Black Coffee: Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis Inspired Musings

Langston Hughes jazz poems this is not! This free verse musing comes from my 1920s fascination and disconnect from the present. Jazz poetry by definition "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation". This one is a little more fluid, but definitely improvised! How to write jazz poetry? It comes from the soul. Not the heart. The heart may help out a bit, but it's the soul where the real stuff comes from.

On a lonesome December night

With January close behind

I entered into a smoke filled room

With a red tint

While a dead trumpet player

Serenaded wine, women and dogs.

Coffee was black as night.

Smoke was hard

And the music seemed to echo through me

As if my soul was a canyon

Cut deep and rigid.

It appeared that the river

Coursing through this canyon

Was as strong and as dark as the coffee before me.

So into my cup I poured the cream

From a woman's breast.

The herbs and seasons of the Earth.

Sugar from the sweetest cane

And even flavors untouched by the maker Himself...

These flavors of apple spice and fig.

And then I drank.

I drank and I smoked to my hearts black content

And the music played on

And on I went.

The spice of the apple.

The sweetness of the fig.

The cool warmth of her milk

And the dew from her lips

Dripping down to her breast in a cascade of silk

Brings my drink to a wonderful flavor!

Yet...

This coffee is still dark...

As Caine himself.