Jazz Poems

STRANGE FRUIT

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh

And the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

C.T.’S VARIATION

some springs the mississippi rose up so high

that sound of jazz from back

boarded shanties by railroad tracks

visionary women letting pigeons loose

on unsettled skies

was drowned by the quiet ballad of natural disaster

some springs song was sweeter even so

sudden cracks split in the sky / for only a second

lighting us in a kind of laughter

as we rolled around quilted histories

extended our arms and cries to the rain

that kept us soft together

some springs the mississippi rose up so high

it drowned the sound of singing and escape

church sisters prayed and rinsed

the brown dinge tinting linens

thanked the trees for breeze

and the greenness sticking to the windows

the sound of jazz from back

boarded shanties by railroad tracks

visionary women letting pigeons loose

on unsettled skies

some springs song was sweeter even so

THULANI DAVIS

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

Jazz Poems

JELLY WROTE

jelly wrote, 

                      you should be walking on four legs

                      but now you’re walking on two,

                      you know you come directly from the

                                    animal famulee

& you do. but dr jive

the winding boy, whose hands only work

was music & pushing

“certain ignorant light skin women” to the corner

was never animal

was never beast in storeyville, refining

a touch for ivory on pool green

with the finest of whorehouse ragtime; use even

for the “darker niggers music. rough,” jelly wrote

“but they loved it in the tenderloin.”

o the tall & chancey, the ladies’

fancy, the finest boy for miles around,

“your salty dog,” but with diamond incisors,

shooting the agate under a stetson sky

his st louis flats winked into

aaah, mr jelly

A.B. Spellman 

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

COLTRANE, SYEEDA’S SONG FLUTE

For M & P.R.

When I came across it on the

piano it reminded me of her,

because it sounded like a

happy, child’s song.

COLTRANE

To Marilyn, to Peter,

playing , making things: the walls, the stairs,

the attics, bright nests in nests;

the slow, light, grave unstitching of lies,

opening, stinking, letting in air

you bear yourselves in, become your own mother

and father

your own child.

You lying closer.

You going along. Days.

The strobe-lit wheel stops dead

once, twice in a life: old-fashioned rays:

and then all the rest of the time pulls blur,

only you remember it more, playing.

Listening here in the late quiet you can think

great things of us all, I think we will all, Coltrane,

meet speechless and easy in Heaven, our names

known and forgotten, all dearest, all come

giant-stepping

out into some wide, light, merciful mind.

John

Coltrane, 40, gone

right through the floorboards,

up to the shins, up to the eyes,

closed over,

Syeeda’s happy, child’s song

left up here, playing.

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

BILLIE HOLIDAY 

Here lies a lady. Day was her double pain,

Pride and compassion equally gone wrong.

At night she sang, “Do you conceive my song?”

And answered in her torn voice, “Don’t explain.”

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet