Nina Simone:Three Poems for a Great Musician

i got it bad for nina simone
by Regie Cabico

nina look at the sky April clouds
hang a fat
sappy syrup on my saddest day
played you  Monday night

my day   unbearable as a wool
coat in april
came back to find  my bed empty
as a tire swing in winter

Monday night i was so terribly sad
as a parlor of long veils, growing even sadder
carrying groceries up too many flights of stairs
& cooking for no one but myself

& the sound of your voice so full  & broad shouldered
made the day with all its drama  into bangles & diamonds
nina you made me a culinary priestess 
you placed a bojangling spell on me

crooning to the sizzling oil as i pranced like a tiger
among the tambourines & tin cans
the rain drops applauded & the single wine glass wept

because i found my inner nina
nina woman painted with egyptian mascara
nubian mona lisa with a tiara

you use silence the way a woman’s figure
made jesus bend at the knees  break to the will
of your beautifully blessed contralto

crackling bittersweet as you held a phrase long
enough for green finches to fly out the winter gloom
nina the storyteller,  nina a river lonely as hell,

nina tossed like an ark full of sparrows
you can honkytonk the bones off Kali
& steal the lightening from her toes

listen nina, i think its going to rain again
human kindness is overflowing & flows harder
even in the cruelest time

Nina Simone
by Lance Jeffers

This brown woman's voice
This black wheat voice
This black thigh voice
This black breast voice:
far far in the dim of me I hear her in the dark field
of the slavery South:
gowned in burlap, barefoot,
head down, a musing smile on her lips:
out into the fields before the dawn she goes alone
she gazes into the trees swaying into the slowly-draining
night:
sudden grief pierces her torso and she laughs scornfully:

Now she stands before a microphone and
feels the echoes of her slavery past:
and ache across her torso and a desolating laugh:
she throws back her head to sing and her teeth whiten
the bloodsea of her mouth

Nina Simone
by Nikki Giovanni

Was a beacon against the stormy sea of bigoty and hatred
Was a quilt against the cold of indifference
Was courage to the cowardly
Was boldness to the timid
Was love to the loveless
Was Home to the lonely
Is ours for now
And evermore

Amen