The vibrant blue paint on the walls seems
almost like that emblematic Technicolor
blue.  I've had the blues, but they didn't
look like these.  The house constricts--
the ceiling seems to dip towards my head
closing in on me.  I fly.  Back in Jazzy's room,
I notice, with humor, a label on the spice:
"Not intended for human consumption."

When first I loved,
I listened to myself.
I heard it from
within my gut
that I should tell:
I loved.  I loved!
Oh, why did I listen
to myself?  Yet
how I loved!

First I loved, then
reasoned with myself,
and this I heard:
I love!  I love!
Oh, why did I not
listen to myself
when I did love?

Oh, why is there
another me
inside myself?
And how she loves!

The way in which
my stomach stirs
is just as when
I touched your face
where you lay
while you slept
with your head
tilted back
and your eyes
closed-skyward--
where were you looking?
what did you see?
did you behold me?
Oh, something
has touched me--
reached inside
with fingertip
and touched the surface
of my waters;
they spin there,
stirring, stirring,
waking.  Oh,
what is happening?

As

the strings
of a viola,
I am

like an
oscillator,
resonant

with
nervous
energy:

do...

te-- le--

so fa me re do--;

As

a marble
dropped
onto

a piano's
keys, my
pulse, with

anxious
accelerando
strikes:

pitch...

pitch, pitch

now, now

now now now

Stop.

Today, I ashed my cigarette
on the ground, but it kept
burning, and there was an
ant
when I went to squelch the embers
with the heel of my boot.

As my foot passed over it
like God's hand over man,
I had a distinct impulse
to **** it.

--but nothing else, no reason;
so I didn't.  In fact,
it would have been just
as justified, just as
reasonable to have said
Good morning
and just as nonsensical.

And though he likely isn't
a listener of music, and
though he is not
likely to spend his days
studying the works
of Yeats or Whitman,
or to ponder spirituality
or philosophy, as men do,

I think he may have even
more of the Lord's favor upon him
than I.

My teacher gave me a piece
by Hindemith
when I was newly a freshman
in her studio
and she told me to study it
and play it.

I took it from her
warily
and dissected the thing
until
I thought I might die
but didn't.

Yet today
as I was weary,
I spent a long time
simply playing intervals
until they were perfect and then
playing them until they were even more perfect
and made myself breathe all of my life into them until it felt utterly natural,

and then I thought that maybe I could
actually stand to have another look at this at this awful, bizarre,
beautiful music of mourning; after all, it doesn't sound so bad these days...

That is when I understood
why my teacher, in her wisdom,
had forced me to undertake this foreign,
fragmented funeral suite in the first place.  For she knew then

what I see now
when I remember
and what I hear
when I practice
and what is like the ecstacy
of laying down a finally completed task--
with a secretive knowing that you'll return to it again by choice one day--
when I perform:

At the outset,
I was not good enough
to play it,
but I was good enough
to learn it.

Look at those
downcast cheekbones,
upturned eyes.
Look at the cloak
of hair that curls
around her face
like climbing vines
about a fence.
Look at her
neck like a vase
and a fanciful
silhouette thereof.
See how it all
gives way to flushed
skin and those
eyes light up with
demure appreciation
for everything
you do
and everything
you say, it seems.
How can you
forget her
even for  a night?
Every move
she makes
engenders
a shudder
in you because
you always think
she might just
touch you.  And oh,
look again upon that
countenance--
there is just
something
about a beautiful woman
that begs
to be loved.