Connie Johnson

Not Everybody

I swing with punctuations 

Lavender noir / an offering 

Of elevated jazz 

And sapphire blue 

Thunderous applause

Scattered leaves of abandon 

and who knows which way 

the weather will blow?

I tried to make you my trademark 

Of chords / complex between-the-

Lines melancholia

Our official drink will always be whiskey!

A jazz after party /tethered to a new world 

Veined with red accents

And tenderness 

I’m thrilled with the way 

You resonate    /    I dance 

to your lonely translations 

But make sure you never use 

The word:  everybody 

Everybody 

Has never spoken 

For me

Soul Sickness 

Belly full of the blues

But you stay hungry 

When did you become 

So insatiable? 

Smoked grass / private revelations

On the sodden bedsheets of a true blues explorer 

You rise to dress in black to stare me down / head to toe 

O lonesome bluesboy of incalculable woe 

There’s Memphis in the recipe 

A little Texas in the secret sauce 

If I fed you with my word / body / testimony 

Would you finally accept the music that they contain?  

There must be a way to cure our soul sickness 

Released by yearning / released by eons 

Of unsatisfied desire 

The pen / the bass 

The whiskey / and the wine 

And why are your eyes filled with 

More tears than mine?

Absinthe Blues

I can recall the way we took

The short route to a soul understanding

I bombarded you with an off-key rendition 

Of everything contained within 

My anxious mind 

I invited you 

To join me in a duet

A fusing of souls: I was the upright piano

You became my funky, acoustic guitar  

With a sip of absinthe 

My singing became better! 

Majestic moonlight

Liquor of tears and 

Melancholia 

Leaves crunched with age 

that you brushed from my hair

Orchestral

And simpatico!

 

There are some who 

would call this: abandon

I only answer to those who 

would call this the blues