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.