A song can hold me together
when I’ve been torn apart,
when I’m at the verge
where jagged edges jut out
popping bloated bright
many a things of life.
Lost notes coming together
and stitching my seams
with threads of sound.
Music doesn’t ask for permission
—it breaks in, a trespasser
who knows all the rooms of my head,
who rewires the walls with chords
until they buzz and climb on air’s back.
On the top of their ethereal lungs,
they belt out polished groove
where reflection of my days are caught.
It’s there when I need it
—when silence has teeth,
When the world gnashes,
pressing its weight on my chest.
in the blackness of spirit,
when the lesser light pale
into insignificance,
when all of me is ground to atoms.
Like spring faeries, they uncap the lid, lift it, unleash the lilt cloistered in secret years, they ride gilt-edged fireflies, flitting and fluttering in the mist of colors. And like spring, life comes back to the earth.
I have heard harmonies
build bridges across days
that feel like sinking ships.
I’ve watched melodies
cut through the static
of my thoughts,
Clean and sharp as a blade
sliding through skin.
The bass is a heartbeat,
steady and human,
the strings—veins
unraveling their stories.
Syncopated at times,
as if an arrhythmia.
A song can hold me together,
there was one leaping out of nowhere,
lost in the night,
found its way in my ears,
then in my heart,
in my half-awaken state,
while I clung into sleep under an eye of dreamless rest,
it was light on its feet,
free of gravity.
When I feel lost,
I press play,
and I teleport here,
a night crawler
a room filled with
nothing but sound
and no judgment,
my acoustic soul gets to drink,
where my fears untangle themselves
like knots in a rope.
Music doesn’t lie.
It doesn’t care,
It’s not a ***** coyote
the petulant thief
mistaking mediocrity for simplicity,
Music forgives,
about what I’ve done
or who I’ve been.
It cradles me as I am:
raw and flammable,
A man with a match
clenched between his teeth.
In the slant of the highway,
I roll with tunes sanding
until the roads are even
and the bends straight
for this drifter with a match
clenched between his teeth,
the song pulls it from my mouth,
lights it,
and says,
burn, if you must—but listen.
It tells me I am brave
when I don’t believe it.
It tells me I am whole,
even when the pieces don’t fit.
But I’ve always been a puzzle,
a riddle to myself,
a mystery in a mystery
and a Jack-in-the-box.
When asked why I trust music
like a heathen
collapsing down drear gloom,
funereal mood,
sulked out.
I’ll pause,
let a silence fall
where words should be,
And instead let a rhythm
beat through the air.
A small offering.
Because some things
are answered best
by the sound
of their own making.
There is a gaping chasm in all of us.
One way or another,
we loaded our fractured hearts
with longing,
hoping for an escape,
we shot an embittered gaze
at words that danced on the pages,
swirled in the air on winged notes.
In the dark, I didn’t find myself alone,
I swept the pieces,
ugly, but a whole,
the way a song can hold me together.