Friday, January 30, 2015

B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems


JANUARY BLUES

Today's sky
will not be missed
in a sorry shade 
of black and blue
when Arctic air
quietly smuggled in
from Canada freezes
the lifeless bodies
of snow into ice
bright figurines
and my sax
is exposed 
as an orange
eaten on my motorcycle
on the jazzy corner
for my timely gig,
yet a poet is still
a Beat for life
in his runaway suit
when the same shade
shines in darkness
from a cool club
on the blind window
stares back at him
with a sponged fog
on a wasted visage
and an angel stranger
helps the poet
with the gas
both knowing the blahs
will not outlast
the skittering waters
on our faces
and that spring 
may be early
when words
will go down
and the sax
will again beat out
its underground notes
to play the Blues. 


AT AN L.A. BUS STOP

Would you mind leaving
me off at a bus stop
in Los Angeles,
a runaway 
who's run out of bread
and grief
needs to make a call
back east
in a cavernous dawn
bone tired
troubled by despairing 
shadows
in silences of direction
a winter's pawned jacket
covered with dried blood
drunk with echoes
and thoughts of ecstasy.


HEARING COLTRANE

Hearing Coltrane
in the late A.M.
in my sound proof room
releasing my own riffs
and still believing in art
as a mistaken phone call
leads to a museum date,
finding a neighbors
break up note
in a diary
lying under the floorboard
by the fish tank's
own blue dimentia
and playing solo
of daring mortality
resting on a high note
of early optimism
until the daily news broadcast
spreads its headlines
where a few good stories
make my day.


B.Z. NIDITCH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. 

His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including:Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; LeGuepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest);  Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. His latest poetry collections are “Lorca at Sevilla”,”Captive Cities.” 

He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
 

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