Connie Johnson is a Los Angeles, California-based writer who has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared or will be forthcoming in Iconoclast, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Jerry Jazz Musician, San Pedro River Review, Cholla Needles, Shot Glass Journal, Voicemail Poems, Misfit Magazine, Mudfish 23, Exit 13, Glint Literary Journal, The Rye Whiskey Review and Door Is a Jar.  

Many of Connie’s poems are featured in Jerry Jazz Musician publications.

 

A Lovers’ Journey:  Haiku

“Don’t go to strangers…”
But this smoky dive is full
Of them; jazz awaits 

I walk continents
To reach you; jazz in the air
Guides all of my steps

Kicked loose stilettos
You’re a fishnet of blue notes
On both of my legs

My notebook is filled
With unfinished poetry
I slow down to write

The dreamy haiku
You quote to me is music
Spare & elegant

Say! You’re a jukebox
A quarter’s worth of bebop
Choose wisely, my love

In California
We remember Chet Baker’s
Funny valentine

Sipping sangria
You play it: Sketches of Spain
Intoxicated

Nightfall is waiting
The sky above us beckons
Sting sings Sister Moon

Your muse was last seen
On a slow train to Memphis
Gone from jazz…to blues

Jazz Notes: Haiku

Thelonious Monk
it all happens ‘round midnight
eternal  hepcat

Beauty is wasted
Needles/opium steal it
Weep now for Billie

Racing “sheets of sound”
That’s what Ira Gitler wrote
Coltrane’s giant steps

Harlem in my sights,
Cab Calloway is my dude
Play Minnie the Moocher!

She wears silk stockings
be-bop jazz her preference
his smile was Dizzy

O Camarillo
Past Due summed it up for him
Charlie Parker’s mood

we ask for mercy
Cannonball obliges us
just call it soul jazz

Fly me to the moon 
Doesn’t this feel like a dream?
Tony Bennett sings

Brew that black coffee,
Though Sarah likes espresso
Sip! In gratitude

Burning cigarettes,
Spinning jazz on a Sunday
We worship like this

The Jam Session

I go to hear you sing 
At a packed club on Crenshaw Blvd 
In L.A.:  jazzy vibe diversified; joined
In our love for all things jazz 
And blues

Riffs like a flutter of birds
We congregate: laughter boisterous
Blessings abundant, all jazz heard
‘Round here a jubilant shout,
Blues mementos; heritage 
Of our awakening

Sumptuous
Your soul’s replica,
Gritty lines to a jam that
Dinah Washington would have
Swung on a Sunday night: “I can sing
anything, anything at all”

And so can you, L.A. diva
In a spontaneous jam session that 
Just might ignite. This is the feast 
Of jazz and blues recollection; 
This is where we all gather 
To partake.