B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016
Smooth jazz playing
at a natural good night
for my last gig
buried over
quarter notes
drowning in
poetry pockets of sax
asked to play
at a birthday party
warmed by wood stoves
in a Fall midnight hour
watching a bird
through windows
chirping under trembling oaks
in the soft showery rain
the whole length of hours
remembering
the French onion soup
and vanilla pancakes
on the fire near
the floorboards
to watch dancing
and propose
a toast that persuades you
that the thirst
and hunger
of our menu wheelhouse
is perfectly arranged.
B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016
In the moon's solitude
waiting to read
new poem sequences
among the last red leaves
waiting to play sax
in the breathing of waves
from a montage of pages
in my impatient mind
outside my window
are stars too embarrassed
by grieving
for the silent woman
a longtime friend, Anna,
who has family in Paris
telling her the only answer
is to love a heart that is light
and she asks me to play
a lucid French piano tune
of her childhood
before she left for America
the Germans invaded
her luminous memory.
Satish Verma, 18 september 2016
It was a summer night.
A windswept moonbeam
plummeted. Sexualizing
an indigo flesh. A butcher
was seducing
a spider, in company of
a holy book. Sunbathing in
mass grave of skulls. The eyes
peeking out of the caps.
You want to pluck the blue
berries from
volcano mounts. The key player
will burn your script. Body
of milk died on snow. The
moth was coming out of cocoon.
Satish Verma, 17 september 2016
While peeling
an orange I think of
you all time.
Walking in ruins
I pick up peonies
in grass, for you.
Dewy-eyed you
call for a knife in night.
It was full moon.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
On solitary horizons
loosed as days lost
combing through
scattered time
of metamorphosis
with hours to appease
us in a poet's analysis
by stardust fleeting words
on nature's face of it
in a poet's abyss
from a visiting memory
breathing in my initials
by lunar landscapes
telescoped on Maple trees
mulling over Chopin's
waltzes once composed
in another century's breath
losing myself
in a dusk of shadows
out in the French countryside
on a rose garden bench
praying for peace
in an open field of orange
and red leaves
over Monet-like river beds
near the monastery fence
at daybreak's solitary sun
here on meadow fields
of strawberries
gathered in Autumn
when the nascent doves
of Picasso in a reddened sky
fly away South to keep warm
like a runaway adolescent
fleeing parental storms.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
Playing Chopin etudes
under his miniature
on the piano
by my twenty-somethings
with my gestures
disclosing my unshaven years
that spilled out
the lyrical muse
of a musical romanticism
that faintly enfolds us
at my recital on pages
of belated practice
here in a sheltered hall
north of the city harbor
for a poet needs to live
and play by a river
as he needs
the saints of Jesus
reading aloud as a debut
the Romantic music
of my apprenticed verse
from my rustling hands
practicing in three languages
suddenly in the thunder
of my audience's hands
the applause like the wind
was deafening.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
There were five of us
who spoke together
after our shielded reading
during a partial sax recital
when time came to a stop
and were translated
to passing glances
in a memorial of the Beats
on a free wielding
rush of our words
by keeping
the lamp burning
at my dancing verse
out in a changing season
of a strong voice
aiming at
swaying at your cool
flirting audience
suddenly inescapable silence
as if to say,
we are taking off
in our night shirts.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
Wherever a moon is sealed
here for my waiting gig
to play new sax riffs
the street lights shine
on a leafless tree
my girlfriend trembles
shading in
an oil portrait of us
or when fading out of love
watching a silent red sky
having lost hope
by the seaside green
yet composing a jazz solo
among swaying dunes
under a solitary gazebo
from my old telescope
viewing the meteoric stars
above Brighton Beach
when Whitman or Crane
visited the Brooklyn Bridge
those spans between
parental storms
of my own visibility
here in Manhattan
writing in nine circled bars
on this voiceless night
by an unmade bed,
anonymous sunglasses
a live elm
with my initials on it
a comatose clock,
with my name and memory
returning to me.
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