Surviving a War that doesn’t seem to end, bombing and sniping all around. This is the real story in a book called “ The Cellist Of Sarajevo”, where three characters emerge to face this adversity head on.  You have Arrow once a innocent young girl, now trained assassin to **** her targets without making a sound. Then you got Kenan a person who risks his life to fetch water for his family and others in need, no matter if it weighs a ton. Finally you have Dragan the person hard to explain, he just does what he needs to do, he will come to not care about the dangers of the outside, because he will control his own destiny. Each of them has their place in the race to survive this cruel onslaught from the men on the hills weaponry.

In the light of your immaculate form I make the following declaration:
I will be your jealous cellist- 
(I.)
And I will play you like a stringed instrument - then
When you make delighted whisperings
And finesse the fine music of the feminine, magnificent 
Your heathen distemper
Distributed, 
woman-like, goddess-like
Classic cello-shape 
Draped in lilting silk
Then
I will fiddle and pluck
Cast broad swathes near and about your single tingling place 
Your attuned instrument 
And it's spruce wooded
frontispiece.
(II.)
You faux arabesque 
(for faux is our shared domain)-
Your hands moving gracefully - you pause - 
Feigning flight 
Feigning fancy
Considering
My rising fire 
Weighty desire
Shadows mingle with glimpses of
My thickness and length-
Veined skin and steel, 
White - waiting, wanting -
And there's an answer. 
(III.)
You are girl - such a girl 
I am boy, only boy 
My persistent mans eye view 
Part pleased with the flashes of you - 
Now in new 
Near **** rhythm 
This gilded exuberance, 
Radiant
Hypnotic
Sets sparks flying 
Tickling toward sky and stars
I would have you 
My dexterous digits upon your supple, warm-
Fragrant fresh flesh fret board 
I would squeeze you where
Your mystery resides and
Elsewhere besides.
(IV.)
Roughly - at first - needy
Determined -
I would play upon
Your duet of juice creators
Invoke the 
Holiness of your 
Secret sacred spaces
Doublet, Triplet, Quintet 
Play on! play on! 
I would have you 
With my plugging piece 
There! There!
Your open legs 
Secretly seeking my carnival of thrusting 
Inside your warm girls pearl
Antidote for collective loneliness. 
(V. )
I would hold you, your sides - 
Firm in my greed
Our lustful minuet in 3/4 time
Play on, play on - I 
Kiss your neck, 
nibble your *******
It's you, it's you
You arch yourself toward me
Warmly
Affectionate, 
We hold hands, fingers between, 
And dance. 
(VI.)
This some time Summertime
Bright flame 
We reach - how we reach- 
Our mouths, our tongues - 
The very words we speak- yearning for - 
longing for -
Connection
Each to the other, and 
Our connection to God 
"Rightful sin - 
Come to us again
And again - and again 
Satisfy our minds!"

My art
My passion awakes
My fingertips
From your tailpiece
Your tailpiece
To your neck

Pulsating change
Change of pitch
Rigorous vibrato
My fingers
On your strings
In an extreme tremolo

My hands
Are bewitched
By your slender auburn corpo
Your firm belly
Twitched
In a perfect falsetto

I pluck
You whisper
Bisbigliando
Your fingerboard
Wildly opens
In stile concitato

I play your chord
Your nakedness
In a gentle adagio
You whimper in a rich
Sonorous
Pianissimo

In my warmth
You arouse
In intense crescendo
Swollen, overwhelmed
By our wonderful
Concerto

You rest
Satisfied
In a climactic finale
Crafted
In good music
By an ******* play

My little secret
My little piece
A jewel on my chest
You are my cello
I am your
Cellist

God no you didn't die
I wasn't with you
God knows I never tried
To make me more like you
The evening never breaks
Without lightening on your face
If I could see it all again
I'd go back and watch it end

Magnificent
Dreaming friend
Never never sleep
It's not nice
I went
Screaming when
I saw your dying breath

Hold hold hold
Hold on
I'm not dreaming I'm not dying
Without your song
Won't won't won't
Won't you be
A little bit less frightening
A little more alive again
I don't pretend anymore
I know it's over but I can't move alone
Without your song

Four strings and rosin,
Resin of old cello fires,
  .  .  .  Fingers in amber.

The Little Withering Rep. had met
To rehearse their pantomime,
They’d left it a little late for Christmas,
Could it be done in time?
‘We have a choice, we can do Snow White,
Or Peter Pan would be good,
But we have the sets for another play,
‘The Wicked Witch of the Wood!’

Their hands went up for ‘The Wicked Witch,’
They thought it would be the best,
For Meryl Rose had a wart on her nose
And another one on her chest.
‘Meryl can play the wicked witch
As I think it’s understood!’
But Meryl pouted, she wanted to play
Little Red Riding Hood.

‘I’m always cast as the ugly *****,’
She cried, ‘But what about her?
She always gets the plummiest parts,
The ones with a bit of flair.’
But Helen stuck her nose in the air
And sniffed, ‘I’m younger than you.
You get to play the character parts,
I’m sweet, and innocent too.’

‘Now let’s not fight, it’s a Gala Night,’
The Director said, ‘Let’s cast!
Norman, you’ll be the noble prince,
And Fred can be Gormenghast.
Julia, you can be the Page
But you’ll have to improvise,
We’ll have you girt with the shortest skirt
For you have the longest thighs.’

‘We’ll have to steal from the other tales
For the script is not yet writ,
Helen, you get the sleeping part
For the apple that you’ve bit,
The littlest ones can play the dwarves
And run around on their knees,
Don’t worry, Matt, you can play a bat
And hang from one of the trees.’

They all got into their costumes,
Fancy cloaks with a funny hat,
But Albert Hook had been overlooked,
He dressed as a giant rat.
‘We’ll write in a part for everyone,’
For some had been looking glum,
‘You can be Jack and the Beanstalk, Mac,
And Tim can be ‘Fi-Fo-Fum!’

The curtain raised on the opening night
To reveal a darkened wood,
A giant bat fell out of a tree
To land where the Page was stood,
She shrieked, and clung to the wicked witch
Who was straddling broom and stick,
It knocked the apple out of her hand
That rolled in the orchestra pit.

‘Please can I have my apple back?’
She whispered over the lights,
The cellist was shaking his head at that,
He’d already taken a bite!
The sleeping beauty was not asleep,
The dwarves were looking dumb,
And Jack had shaken the beanstalk then
To the sound, ‘Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum!’

Nobody seemed to know what to do
The rat ran over the floor,
The cellist in the orchestra pit
Then flung back the apple core,
The Witch ran over to Helen then
Who screamed in a long, high note,
‘You’re mad if you think I’m eating that!’
But the Witch rammed it down her throat.

After they’d called the ambulance
And carted Helen away,
The police came in for the errant Witch
And said, ‘You will have to pay!
A joke’s a joke, but you tried to choke
The lead with an apple core!’
While the dwarves were rolling around in fits
As the audience fled for the door.

David Lewis Paget

My name is Zhou Yuanten, but call me Eddie. I am a doctoral student at Xinjiang University –in the far, far west, but at Brunel to study this year. My English is good. I lived in Boston, Massachusetts for undergraduate years. I majored in piano at the New England C and then discovered I wanted to compose rather than play. So I go to MIT and soon I discover the English do it so differently, so I apply to Brunel. And at Brunel they then say of this place ‘you have to go.’ So here I am.

So surprising to be greeted in Chinese! And not just Nin Hao, we have a conversation! His accent is Northern Mandarin. He is writing a novel, he explains, about poets Zuo-Fen and Zuo-Si. We have 15 minutes conversation every day and I help him with his characters. Strange, to most of the class he is nobody, but to foreign students here we know him through his website and his software. I have even played his colours piece, The Goethe Triangle.

It is joy to be respected by a teacher and his sessions are like no other I’ve had here, and here I mean the UK. Oh, so laid-back, so lazy so many teachers. People lack energy here. They are dreamers and only think of themselves. He is full of energy and talks often about this Imogen of whom I never hear. Her father a great composer and she copied his music from when she was a girl – such beautiful calligraphy. Her father loved India and learned Sanskrit. He should have learned Mandarin; at least that is a living language. ‘Imo’, he says, ‘is my heroine, my mentor, the musician I most revere.’ He showed us her library and what was her studio in one of the old buildings here. He gives me this little book about her ten years in this place. A strange looking lady; there’s a photograph of her conducting Bach in the Great Hall. She looks like she is dancing.

This morning some are not here, but there are little notes on the desk with apologies perhaps. He leaves them untouched and we make chords again, and scales and arpeggios and Slonimsky’s famous melodic patterns. We write and write. He sings, we sing too. There is a horn and a cello with us today. They play and make jokes. They show us harmonics and tunings and bend our ears in new directions we do not expect. Those who complain about this course not being ‘advanced’ will eat their words; only I think some of those are not here.

As Chinese we hear sound in a different way I think. In our language tone is so important. To each word there are four tones that make meaning quite different. Chinese uses only about 400 syllables, compared to 4000 in English. So there are lots of syllables, like ****, that have multiple meanings. I tell him the story of the Lion-eating Poet, which he does not know!! I am writing this out for him, all 92 characters. Just one word **** but with four meanings – lion, ten, to make, to be. The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den is the story of a poet (****) named **** who loves to eat lions (**** ****) goes to market (****) to buy ten (****) of them, takes them home to eat (****) and discovers they are made (****) of stone (****).

So I have no trouble hearing what others struggle to hear. We make pieces that are all about tone, and on a single note. Mark, the cellist, plays the opening of Lutoslawski’s Concerto – forty-two repetitions of a tenor ‘D’ a second apart. I had never heard this – a cadenza at the beginning of a concerto. Now we write a duo, on just one note. We write; they play. We are like many Mozarts trying to write only what we have already heard, making only one copy. I use the four tones and must teach the players the signs. I demonstrate and he says of the 1st tone – ‘Going to the Dentist, the 2nd – Climbing a ladder, the 3rd – ‘The Rollercoaster’, the 4th –‘Stepping on a pin’. We all do it!

And there are all these microtones. We listen to a moment of Ravel’s Bolero and pieces by Thomas Ades and Julian Anderson, then in detail (and with the score) to part of Duet for piano and orchestra by George Benjamin. This is spectral music. He is daring to introduce this – very difficult subject - this idea that a sound could be mimicked (? Is that the word – to impersonate?) by analysing it for the frequencies that make it up, and then getting instruments with similar acoustic properties to play the frequencies as pitches. So the need for microtones – goodbye equal temperament! Great in theory, difficult in practice.

This afternoon we are to study spectral composing using our computers. Until now we use our computers or smart phones to listen to extracts. He has this page of web links on his website for each session. Instead of listening through hi-fi we listen through our headphones. Better of course by far, no birds sounds or instruments playing next door. We can hear it again anytime. So there is software to download, Fourier analysis I suppose, he tries hard not to use any science or maths because there are some here who object, but they are fools. Even Bach knew of acoustics – designing the organs he played.

We finish this morning studying harmonic rhythm and this word tonality nobody seems quite able to describe. To him even the chromatic scale is tonality, and he shows in a duet for horn and cello how our ears take in tonality change. This is not about keys, but about groupings of pitches – anywhere – so a tonality can be spread across several octaves. So often, he says, composers are not aware of the tonalities they create, they don’t hear harmonic rhythm. They’re missing an opportunity! Sound can be coloured by awareness of what makes up a tonality. So understanding spectral music must help towards this. It is very liberating all this. If we take sound as a starting point rather than a system we can go anywhere.

Yesterday he asked me about a book he is reading. Did I know it? A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo. Of course I know this very funny book. He said he liked to think of music in the same way the character of the Chinese girl Z thinks about love.

“Love,” this English word: like other English words it has a tense. “Loved”, or “will love”, or “have loved.” All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exists in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ài in pinyin. It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.

And so it is with music. Music is a being, a situation, a circumstance. It holds past and future. It is wondrous, just like love.

A SEAHORSE QUESTIONING

( for Onelia )

The cellist's hand
waits outside time

pauses
beside his instrument

like an exotic fish

steadying itself
in the flow of the music

before dashing out
from behind a glowing coral

eagerly snapping up
the little notes that swim by

at his head
his cello bobs

like a seahorse
questioning

all that is
happening

as he tries to enter
the same stream

(despite Heraclitus's advice)  

.. twice.

For my nimble fingers sting,
Yet it is not written in the music.
I must play as if I were Mozart!
I wish to play as Morgan.
A forever battle of who to be.
A blend I suppose.
They use words like double bar and chord,
For I have not the faintest idea what they mean.
As tears well in the corners of the eye,
They do not flow.
Because the only flow,
Is the rhythm of my bow.

As I'm
sitting in the balcony
and the gallery lights start
    to dim,
and you walk on
stage, ready to fill
a room with
songs

You don't know how you
fill me with music
you fill everyone
with song
-and when they leave,
when I leave,
your melodies
linger and
God if you only knew that
I am your song

I think this
could be easy,
and I think that
I could be yours

So darling,
play me, play me, play me
play me in a sea of bows,
but don't string me
along

At the ripe age of three
I would take full sheets of paper
and set them gently in front of me
and think of how beautiful they were.
Because they were waiting for my words.
But it wasn't until I was in the eleventh
grade that I found them
hiding with my heartbeat.
I never really fought with my fists
but I fought with a little too much heart.
Felt a bit too much
but I don't regret it.
Nor will I ever.
Do you know how to make things beautiful?
The cellist sitting on the street corner
bowing those strings that haven't yet
broken and remember,
that you never paid attention to how it looked.
But it was gorgeous.
And you're gorgeous.
We never measure life
with how many
heart beats we've got
we measure it by how many
miles we've walked.
And although we're not perfect,
neither is God.
We are strong.
We are beautiful.
And I wonder which is more dangerous;
a bottle of whiskey
or a loaded gun.
But it doesn't matter
because somewhere out there
there's someone promising
that they will paint their lover's
portrait in the sky with fire.
And all my life I've hated being a man,
so I decided that these poems
they're my children.
And after you hear them,
I hope that you'll carry them with you.
So don't walk through your life
with your ears covered.
This is for the women who make our heartbeats.
Who give birth to lives.
And this,
this is for the men.
Who sacrifice everything they have
just so they can keep telling
someone that they love them.
I can count ten thousand reasons
to be alive.
But only one reason to be right here.
Beauty kiss my lips.
Mercy show us tears.
We have to fill the gaps with something alive.
So I spend my spare time remembering
your eyes by heart.
Let's split this night open.
We'll cleave it with our words.
We'll sew together our gaping wounds
with the strings of kites,
so that when the wind blows
birds will pluck at them and make
music from our strife.
Remember this.
We couldn't have asked for a more
exciting time to be alive.
So let's make something beautiful.
Lay me down under a blanket of stars
so that when I wake up I can
find my way home.
This world can be cold but
I've learned that heartbeats are louder than gunshots.
And you don't need to tell me there's more out there
Instead I'll go stargazing in your
eyes and strip these
ribbons from my arms.
Build me.
Give me something worthwhile.
And let's learn
how to make things pretty.

My actions are caused by who knows what
but fixed with the simple ,
cellist who plays , my instability away
the violin that makes the lost child feel found ,
the Viola plays through my ears ,
cleansing my brain of stress
the Piano picks away my paranoia
the orchestra is such a sound to apprehend

Evergreen soldiers at the whim of Alraus
I've had a recurrent dream of the enlisted warriors
abandoning their post , occupying the fertile grassland
in a chess type move to gain control
Free of shade , of root-bound thirst , of choking
moss gathering unchallenged in overpopulated arbors
A celebration courtesy of the Robin Knights , the Chickadee troubadours ,
the Cardinal gentlemen at the Court of Queen Chestnut
Slash , sugar , loblolly and white oak
Persimmon , hickory , honey locust and dogwood
The myrrh of gardenia , magnolia , honeysuckle and tea rose
Earthen red clay , white sand , black loam and kaolin
Grasshopper cellist , cricket flautist , a chuckling crow with a
Spanish guitar
The toad trombones , a bluebird violin solo , a mockingbird reads
a touching poem that even sways the worker ants into a brief pause
The Old Forest becomes pasture and the grassland young woodland
The dove cue the night , the katydids croon to the moon ,
the bullfrogs 'pooka-dooka' and the lovers swoon* ...

I write symphonies.
Not with a pen but a brush.
My words aren't spoken.
They are thrown.
They are splattered.
I feel each stroke as a note.
A cellist writing his greatest concerto.
A masterpiece.
And I'm writing for you.

She sits—left leg upon right,
right hand resting in left,

eyes closed, watching joy drift
among sorrows; up one minute,

down the next; a Ferris wheel
of fear and loneliness, then

moments of letting go;
the brows furrowed and then

a smile on her lips—the way a
cellist emotes herself through Bach.

Others have said to her that she is
lucky to be so groundless, to be

free of any misapprehension that
life is perfect or that it will be easy.

She knows better than that.
And because she does, she can take

the crests and the troughs as they come—
a part of the ocean and not the wave.

The old man without wrinkles
Was playing
Patience
Spreading his cards on the bed
Talking to himself
About his moves
Engrossed in his own world
Of cards and advancing years

People are going and coming
Through his room
Not the least bothered
He is busy with
His outer world
He is not waiting for
The dead end.

When his cataract-operated eyes
Will be tired
He will express his desire
To sit in the veranda

His books and a dictionary
Will be put on the table
And he is seen engrossed
Again cut off from
The outer world
Immersed
In the world of books
Sometimes he would lift up
His head smile and look around
And again go into his self-created world,
Today I read a status on FB
About the legendary cellist,
Pablo Casals who used to practice
At the age of ninety; and beyond

I find similarity between them
Both of them are making progress
In life, defeating despair, it seems
Shutting the dark thoughts
From their inner worlds

Last night
I saw him in my dream playing
Patience and l heard
The distinct strokes of bow on a Cello

And now I woke up
With awe at the way
They were not
Actually waiting
But celebrating!

A SEAHORSE QUESTIONING

( for Onelia)

The cellist's hand
waits outside the music

pauses
beside his instrument

like an exotic fish

steadying itself
in the flow of the music

before dashing out
from behind a glowing coral

eagerly snapping up
the little notes that swim by.

At Nazzareno's head
his cello bobs

like a seahorse
questioning

all that is
happening

as he tries to enter
the same stream

(despite Heraclitus's advice)


~ ~ ~ t/w/i/c/e/.

Face to Face
nose to nose
jousting breaths
teasing
every sense
in their bodies

Lips close but not
quite, so much to say
yet silence inhibited
all sense of speech

His hands
slid sensually up and down
her spine
strumming seductive moans
she was his cello
and he, her cellist
conducting a symphony
that she
and only she
can excel at

Jousting breaths
high moans
tender touches
skin on skin
it's just
ethereal

exhausted by the nights & dawn
that break me over you

I've tried a thousand times and still
there's nothing I can do

I've skipped the songs
& cursed your arms
I burn inside my sleep;
to wake now wearing scars
from break-neck-love
made urgently

the truth in me
I'll never speak
of love that wouldn't keep;
my bones they lay
upon the stage
get played with bows of grief

the cellist stripped my ribs
a trick to twist in perfect fifths
& I admit, a love like this
a pain I cannot quit

A SEAHORSE QUESTIONING

( for Onelia)

The cellist's hand
waits outside the music

pauses
beside his instrument

like an exotic fish

steadying itself
in the flow of the music

before dashing out
from behind a glowing coral

eagerly snapping up
the little notes that swim by.

At Nazzareno's head
his cello bobs

like a seahorse
questioning

all that is
happening

as he tries to enter
the same stream

(despite Heraclitus's advice)

~ ~ ~ t/w/i/c/e/.

My skin is blank sheet music,
and you begin to craft a
song with me.
We write an entire
symphony upon each other,
practicing arpeggios and scales
until each one is
perfectly blended into the next,
one movement cannot be distinguished
from the other.
You begin your overture,
striking chords along
my collar bone and ribs,
each tone lovingly clear.
You are the real composer,
the maestro,
the cellist.
I am simply your muse,
your baton,
your bow.
The reprise begins to fade,
our breath comes back to us,
and we treasure the invisible
notes, rests, and tempos
that played across our skin.

your heart, I wish I could see it laid out before me,
like when I watch a cellist play their part beautifully,
wood and sinew, bow and flesh,
                                         enmesh,
in a dance, where notes fall like a wash of tears,
which run down, laughing so hard at the sadness,
     as notes ascend and descend.
          the chest rises and falls,
              and all I want to see, in truth, is your heart,
                 the cello braced for news good or bad that
                    you are about to share, but not your heart,
                      please don't play me for a fool, I'm not an
                        instrument too, that you have found boxy,
                          and poorly made with materials that age fades,
                            what will you do, when I can no longer hold
my tune?
your heart, I need to see the path you are going to walk,
so we can go side by side, no secrets, our touch is real, with
no distance, so we can in whispered voices, talk, not like the
bow that makes those strings sing, or the pressure of those
fingers to get the notes just so, no...

Like the notes on the aged sheet music, the dark spots and lines
now fade, here and there but remember, the music we once moved
to, now moves us in our memories, treasured and measured beats,
your heart has shaped them, whole notes have become half notes and changed my life...
                                                        n­ow reveal to me will we ever share a destiny?

My parents passed away last spring. Two weeks apart, it was hard to bear.
She was a cellist, he played violin. Their instruments were old and rare.
Growing up, I’d hear them practice. For practice is the only way
to make effort appear effortless in the first chairs on concert day.
Our house resounded with their music. As I grew, I’d also play.
Our family spoke with strings, not voices.
Then there was silence, when they passed away.

Her Cello was made by Testore; His violin was by Lupot,
both treasures of the Luthier’s art.
I wept to see them gathering dust.
Mute witnesses as Death played his part.

It’s hard for artists nowadays to afford such quality.
hard, as well, for me to sell, to send their instruments away
A friend suggested a better way; to keep my loved ones’ legacy
My colleagues play with them on loan; their borrowed voices speak to me.

if you keep lying to yourself it’ll come true.
you’re not hurting yourself.
you’re not cutting.
you’re eating enough.
you’re not suicidal.
you’re not depressed.
you’re getting enough sleep.
you’re good enough.
you’re a good person.
you’re happy.
you’re okay.
you’re a good singer.
you’re a good artist.
you’re a good writer.
you’re understanding.
you’re a good friend.
you’re not manipulative.
you’re not sensitive.
you’re a good listener.
you’re able to vent.
you’re valid.
you’re listened to.
you’re not being manipulated.
you’re not lying to yourself.
you’re telling the truth.
you’re always there for others.
you’re patient.
you’re trying hard enough.
you’re not annoyed easily.
you’re a good cellist.
you’re a good student.
you’re a good child.
you’re funny.
you’re confident.
you’re not at all shy.
you’re creative.
you’re able to achieve your dreams.
you’re loved.

‘Tis a strange sorrow
‘The language of hymns’
from an avant-garde cellist

Breaks your heart to hear it!

Pain is long and deep, it broadens itself, at self-will, running wild

      motivating any artist to dream, poets dream long and before acting with
grandeur and in youth, there’s nothing but dreams,

                                      as lust doesn’t cost a thing    until all that youth drys up

and the ability to stop dreaming isn’t felt, just aging

to achieve harmony in this life, one must struggle for years, especially in poetry, where they can all articulate love, like the Tenor or the Cellist, over composed symphonies. And the ******’s praise them all.

                               my heart is in my hand, because it’s pierced
                               those who have content, are the ones who
                               dared to live in the first place and I’m still hung
                               up on you, because those who’ve lived, seem
                               to have experienced love, my heart is caught
                               providing a helping hand to write any poem.


      People had made love without poetry, because lust is easier.

                              And when awareness kicks in, it will be too late and poets join time to mock them with heavy laughter.


    
                  I grow tired of waiting, fatigued after actions with efforts of affection


Life goes on


No-one likes the lovers lost in love, because it reminds them,
of what they don’t have, wondering if the love is wild and roaring
or if it took their youth to tame. No one likes the lovers lost
in love, because it can devalue any romantic piece, those
lovers in ****** acts, intimately fusing their souls together,
getting to know the ecstasy of illumination and addicted to
sparking awakening in each other. For no one likes anyone
in love, for their souls are free and without void and despair,
so they shun those lovers out, in return those lovers build
a world of their own, forgetting the earth for the rest of
humanity, never to fit in again. Can you love a smile? Can
you love a glance? Holding hands? Would you tame beauty?
For without love, the law means nothing and the poets will
turn out as serial killers. For no one likes people being truly
in love, because it reminds them what’s without.

                          I can read any poem, for such things as love, is not written,
   only expressed in actions, whispered in the ears of night,
                                 spoken by the mouths, who’ve been to the horizon
                                 and back.
Only in love, where it can strip anyone down to the ****, bearing to the world, all their faults, sins, mistakes and regrets, revealing all their secrets and transcend into a saint. A Muse for the world. I don’t know about you, to what I think about those first kisses between yourself and your lover, is conversation  between Angels, closing lips, each other’s breathes felt lightly pressed upon skin, and the Angels sing when the lips are closed, holding hands and finally the delicate souls can meet and begins to feel safe for the first time.
             And everyday sounds, turn into love songs, that we’ve grown to accustom
  to listen to, without knowing their meaning. Living now, like life ends at the end of the day, you can blame fate for falling in love or you could just go out and experience love. It’s a place that we all ache to go, twinge at the sight of it, love involves the energy of any supernova that births beauty on site, creating memories for poets, adding
charm to this present, parenting the future, dragging things up from the heart, when we dared not to and finally for the first time, you shrug your shoulders and let go.

                            As for anyone telling that you have to work for love.
                            Slap them as hard as you can. Than recommend them
                            a good lawyer and a young lover for their spouse.

(knowledge variable)

All are invited to taste-test a French meal, free-of-charge, at the
Table of near west side Chef Louis.  The first course will be a
Salade Niçoise, prepared the usual way – vegetables, salad greens
From the Periwinkle family, des oeufs durs et des olives ‒ Flavored with a pinch of myrtle.  Those so inclined may have escargots instead.  Louis will pop the cork on a vintage vin rouge.

The main course:  canard à l’orange, spécialité de la maison.  
Known far and wide as the best duck in town, it has a secret sauce
Including the bird’s bone marrow, and is a favorite of Paul Soglin;
Hizzoner has been showing up brandishing a “ditch Walker” sign.

While the cuisine is incomparable, the dinner music, too, is
Délicieuse.  In town for only a week is the diva, Renée Fleming,
Accompanied by the virtuoso cellist, Yo-Yo Ma.  To forestall the
Entry of hordes of fans, Louis will have the louvers closed.

The wait staff will be in the wings with the dessert du jour, Crêpes
Suzette – using the best Orange Curaçao ‒ before a small frigate
Is unmoored for return to the Lesser Antilles to pick up a new
Stash.  Louis is a total service restauranteur, and he has vowed to
Let all his guests take a selfie, with him, Yo-Yo and Renée, in the
Private chef’s booth, in just a glimmer of the day’s remaining light.

Though he’s unbearded, Louis uses Brilliantine regularly to help
Him attract the most voluptuous of available dates.  Mais, prenez
Garde, mes demoiselles, Louis est français, après tout….  


© Lewis Bosworth, 7-2017

Here, where it is so easy to dance,
the whole street moves in solidarity
with the silver-haired couple performing
a living room waltz across a public square,
feet crossing and twisting and crossing back
to the sultry sounds of the swaying cellist
and his violin friend, playing not for money
but for the love of it, and of these streets
nestled below the chiming bell-tower,
where fountain water rushes out,
flowing onto marble steps pulsing with life
while old ladies in matching scarves shuffle by
in time with skipping school children
laughing in harmony, and even the prison next door
pounds out La Traviata because here,
where it is so easy to dance,
the whole street moves.

Lying in bed
Unable to sleep
The fan in the room
Oscillates sounding
Like the waves
Lapping the shore
I think back to
This morning
When I heard
A cellist amongst the choir
Tears rolled down my cheeks
Why is it that I cannot sleep

Long past midnight
    but I could not sleep
     love has taken flight
     promises she didn't keep--

    my cello I'll hold close tight
    let every note my sorrow echo
    poets who praise love hardly know the blight
    nor the forlorn's tears that so deeply flow

How beautiful the children's feet,
Mothers at the border crossings,
The cellist in the war-torn streets,
Resplendent in the evening,
Who know that evil has a name,
A placid face, blue eyes of death,
Who murders with a toxic rain
That sears the skin,  that takes the breath.
The earth grows dark with fallen leaves;
Blood brothers, elders, innocents.
Say nothing of the amputees,
The blinded and the minds that went
Beyond recovery.  God's hooks
Were never meant for common folks.