154 Music poems

We were thinking of starting a band, all lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery. This one would be gem, that one metamorphic, the rest pebbles and some laboratory-grown, semi-precious stones. The trees were in it for the long-run; they swayed or stood stoic, sheltered what they could. We made the cast as an idle grouping: we played the trump, the idiot, the glue. We backdropped with hearts hardly beating, our eyes set straight in our heads: the bombed- out school kids, the oilfields scrubbed in turns. We chewed the fat amongst ourselves. You said, this place should be more festive: a lightning bolt, a snail, a fraud. I set a crumb aside for the local roof rat; you tallied the droppings, the amputees, the gold. I blew my top when you lost "Dominion." You said, what can be done? It's gone, it's gone. Wind started in through the rift-way, buzzed over our slate-blue bones. All the leaves have aged with kindness, all our pretend looped and windowed raggedness went largely unseen. We were on stage the whole performance, held our breath for the final moments with cheeks rent and red. No neck was slit on our backs; no distraught lover jumped from our cliff's edge. There was a stirring backstage we could sense it: a temptress, some anger, some sin. Weeds came thick around us. The act had been bungled sorely. We withheld our opinions, sat in wait. We were good for a throwing.

I play the egg and I play the triangle I play the reed and I play each angle I play the lyre and I play the lute I play the snare and I play the flute I play the licorice stick and I play the juke I play the kettle and I play the uke who ever thought of the triangle who ever thought of the clarinet the castanets the cornet the discotheque the harmonium the euphonium marimbas and maracas harmonicas tom-toms and tatas I play the fiddle and I play the jug I play the washboard and the washtub I play kalimba and I play the koto I play the organ and I play the banjo I play the fool I play it cool I play hot and I play pranks I played your mixtape forgot to say thanks

here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash — coming to you via triple ones on a mission — pop a wheelie for originators of the flash. check ya dial, emboss the rock b4 a fella dip dash.                                                      grand to slam a party — peep two needles in collision: here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash. flare your dome w/ a pinch of cheeba succotash— got my avenue peaking rapid circumcision — pop a wheelie for originators of the flash. ululate the call; gods never caught tongue-lash — tweak an EQ. my hash sparks double vision: here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash. got my tambourine for ya partner. pass the calabash. smile for the DJ when the cut spits — peep the precision.                            pop a wheelie for originators of the flash — never fret what the beat can establish in the trash. master meter on Orion, starship blast w/ supervision: here’s the remedy for your chronic whiplash — pop a wheelie for originators of the flash.

for John Coltrane Words after all are syllables just and you put them in their place notes sounds a painter using his stroke so the spot where the article an umbrella a knife we could find in its most intricate hiding slashed as it was with color called “being” or even “it” Expressions For the moment just when the syllables out of their webs float We were just beginning to hear like a crane hoisted into the fine thin air that had a little ache (or soft crackle) golden staffed edge of quick Mercury the scale runner Envoi C’est juste your umbrella colorings dense as telephone voice humming down the line polyphonic Red plumaged birds not so natural complicated wings French! Sweet difficult passages on your throats there just there caterpillar edging to moth Midnight in the chrome attic

1 One could sing October rain, and one had a gift for plain chant and prayer, a domain unsettled by love or its intimate other. What fits with this theology no one dares to say. These twins so perfectly in tune must know "the modesty of nature," the perfect art and texture that sustains the other name. Paris could not be the frame for loyal Romans, their shame worn upon their bodies light as air, and nothing is quite as endurable as death. Those who have taken this path move with an abiding breath. Such a common dance this dense intention of love's expense. Keep this for that special hour when the Roman drops his sour gift for abandoned splendour; et c'est la nuit, the footfall that troubles that other Paul. 2 I have learned the felicity of fire, how in its wake something picks at buried seed. Think this a most festive deed, nature's mistake, borrowed flare of a village dance, satire of the sun's course, light you read through waste, repair. Death had freed that first opaque habitation (what a widening gyre), an aspen ache, a lustrous scar that might lead to a hidden grove, or breed astonishment in its loss; all entire, a shaping breath proposes its own pyre. 3 Solitude guides me through this minor occasion; moon is my mentor, one on a spree. This notion, night's philanthropy, courts my favor. Devotion, love's predecessor, sings its tidy discretion. Such gentility reins all vigor, all caution.

"F. . . the oven is an F" Samantha Foggle, age 3 Oh, to hear the world with such clarity. Such surety. To know the note of your breakfast chat is B-flat minor. That the ’57 Chevy stalled outside the garage is a D. To recognize the Apricot kitchen paint for what it is: F-sharp. To understand the way you feel for him is G, definitely a G. And as you watch him descend the scale of the front steps to his car for work, the house quiets to an A. The arpeggio of last night’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor still ringing in your ears.

I Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the selfsame sounds On my spirit make a music, too. Music is feeling, then, not sound; And thus it is that what I feel, Here in this room, desiring you, Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk, Is music. It is like the strain Waked in the elders by Susanna: Of a green evening, clear and warm, She bathed in her still garden, while The red-eyed elders, watching, felt The basses of their beings throb In witching chords, and their thin blood Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna. II In the green water, clear and warm, Susanna lay. She searched The touch of springs, And found Concealed imaginings. She sighed, For so much melody. Upon the bank, she stood In the cool Of spent emotions. She felt, among the leaves, The dew Of old devotions. She walked upon the grass, Still quavering. The winds were like her maids, On timid feet, Fetching her woven scarves, Yet wavering. A breath upon her hand Muted the night. She turned— A cymbal crashed, And roaring horns. III Soon, with a noise like tambourines, Came her attendant Byzantines. They wondered why Susanna cried Against the elders by her side; And as they whispered, the refrain Was like a willow swept by rain. Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame Revealed Susanna and her shame. And then, the simpering Byzantines Fled, with a noise like tambourines. IV Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing. So gardens die, their meek breath scenting The cowl of winter, done repenting. So maidens die, to the auroral Celebration of a maiden's choral. Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death's ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

New York grows Slimmer In his absence. I suppose You could also title this picture Of Miles, his leathery Squint, the grace In his fingers a sliver of the stuff You can’t get anymore, As the rest of us wonder: What was the name Of the driver Of that truck? And the rest Of us sigh: Death is one hell Of a pickpocket.

Touched by your goodness, I am like that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby that someone had smashed and somehow heaved through an open window. And you might think by this I mean I’m broken or abandoned, or unloved.   Truth is, I don’t know exactly what I am, any more than the wreckage in the alley knows it’s a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves. Maybe I’m all that’s left of what I was. But touching me, I know, you are the good breeze blowing across its rusted strings. What would you call that feeling when the wood, even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me; Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide. So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.