Heartstone is a reflection in music on a ‘lost’ poem. The poem described in its two short verses a summer’s day, a landscape, a fossil found and placed in the palm of a child’s hand. The poem inspired a seven-movement work for wind, brass and percussion with solo piano. Here is its poetic programme note.

Chert

The piano draws an arc of rhythm
rising then falling.
Above
two choirs of wind and brass
exclaim, fanfare, mark out
shorter, determined
gestures of sound.

The procession, almost a march,
becomes a dance.
Alone
Two choirs of wind and brass
become four couples
whose music weaves
from complexity a simplicity:
Chromatic to Pentatonic
twelve becoming five.

Prase

Four stopped horns,
five extended tonalities.
Together they wander
a maze of Pentatonic paths;
alone, and in pairs, as a quartet
they discover within
a measured harmonic rhythm.
Tension: resolution

. . . and surrounding
their every move
the piano
insists an obligato,
a continuum of phrases,
absorbing into itself
the warp and weft of horn tone.

Sard

Oscillating
in perpetual motion
the full ensemble
occupies a frame
of time and space.

Flutes, reeds,
double-reeds
brass, piano,
percussion
mirror-fold on mirror-fold
layer upon layer
overlapping.

Yarns of threaded sound.

Tuff

Without a break
the mirrored oscillations
patter pentatonics
on tuned percussion
of marimba and vibraphone

whilst
a *batterie of drums
lays down
shards of beaten rhythm
against this onward
folding of tonality change.

In the background
a choir of winds
flutes and single reeds
waymark this recursive journey
gathering together
cadential moments and the
necessary pause for breath.

Marl

Relentlessly, the motion is sustained,
piano-driven,
a syncopated continuo,
rhythm-sectioned
amidst layers of percussion.

Adding edge,
a choir of brass and double reeds
amplify the piano’s jagged rhythms
providing impetus for
phrases to become longer and longer,
ratching up the tension,
ever-denying closure
until the batterie
delivers
a conclusive flourish.

Paramoudra

Pulse-figures of winds.
Motific cells of brass.
Both
negotiate a stream of
fractal-shaped tonality
expanding: contracting.
A blossom of fanfares

folding into
pulsating layers
of tuned percussion,
flutes and reeds.
A dance-like episode

absorbs a chorale.
Four horns in close harmony
against the continuing dance.
A duet of differences

flows into a cascade of chords
in closed and open forms.
The piano supports
brass-flourishing figures
before a final stillness.

Heartstone

In gentle reflection
the solitary piano –
a figure in a landscape
of collapsed harmonic forms -
presents in slow procession
the essence of previous music.

With my heart I picture you in polaroids
tinted blue by my eyes, surrounded by crushed leaves.
In the skipping track of my inner eye
your mouth, the way it moves when you focus
the open-palmed reaching of marimba chorale
and softening of your brow from the vines
of midnight-colour hair.
From many perspectives, again and again,
in the skipping track of my inner eye,
photographs shot with love.

the rain falls,
like a hymn,
upon the windows.
a song of hope,
sent from grey
and sombre sky.

given to an
adoring ground
accepted as
communion and
restoration.

listened to from within,
watched by wondering eyes,
the holiness of nature.
....beautifuly divine....

Back in time during some tense moment,
of weakness causes a state -of Confusion
or was it  an era of delusion in my poetic mind?
to my greatest surprise, this became a series
  of my confessional poetry.

Aching for someone to fill a void
A love that couldn’t be granted
Without the repercussion of the change.....

Why have I chosen?
Such a man of low caliber
To fulfill my wildest fantasies

A man who knows
Not what he wants
Who never delivered those timely sigh
Or made the almighty seem
Less powerful than him

Oh how long have I waited to reach?
That high pitch of satisfaction
To hear the sound of
“Oh God, oh my God
Without a choir chorale

My bed, his cave,
No waiver, the thrill is gone
A wish not granted
A void yet to be filled

We shalt Noel ourn favorite aria
A chorale of valiant rendezvous,

Overcome by ourn setting sun
Enchanted by ourn moon,

Fixated and elevated, by flying bolide's in the empyrean
Statue's of us to be built, with ourn amour' as its coliseum,

Dozy by ourn ardor spree, worn out from long heartfelt night
Covering eachother with balm, mollified by ourn spice...

The birds to maketh their fly-by, the bugs to creep on foot
The sand beneathe ourn locked feet, touched by the soot....

Her head on mine chest, as this she Whisper's ( I loveth thee mine rey)

I whisper back (I loveth thee more, reina of mine heart's display)




As tis
The passer-byers witnessed two angels lost in the moment
Forgetting the world ever existed...

Looking into eachother's extraterrestrial pupil's!!!!!

~for Honey~

upon arrival in May, 2020, at the sheltering island:

sparser, leaner, the overage of summer fullness lacking,
some of the presumptuous early blooms silly attempting
with no success, the deceiving of new arrivals, while the many
naked branches, leaf-less, trees, struggling be fully realized, needy
to join, volunteer, with the troops of advancing green recruits

this no poem, just descriptive, a viewpoint, my eyes awaken
to calm waterways, white boat dots trawling, looking
for new births, bounties of raw refreshment, sailing to an audience
of landed, gentrified emerald grasses, their chorale singing ‘thirsty!’

of me they ask, who be you, we’ve not seen nary a human trod
our land and seascape for months many, we have no recollection,
no issuing, of an invitation to any two legged slightly-familiar interlopers, reply simple, essence of essential, I’m being, being here!

your shores shore me in ways undefinable, that my
travels and travails don’t dare accompany or defy,
looking for old friends, natural ones, some likely passed,  all
whilst I sing Over the Rainbow, wishing wishes wonderful

already becoming truth, eyes daren’t deceive, my somewhere
here, where a winter’s rainbow made its landing, dreams truthful revealed, richly greeted, our presence yet welcomed, by sea salted
odiferous air, lapidaries of sapphiric waves, animals of the Kingdom

the poetry nook members, askance asking, why, what so long took,
we, your audience, waiting patiently for a coming, to pen our
woods and tales, long, short and tall, prophecies of storms,
lighting crashes, of a stilling peacefulness, heaven-bequeathed

the Adirondack thrones, four kings, wearied worn, beyond gray,
show their weathering rings pride of ‘another year, we’ve survived,’
saying now, we’ll speak to the world, through you-man-poet,
our minions too, deer, wolves, rabbits, starfish, osprey, sea trout, piping plover, all winter survivors, will enjoin your verses

much to tell, newly created, new spells, to trance your eyes,
you seeing only our surfaces, guessing at our depths, our inherency,
looking for recovered keys to unlock your own hardy boyish mysteries, but ours, are perpetual unsolvable which is why,
you humans, ne’er fail to return

your soft footfalls, children’s shrieks, jewels to adorn us,
our nature, needs adoration and adulation, our tree limbs
for swinging on lumber-cut swings, flying towards our blued skies, requires humans to summer-slum, breaching the winters remaining slumbering yet few ends to join you when you at last first chant,

                               that, that’s where
                               you will find me, 
                               thinking,
                               think to myself,
                                                         ­ oh, what a wonderful world!

ICH RUF ZU DIR. . .
( for Mimi )

1.

brushes her hair in the mirror
she stares Death full in the face
the heart attack catching her off guard

11.

Dusk walks off
into the distance
Night speaks slowly….quietly

111.

Green shadows
lilac shadows
never just
black

1V.

gooseberries…geraniums…sherbet
those things of childhood
she both liked & didn’t

V.

I only half listen to them, smug in their snug, poets scoring points off each other over the odd pint or two or more. . .

“Ahhh now Jaysus...your oyster always gives me the collywobbles. Every time I encounter an oyster I think of Chekov’s corpse and sure the appetite goes off of me!”

“Is that right?”

“That’ right so it is!”

“Sure when poor Chekov became a corpse...he was kept on ice with the oysters and shipped to Moscow. So it’s always Chekov’s auld face I see( ya see )when I come face to face with an oyster. I think of him being extracted from his shell and slipping slowly down Death’s throat.

“Ahhh Jaysus...Jaysus sure isn’t Death a terrible man altogether for the poets and such like. But come here to me when I’m talking to ya...have ya ever heard tell of a fella called.. if memory serves me well. . .Qui ****-Haung-ti?”

“Qui ****-Haung-ti? Eh, let’s see now...ahh...no...now…I don’t believe I have had that pleasure? Who he? For God’s sake!

“ Sure wasn’t yer man only the first supreme ruler of China!”

“He wasn’t..!”

“He was...I declare to God!”

“And sure for 9 months, 9 months now I tell ya, after his death he continued to reign seated upon his throne...surrounded by fish!”

“Well, that’s as posthumous as ya can get! But, why...the fish?”

“To disguise the smell...ya ejit!”

“And that’s why I can’t stand either sight or sound of our scaly friends.  It gives me the creep I tell ya!”

“Fair enough!”

“Will ya have another?”

“Ahhh sure, I will so!”

V1.

bitter gooseberries

V11.

I pray to my granny’s apron full of stars and flowers…only a rag now for shining shoes; to my uncle’s auld hat that that sat for years and years on the brown dresser like a dried up soul.
To my other uncle’s battered boots still caked with mud from summer’s long long ago which now houses a kitten that can’t get out mewing pitifully its plight:

V111.

the gooseberry’s bitterness

Solaris...was it
floating in space
back to Bach...ich ruf zu dir...

1X.

she holds the gooseberry
between finger and thumb
her eyes devouring it

X.

the sun shone through it
a prism of living light

snow is falling
in the room

from which she first
saw snow
falling

she stands outside
falling through time

X1.

she listens to the wheat
the wheat listens to her listening
the wind moves them both

X11.

in the story of her
childhood there are
always gooseberries

X111.

the words dress themselves up
walk around in stories
showing off

X1V.

she prays to the green light
of the gooseberry that is
the God of living things

XV.
the mirror holds her reflection
even when she’s gone
Death hums its little tune

XV1.

“They’re better fed than read...”
as my grandmother said
about anyone other than our selves

XV11.

he thought the good idea...was his
she thought the good idea...was hers

XV111.

he said he will( but he won’t )
she said she won’t( but she will )

X1X.

the mirror can’t find her
anywhere
she’s fallen off the edge of a flat world

*

The title emerges from Bach's BWV 177 - "Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ"

Cantata for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity

Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ,
Ich bitt, erhör mein Klagen,
Verleih mir Gnad zu dieser Frist,
Laß mich doch nicht verzagen;

I call to You, Lord Jesus Christ,
I beg You, hear my cries,
grant me mercy at this time,
do not let me despair;

The soundtrack of SOLARIS features Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale prelude for *****, Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639, played by Leonid Roizman, and an electronic score by Eduard Artemyev. The prelude is the film's central musical theme.

Tarkovsky initially wanted the film to be devoid of music and asked composer Artemyev to orchestrate ambient sounds as a musical score. The latter proposed subtly introducing orchestral music. In counterpoint to classical music as Earth's theme is fluid electronic music as the theme for the planet Solaris.

The character of Hari has her own subtheme, a cantus firmus based upon J. S. Bach's music featuring Artemyev's composition atop it; it is heard at Hari's death and at story's end.

The memory of the movie...of the two drunks in the pub....of the music...her childhood memories of gooseberries all hail the prelude to her...death.... memories lie shattered and scattered like the hand mirror fallen from her hand...reflecting all and nothing.

A sequence poem that attempts to mimic the strands of the choral movements sustained by a single voice a la Mr. Bach.

Whatever is in the head when Mr. Death comes calling.

we sit at the edge of
vespertide
listening to the chorale
of evensong
this day's opus almost done
now tapering off in
slow melodious decrescendo..
it is the gloaming
and the final flurry of light
glimmers on the horizon

now the night becomes
the diva,
the first star has been wished upon,
the first sattelite too.
and the bass note of the cicadas
builds to a *****, needful hum...

lights go on in little square
patches, and the smell
of barbeque fragrances
the summer night air

under the streetlights
the moths come to dance
a dare each other to touch
the midnight sun...

and in our garden
the rustle of the
tame gone feral
rabbit "bellamy"
has begun...

a hulking grey white
shadow now he lollops
toward the tasty green
carrot-tops...
until the sound of pounding
feet causes him to freeze
considering his position
bellamy chooses discretion
over valour and departs with haste

the wind now has a coolness to it
and the grass grows damp about us
by still we sit enamoured of the changing
slow and quiet about us
the seas whisper secrets
and the birds settle in for the night
excepting those who hunt on silent wings

the stars begin to pop
bright white on the darkening sky
and the crescent moon smile with
a sideways grin...

it is now the darker things come
owls on the wing
spiders to reknit there webs
the big bass frog to sing his song
and the small blood seeker
come with whinging wings

now we must give the night
it's privacy, as we walk inside,
from the pond a series of sounds
means the frog has found dinner
hopefuuly a mosiquito buffet

the vesper tide hath turned
the night is now come.....

On the 21st floor of a corporate building
down in Valero street,
there is an orchestra.
The delicate-paired symphony of
clicking keyboards
and heels tapping on cold cement
to the beat of
practiced impassivity.

The seconds also made sounds
along with a chorale
of both sweet and bitter voices
singing like cicadas faintly next to your ear–
"I told you so".
The second you glanced out the window
will have been the twelfth time;
gawking, scanning the view
like a hawk.
But a hawk is vicious—
and you remember how everyday
always seems to feel like a train ride to
a dead end,
and how Fridays are finales
to a weekly competition
where you reward yourself merely with participation
because you’re here,
you’re here,
but you’ve crawled your way to be here.

You’re not a hawk.
But you gaze down at the people
crossing the intersection of streets
and maybe that’s just as good as life can get.

You’re a lighthouse.
Watching as the hours and people go by
through a small office window —
but how do you call yourself a lighthouse if you
have lost your light?
The script says,
“I’m making a living”
and one ought to take it as it is.
But more often than not
we fail to ask ourselves
if we’re actually living,
or just merely getting by.

Nowadays,
the latter sounds more like a normal thing.

(A)bove the church were golden bells.
(N)ext to it was the finest sight, a hunch-back belle.
(N)ested in a tower of cobwebs and dusty shelves.
(E)xcept no one new that she was a princess walking among our common selves.

(C)arved within her heart is a beauty without comparison.
(U)nsuspectingly she can bust you out and then throw you to a jail garison.
(R)eclaimed by her will was a kingdom of magic.
(T)hat three young lads fought for her though always arguing about logic.
(I)n her eyes you can see a bright red glow.
(S)hining like blood red rubies in a cave under six feet of snow.

(S)ilence is sought out whenever she starts to sing.
(M)ajestic is her voice but can give you an alarming sting.
(I)n her greatest moments she sings with an enormous chorale.
(T)he kind of crowd that boosts her morale.
(H)old your breath for a mesmerizing musical royale.

tap into the line of grief
-  Receiving this message. Recieving messages. Intense and deep. It running through me like a shock. A primal instinct. A knowing.

- last night i dreamt that your face fell apart
- last night i dreamt your came came apart
- in broad day light i dreamt your face fell apart
- in broad day light i dreamt your face came apart

- just when i thought there was no saving me, your mother invites me to join the family chorale of shrieks in response to a baby garter snake (on the porch)
i am unimpressed
calls me out to the porch to look at a snake
i am unimpressed
would i really be concerend?
everyone knows i'm a snake

you (momma) call me out to
you invite me to witness the 3 headed spetacle of a baby garter snake and your daughter trapping it by its tail
"someone **** it"

you invite me to the family event of killing the baby garter snake on the porch
it looks innocent to me
do you expect me to be impressed
afraid?
we all know i'm a (the) snake

How is it possible?
That in your eyes...
I have found,
that my music Resonates
As hard,
As the shining of the stars.

Never a human show me
That music can be found
In the warm of mortal arms.
Melodies fly over the skies
When I think, on those eyes.

Now, that the light is just white...
My music has no life,
You took the colors apart.

I can not decorate
The rhythm of your lips.
They faded
and,
I can not paint them.

I can not hold
those hands anymore
Indicating the tempo.
So, I will go find you.

The world that is below
Does not scare me at all
The smell of your dry tears
Is singing me to where I should be.

After I finish my last piece,
I will trust in my ears
and, I will bring you with me.
So, we both shall compose,
The greatest symphony of love.

I have figured out
that If I play this twelve row.  
The doors of the underworld
will open, so I won’t feel this cold.

Every night after you closed your eyes...
I have been dreaming with:
dramatic purple
Melodies.
   Sophisticated
      Rhythms.
And
Lyrics that…
Try to convince me
To forget
Your turquoise smell.  
It feels like a dream
but it is so real that
It feels like my music
Now is complete
Without your breath.  

Now, I’m here…
it seems like nowhere
Absence of presence
NO tonality
ambiguous personality
Kind of
I’m liking this place…

I see you precious as the last sky that I see in my dreams every sleep,

I take out The purple melody

And I play an elegant transcription of the symphony of my dreams…

You look at me and smile

So we both will be apart…

I will bring you alive...
with my next chorale.
With a Symphony
for 300 hundred souls.
I WILL BRING YOU ALIVE
WITH AN ETERNAL RHYTHM
Every morning, Every dream,
where there is a note
you are with me.

Early winter morning under the weakened sun.
Trees sway with the thunderous roar of the blowing wind above the snowy sand.

Heaven's glorious symphonies are heard as church bells rang.
Young and old gather around as the choir started and sang.

Loud prayers can be heard from an echoing distance.
Emancipating each and every heart in a matter of chance.

Evangelic voices from the chorale continued aloud.
Now the priest started to preach with a voice so loud.

Valiant soldiers arrived to join the uplifted crowd.
In a timely manner unveiling a hidden shroud.

Little children were out in the fields playing.
Out in the evergreens vast wilderness and doing their own thing.

Roses and rasp berries were plenty on a nearby garden.
Its a beatiful place with a few wooden carvings.

At last the day is retiring, dusk arrives and the night will finally come and settle in.

Morning Spider

What were you trying to say
from down the dry well
of the German coffee maker?  
A brusque “guten Morgan”
unworthy of the finesse required
to defeat the hinged plastic lid,
“****** off mate” belying
the English taste for tea,
begging bus fare for the Silk Road
transparent even without a bracing first cup.
A caution, then?  
Don’t leave bags unattended,
know the warning signs of stroke,
sleep like a baby
with two-step authentication?  
Choirmaster alone in the apse,
dwarfed by vaulting cathedral walls
soaring seamless into heavenly gloom,
where I hover on high, indifferent
god commanding flood water, bestowing
the random fly of mercy, deigning
to lower a spoon of salvation
while you weave a gossamer chorale, perhaps,
working the tiny shuttles your batons.

Vespers

What were you chanting  
from down the dry well
of our German coffee maker?  

A brusque Gute Nacht masking
the finesse required to defeat
the hinged plastic lid?

Begging bus fare
for the Silk Road
transparent,

even without mornings
bracing first cup.
A caution, then?  

Don’t leave bags unattended?
Know the warning signs of stroke?
Sleep like a baby, use two-step

authentication?
Your cloistered solitude,
fringed bulb of abdomen

whispered tonsure,
solitary choirmaster dwarfed
by cathedral walls

soaring graduated
into heavenly gloom
where I hovered on high,

my nightly routine
to summon The Flood,
deigning to lower

a spoon of salvation
while you wove a gossamer
chorale,  

working
the eight tiny shuttles
of your batons.

You were a smeary bruise,
your eye hysterical,
cut from white twill
in the brumal March;
I slipped my blues,
to a blonde chorale
in your room, on the hill
gushing with larch.
We practiced slow,
while black cones bled
coffee. Your breath
came in little throws,
your heart in parcels of red,
that led to our little death.

Morning Spider

What were you trying to say
from down the dry well
of our German coffee maker?  
A brusque “guten Morgan”,
unworthy of the finesse required
to defeat the hinged plastic lid,
“****** off mate” belying
the English taste for tea,
begging bus fare for the Silk Road
transparent, even without a bracing first cup.
A caution, then?  
Don’t leave bags unattended,
know the warning signs of stroke,
sleep like a baby with two-step
authentication?  
But your solitude, small bare bulb
of abdomen, put me in mind
of a monks tonsure, choirmaster
alone in the apse, dwarfed
by vaulting cathedral walls
soaring seamless into heavenly gloom,
where I hover on high, indifferent
god commanding the flood waters,
bestowing random flies of mercy,
deigning to lower a spoon of salvation
while you weave a gossamer chorale,  
working the tiny shuttles of your batons.

among the summer stupor,
the gleeful pounce

onto that that flies
on diaphanous wings

tracing secret silver spirals

small bursting berries in tiny flaxen fingers
blue blackberry mouthfuls
the boys of summer with indigo grins and legs akimbo

their chorale sweet and brimming between
the shrinking hours

a jovial furor against a backdrop of blue

I SAW THE BEST MINDS OF MY GENERALIZATION
wearing halos of fog,
opening their eyes with a burst of surreal an' shattering
the beacon of light
with a splatter of the gray matter... afterwards it all became
so fug'n trite.

I'm phrasing perfect with a hint of propulsive barb'd barkin'
—Man, I am aching to blather,
**** man, it's more than ****-cheek chatter—
it BBBBBBBBBButt bubbles with a puhcussive tootin';
a howl absurd!

I raise a cup & say cheers t' Allen Ginsberg

"O BLOATED BLUES an' DECIBELS DANCE
t'BALLYHOO'd BE-BOP FLUNG
An' BOMBS BUSTIN OPEN with Gear's CLAWING
t'BE AIRBORNE",
Yes, he SITs IN a SPACE SHARE'd with us;
finger snappin' & poetry clappin' from
a heavenly ladder's rung...

A MAD HATTER's CHINA TEACUP is filled
with continuous soft crackling liveliness of effervescence...
and buoyed by the holy soul jelly roll that moves
through here now.
So let us praise and bestow upon him,
a heartfelt bow before we etch on the walls
of my primitive pome cave
our beatnik chorale reverberation of "AND HOW!"

By "ooznozz"

Swell
cut back
trace the outline of my shadow
with caution tape
Holy ****, I'm about to die

Arpeggios
Metronomical beats
****** the tempo
with a chorale prelude
This time in Pig Latin:
Oly-Hay Uck-Fay, M-Iay Bout-Aay O-Tay Ie-Day

Out of key
with somber inflections
Press on my dear, Press on
with a dog eared national geographic
bookmarked to all the places I want to travel
One more time for someone who cares:

By green and windblown rippled slopes
where cattle graze in summer sun;
beneath blue skies when larks sing shrill,
and rabbits by the hedgerows run.
When meadowsweet and columbine
bedeck the lea like ocean foam;
we soft return like shadows lost
to seek our old ancestral home.

Within the tree-lined borderlands
we wait until the day is done;
‘til passing fancies leave us be
and once again our time is come.
When doors and gates are closed and locked
we slip within as night winds roam;
and talk in whispered secrecy
of times in our ancestral home.

No more within cold fireplace
do fallen logs burn bright and fair;
from panelled walls in sullen oils
dark portraits of the long-dead stare.
On bowing shelves of oak repose
forgotten tales in leathern tome;
unread by men for centuries,
hid deep in our ancestral home.

And through the marches of the night
we drift from room to balcony;
recalling days of childhood lost,
the laughter of sweet memory.
Yet all too soon we must be gone
‘ere birds again chorale the dawn;
and disappear like shadows soft
that fly from our ancestral home.

In the darkness in between,
of true love and and lust I sing,
breathy songs with gasping spasms,
creeping tongues and *******.

With fingers that travel over her lands,
exploring everywhere with both hands,
warming breaths on silky skin,
burning pyres of original sin.

Building toward volcanic eruption,
with all the powers of seduction,
whispered lovings cooed in an ear,
intentions made crystal clear.

Engorged lips pressed together,
now teasing with a feather,
ice cubes melt and dripped along,
extending verses of this song.

Harmonies entered as one voice,
higher now, we have no choice,
baseline bumping, shaking walls,
setting up the chorale call.

The chorus hits hard and fast,
finale is soon cannot last,
our music made and instruments spent,
we wonder where the night time went.

By green and windblown rippled slopes
where cattle graze in summer sun;
beneath blue skies when larks sing shrill
and rabbits by the hedgerows run.
When meadowsweet and columbine
bedeck the lea like ocean foam;
we soft return like shadows lost
to seek our old ancestral home.

Within the tree-lined borderlands
we wait until the day is done;
‘til passing fancies leave us be
and once again our time is come.
When doors and gates are closed and locked
we slip within as night winds roam;
and talk in whispered secrecy
of times in our ancestral home.

No more within cold fireplace
do fallen logs burn bright and fair;
from panelled walls in sullen oils
dark portraits of the long-dead stare.
On bowing shelves of oak repose
forgotten tales in leathern tome;
unread by men for centuries,
hid deep in our ancestral home.

And through the marches of the night
we drift from room to balcony;
recalling days of childhood lost,
the laughter of sweet memory.
Yet all too soon we must be gone
‘ere birds again chorale the dawn;
and disappear like shadows soft
that fly from our ancestral home.

They're not going to understand me
Possibly not till long after I am dead

But that's ok; I guard the point
I break the press. I look behind.

                      I pass ahead

                              Wed
                        ­     Dread
                               Said



                                 led.

“This scorched land has a proteus yet correlate intimacy,
Could it have been I was once before thee in the aft?
Maybe when I was on the abscond of tortuous criterion,
In search of something imminent that is decisive coeval,

Scurry beams of spirit would be like a noxious gallimaufry,
Oh vault of slags bitterness where feathered creatures ****,
Remote land that is before me in lieu of the love I have lost,
The quietude air whisks flower chorale refrains of melancholy,

I am a lost pioneer on an unending expedition for melioration,
Deep blue brine in the vastly distance awaits an archipelago,
To not have her in my arms would be like a blade of dread,
As the fiery sun blazes brightly with a sky of blue as am I,

I can only say at the endow of this journey I hope for her,
Scorching this barren land is nihility compared to her loss,
It is her love that keeps me live as I thrive forward,
As eventide arrives frigid cold that was aft scorched land,  

As I ponder exordium with the thought of oppressed feelings,
Yearning as my love has befallen with my present anguish,
For I now am that oppressed suitor on Scorched Lands”
    By Andrew Guzaldo © 11/07/2019 #172

Napolilita - What a gal!
I see her sitting with her pal
Beside a secret strait canal
Composing quite a queer chorale

I hear the one begin to sing
About a dear forbidden thing
Surrounded by the flowers of spring
The other simply listening

In both their eyes I see a fire
Of hope for half fulfilled desire
As one the other does admire
And hopes to happiness inspire

They listen to relieve their pain
Weighed down by such uncommon strain
Connected by their spirits twain
They guard their hearts from being slain

Red lucent smears
of black bird night
on flat water shine,
everything doubled
by the canal.

Sleep in beer,
old gold light
played over pine
& I'm troubled
by old rationales.

An image appears:
the same sleight
of heart, same shrine
made of rubble,
same blinded chorale.

He thought a bone shattered
A rib, perhaps
Something in his chest, at least.
It shattered, or just cleaved right down the middle.

She was abrupt, rude, almost
Straight and to the point.
If her words were a symphony,
She’d be staccato, short and sharp and
Leaving you wondering if there was a point to that repetitive noise.

He was a chorale, smooth and savory and lagato
A long soothing soak in the tub
A gentle wash of waves over the sand.
His words were rounded stones
His tongue felt-lined and soft.
When he spoke, his notes serenaded you
And you found yourself leaning forward to catch each
Harmonious line and shifting melody.

Together, she clanked, cursed
Destroyed anything pleasant around.
She crushed him, overpowered him
Distasteful dissonance and an F sharp where the
Key signature clearly called for F natural.

Either way, she broke him with one clipped,
Short confession
As sentimental as her usual tune
Despite its overarching message.
She loved him?
Inconceivable.
Things like her didn’t love
They clanked along, out of tune,
Tone deaf, a child banging on a piano
Violently punching and spasming over the keys.

She broke him, in half
A crack down the middle that slowly scritched and scratched its way
Until he was only connected by lungs and a heart in the very middle.

Love?
No.
She did not love him.
She could never love him.

a gentle reminder peeks through the silence,
prompting the birth of light.
the tender whisper of the lone singer,
asking the sun to rise.
a neighbour chimes in revealing his own tune,
starting the daily chorale.
the ensemble awakes the doziest dosser,
with the sound of pure morning life.
-T