contemporary poems

Crossing the Race Line | Bryn Fortey - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Crossing the Race Line | Bryn Fortey

come the late twenties
and music, particularly jazz
took some small steps
in crossing the race line
encouraging interracial performances

Italian/American Eddie Lang
born Salvatore Massaro
cut some 1929 duets with
African/American Lonnie Johnson
bringing together the two men
credited with giving the guitar
prominence as a solo instrument
though Lang had to be billed as
Blind Willie Dunn
to hide the fact he was white

around the same time
a white St Louis novelty jazz act
The Mound City Blue Blowers
featuring comb and tissue paper
and a suitcase for a drum
cut some sides with
well known jazz guests
one of which was
black tenor sax virtuoso
Coleman Hawkins
one of the first such recordings
to be issued

tiny steps maybe
but important in their own way

Revenge | Krushna Chandra Mishra - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Revenge | Krushna Chandra Mishra

They ask me not to swear
In the name of gods or kinsfolk
I have found lost in designs drawn
By others I have heard to be behind
The torment and torture and the end
That saw me orphaned and dispossessed
To take revenge wreaking disaster for all
For whose atrocious attitudes I am what
I should have not been today had I behind
Me those structures of support and those
Ladders linking the heavens to the earth
I stand on disdained by those that have
Made me poor, lost and crying for a fate
I have been denied in the designs diabolic
Devils have maliciously made to make me
Victim to vagaries of situations over which
I am not sure now when I may have control
To answer them all for whom I am what I am
Today reasoning hard over this need to prepare
For an appropriate response even as reprehensible
Action people crudely may call revenge.

The Wind That Took the World/ The Gradual Apocalypse | Andrew Darlington - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

The Wind That Took the World/ The Gradual Apocalypse | Andrew Darlington

the universe is murderous,
I’d never died before, so
didn’t know what to expect,
looking up from where I sit
I see the dead tree budding
leaves erupt in a rage of foliage,
in a proliferation of small red berries,
then leaves turn autumnal crisp and die,
a year of seasons pass in a moment,
the beauty of a random time-eddy,
back where reality ends it’s past midnight
moons blaze down over broken rooftops,
ghosts of the dead outnumber the living
in tangles of skewed tachyons,
back when this murderous universe ends
colours pour like perfume and hours do
strange things, running fast then slower,
I forget your name, it no long matters,
looking up from where I sit, I see
you’re caught by the gravity of moonfire,
in the gold of a random temporal eddy
frozen in an eternal time-slow moment,
you are twenty-one and will ever be so,
I’ve aged decades as I still wait for you,
but I’ve died before, I know what to expect

More at http://www.andrewdarlington.blogspot.com/.

Upgrades | Stan Morrison - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Upgrades | Stan Morrison

a tattoo, I would say, is definitely not for you
especially those with permanent/fading blue
and with terrible graphics and artistry too
ditto for surgery to enhance your looks
after leafing through before/after books
photoshopped/enhanced by medical crooks
you’re not destined to look/act very smart
no advantage for a horse before a cart
vanity/deceit do not come from the heart
no great shakes for trying/buying new threads
just do something smart/authentic instead
turn off your internet and stay in bed

Irony of Rains... | TheAPwrites - Contemporary Poetry Website Featuring Notable Poems

Irony of Rains… | TheAPwrites

While the half is drown,
And half dry is frown,
Half facing a scarcity,
Half suffering from availability,
Half is waiting impatiently,
Half is out due to plenty,
On half it’s flood,
On half it’s dead bloods,
Somewhere hope to dry,
Somewhere tears dry,
Some are tensed to low,
Some are waiting for flow,
Why is it so, don’t know,
Answer we all know.

More at https://theapwrites.wordpress.com/.

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