet writes about the origins of our personal blues, and how they can affect us…
...March 12th, 2023
The poet honors his friend, the late jazz pianist Janice Scroggins, and reads his poem while Ms. Scroggins accompanies him
...March 5th, 2023
The poet is inspired by John Coltrane’s 1961 recording, “Ole”
...February 26th, 2023
The poet suggests better music could have accompanied the final scene in the film “Casablanca”
...February 19th, 2023
The poet recalls the impact of Chet Baker’s music on her late, earlier life friend
...February 12th, 2023
Meanwhile, digging
the scene
a sultry
walking hip-step
bop that
fell to the
sweetest
moody!
...February 5th, 2023
The poet writes about the complexity of pianist Cecil Taylor’s music, and the liberation he feels from listening to it
...January 22nd, 2023
The poet imagines being a monarch butterfly, inspired to movement by the music of Django Reinhardt
...January 15th, 2023
The poet shares a memory of the jazz pianist Carla Bley
...January 8th, 2023
The poet reveres the power and beauty and historical significance of Black women, and reads his poem
...January 1st, 2023
Click here to read about plans for the future of Jerry Jazz Musician.
The Sunday Poem: “Lennie Tristano” by Erren Kelly
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...
Erren Kelly reads his poem at its conclusion.
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
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