Parenting

organizing the day,
while the baby room adjacent
makes dreaming rock n' roll noises
siren calls to lay in bed,
semi-alert, on guard duty,
scheming about dis n' dat,
you are sleeping, dreaming,
wide awake seeing,
multitasking eyes closed simultaneously.

lesser of a poet, more a notate-er,
list keeper, note taker,
arguing with yourself inside the head,
actually feeling the thoughts
coursing, lurking, seeing both sides now,
parentally, washing the dishes
of the hours and years ahead.

while the woman-mother
makes her soprano dreaming noises,
you laugh at the orchestra of
*******, sighing somnolent noises,
a cadenza of love dancing in your
irresistible wide awake dreams.

paying the bills, lying in the dark,
you wonder-worry about the agenda
unknown that will overgrow you,
fast creeping up the grain of your skin,
ivy on stone skin walls.

lala lala
you borrow baby's lullaby,
yourself calming,
keeping time, silly rhyming,
organizing the days ahead
in you head, while,
recording the harmonies of sensory inputs.

the dark provides the cloak
where you alone
feel and hear the worry and laugh lines knitting
into a single stitch of parenting.


1/20/2013

Dear Vamika,
of a long and a
short
time away. Of the
future, when
your ******* are fuller
and you can finally speak
French fluently.

I hope you are a woman.

I know you
have not changed the world.
I didn’t write you that way.
I’m still
not writing you that way.
For my cheap gel pen
has none of that spark
of Fitzgerald’s and Nabokov’s,
who could bewitch the imagination with
such timeless giants
as ****** and Daisy.

So remember:
you’ll be brilliant
but absent
from any history books.
But still.
You are enough, exquisitely enough,
for the literature
I inhabit.

Hence, I fill pages with your inky
outlines, shade in the spaces
slowly
with hopes and wishes and poetry and dreams.
For you, of you.
I note
all that you are
composed of, so that
even the marginalia
laughs out your lipstick,
your clothes drawers,
your reading habits.

I am writing you as a woman.

I am writing you
as Music. Here is your laughter,
a little smokier now,
unspooling like a work of
Debussy’s. Here are your
fingers, lighter now, like meringues
or dandelions, as they dance
on your silver flute,
better, better, better than ever,
in shiny theatres far
grander than you imagined.
And here are your tiny
scrawled music notes, that with a few touched
keys, echo as tumbling stars
in the ears of thousands
and then plenty.

I hope you are a woman.
So play, compose, laugh and sing; be
Music ‘til your dying day.

I am writing you
as Ambition. It is calmer
than the fire that currently
singes my hands. Yet it’s still as
constant
as the flame you
light, every night before bed,
in front of the Goddess Durga
you pray to.
Your heart still
salivates for hard-boiled
surprises, for lucky pennies
found on pavements, for the
metallic sweetness of, yes,
success.

I hope you are a woman.
So strive, and strive again,
‘til you’re nothing but ash.

I am writing you, too,
as Success.
Surprise!
Those words unhooked
from the crevices of your mind,
are now bound in
paperbacks.
You are a poet, sleeker than
the 17-year-old fledgling
in her dim bedroom.
You are a journalist,
pouring morning stories
like hot tea, and sighing
with honey glee at
your name in
print.
You are a writer;
you fill even more pages, and
you now have a
gleaming, expensive
pen.

I hope you are a woman.
So write, ‘til you have lost
all breath.

I am writing you
as Compassion. How could I not
let you share words (your  personal magic) with
countless sparking children?
And not fill your hands with
gifts of maths, English,
science and art that you can
give and give and
give to them?
An education is as precious and
priceless as Picasso, you say.
A human right, all the same.
A human right.

I hope you are a woman.
So be kind. That’s it.
Always.
I have not forgotten  
to write you as
Justice.
Go out and support,
wave flags and placards,
sign petitions, join many
campaigns, scream out ‘til
your throat can’t bear such
honesty, such
indignation.
Keep fighting.
Never stop. The world is unfixable,
imperfect and
unhappy.
Help it.

I hope you fight for other women.
I hope you fight for other humans.

I am also writing you
as Resilience. So you’re able
to face yourself in that
mirror, even though
your stomach has a stubborn bulge, still,
and you haven’t yet learned
to smile at your nose.
Still.
And I’m reminding you that you do,
yes, you do,
have the strength to cry alone, then
get over it,
to have panic attacks, then
get over it,
to pick yourself up from
life’s many disintegrations and
start again.
You can. You’ve already done it.
I hope you always will.

I know that you are a woman.
So never give up, as
cliché as it sounds. Go ahead and
die trying.

Now, as the cadenza
of this rather sentimental piece,
which I’ve spun as
sweet
as stolen sugar
and the romantic comedies at which
you secretly weep,
I am writing you as
Tenderness.
See, I decided that Love and
Romance are but
bombs. And you and I both
believe in non-violence.
Therefore, you are
a hugger now, with lips
which kiss your husband,
scold your children
and sing
lullabies to the whole silly lot of them.
Your heart is always
swimming
with a good bit of warm wine,  so don’t
question its fullness.
Take care of yourself.

This.
This, above, is all I hope for you
to stay and have and be
until the symphony’s final note, your
final breath.

You are a woman.
Flawed, intelligent, beautiful, cracked, strong, kind, stubborn, soft, honest.
Real.

You are a woman.
So stay like this,
but be just a little more wiser, a little more grown
each passing year.

A woman.
Vamika, that’s all I ever want you to be.

~for the one who will know it was written for her~

muddy verb and adjective,
muddling and muddled

have you ever seen a pas de deux/deluxe,
one dancer, proscriptive,
and her partner, prescriptive?

the stage, of course,
exactly the width of your head,
from ear to shining ear

this couple o’muses dance en concert,
though their very natures are anti-logarithmic,
the value of their exponential activity is a
descriptive nomenclature

I am overly abstruse this Saturday morn,
mushing mathematics and ballet, verbal word games
as is my wont wanted,
everyone sleeping while I rise at 6am,
doing ablutions, seeking absolution,
pulling weeds from our respective gardens,
answering old friends I have yet to meet,
to whom I answer,
“still here, though long time no see,”
which is of course hysterical funny, inherently contradictory,
as the brain grasps well my
Red and Dead Sea brain cells, a splitting motif

muddling and muddled,
proscribed from getting on transport,
to deliver to you the proper healing prescriptive,
as if I had in my possess to diagnosis and correctly assess

even though one of my many passport names,
a requirement, to visit,
this inter-netting ether, that both combines and separates,
permits me safe passage,
over the historical lineage of borderlines of land and sea,
to deliver this message,
to you
woman

I am here, waiting patiently, though long time no see like ever,
absentia, dementia, both self-censure,
here, then, my cadenza,
dedicated solely soulfully for you,
as the sabbath sun rises over the East River,
saying, laughing unto me,
“still here, though long time no see,”
for though I cannot look upon her, my sun, my sun,
yet she, as well, is everywhere-inside of me,
warmly illuminating my muddled mind

Penned on watermarked cotton paper
Cursive letters script the words
of a surrendering rhythmic rhyme.
The ardent sonata was written
by the light of a Blue Moon’s shine.

The blood red ink bled through
the white wrinkled cotton pages;
musical notes dried by the warmth
of glowing Moon Beams radiance
in the subtle pollination breeze...

The maestro Coyote’s howl cried out!

Instinctively rousing the stillness of the night;
       a feral essence echoed
       through the eerie silence
       of the distant horizon,
bringing helpless lovers to their knees.

The words to the Cabernet Sauvignon
       stained midnight  lullaby,
       were emotions quilled,
       blending an aura accenting
       organic warmth of tones...

       The native maple trees'
flowering canopies of Spring
released a dusty yellow pollen
onto the watermarked cotton sheets.

In a moment of rapturous intimacy,
       an elixir of intoxicating bliss
illumined the achingly euphoric moments.
A natural untamed wildness was exhaled;
       savored ecstasy released
       into a passionate song of love …

That poignant melody forever lingers,
       like hieroglyphics on the walls
of some long lost abandoned cave.

Engraved, etched, brushed and stroked
       onto the brattice canvas
       of a musical Minstrel’s
            melodic montage ...

       Watch the artiste’s fingers
       prancing graceful ballet
       Worn down catgut strings

                                *moan
          
     ­                  weep

              purr**

       crying out lustfully.
     as if it were
    enraptured lovers'
  breathless sighs

  the rhythm’s cadence
whispers a masterpiece
       in an infinite
       harmonious time...

       The tempo’s lines
                Phrasing…

                 ...hush...!

             ♪♫♪ ~ ♫  ♪♪

        Listen to the pictures flow...
Listen to the weeping guitar strings
      of the passionate troubadour
stroking the metaphorical canvas scene.

       The ebb and flow
       of the musical rhythm's throb
arouse the Blue Moon’s hypnotic  allure,
    throwing incandescent shadows
    that dance around Moonbeams.

Joyfully twirling, blissfully embracing
in the blossoming Forget-me-not fields;
            Bluebonnet Lupine
               swirl and tango
       with the moonlit breeze.

       Lilacs fragrant aroma drifts
with spring’s churning romantic haze;
rekindling this fleeting memories recital.
The Minstrel and the Minstrel’s song
         now yearn to be set free ~

      Timbre without reverberation …
The twilight serenade was never penned
  to be hidden from the Nightingale

A romantic moment’s sorrowful lament
to be abandoned like a broken dream;
   fading unnoticed into forevermore ―
      Unsung,  unsaid, unreleased,
                     unrequited
                through eternity…

              The maestro Coyote
       is a wilderness troubadour
       illumined under the gloaming
               full moon’s spell.

                Howling soulfully...
               wailing impulsively ~
              ... crying hopefully
             pleading mournfully
                     lamenting
the Minstrel’s breathless cadenza ...

A bitter sweet musical embryo of love
                 found and lost
                       below
           the full Blue Moon’s
               glistening light…



©  H.  Rivers ... 2012, 2013
           all rights reserved

THE KNEES
  of this proud woman
are bone.
  
The elbows
  of this proud woman
are bone.
  
The summer-white stars
  and the winter-white stars
never stop circling
  around this proud woman.
  
The bones
  of this proud woman
answer the vibrations
  of the stars.
  
  In summer
the stars speak deep thoughts
  In the winter
the stars repeat summer speeches.
  
The knees
  of this proud woman
know these thoughts
  and know these speeches
of the summer and winter stars.

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.

reposting a poem from 3 1/2 years ago, when I knew how to write
  
<>
organizing the day,
while the baby room renter in the adjacent,,
makes dreamy rock n' roll noises,
siren calls to stay~lay in bed,
tho status of semi-alert,
ready to relieve Ernie and Bert,
who have the first shift covered

soon on guard duty,
scheming about dis n' dat,
you are sleeping, dreaming,
wide awake seeing,
multitasking with eyes closed simultaneously.

lesser of a poet, more a notate-er,
list keeper, note taker,
arguing with yourself inside the head,
actually feeling the thoughts
coursing, lurking, seeing both sides now,
parentally, washing the dishes
of the hours and years ahead.

while the woman-mother
makes her soprano dreaming noises,
you laugh at the orchestra of
*******, sighing somnolent noises,
a cadenza of love dancing in your
irresistible wide awake dreams.

paying the bills, lying in the dark,
you wonder-worry about the agenda
unknown that will overgrow you,
fast creeping up the grain of your skin,
ivy on stone skin walls.

lala lala
you borrow baby's lullaby,
yourself for to calming,
keeping time, silly rhyming,
organizing the days ahead
in you head, while,
recording the harmonies of
sweet sensory inputs.

the dark provides the cloak
where you alone
feel and hear the worry
and laugh lines knitting
into a single stitch of parenting.


1/20/2013

Here we shared the slips and reels of earnest conversation,
An interweaving counterpoint of dialogue
Wherein I bled the truth of loving.
Heart’s secrets shed
And shared.
And by and by transposing the antiphonal chant
You guide towards consonance, harmony,
With gentle lilting phrasing
Encouraging sweet concord within the cantus firmus.

And yet you say you do not sing?
Surely our hearts beat out the song of love and life
And all our narratives are ballades sung in open form?
I have heard you sing your madrigals
With melodies of hope and peace and grace
And tried to catch the tune.

Here, have rich harmonies been played out
And love songs whispered on the air.

So, if God grants, a final cadenza let there be
In a lullaby that’s sung for me.

Verily the exordium told anent a beauty engirdled in her fedora
soliciting those whoever descried her into her mere servile admirer
eight trenchant tinctures upon her body invigorate like a cadenza
I dare not to contradict the verity that I am beguiled afore her

whilst the snain distilled faintly enwreathed her in unctuous silk
concordantly she devote herself earnestly to the impeccable rain
that emanate her fragile poetry with prestidigitation in a whisk
forsooth she is but the vernacular sobriquet to the soul of the rain

recall me otherwhile during the rainstorm champagne did coerce
and the sunset's glass of wine exude her ingratiating persona
like a myriad of aphrodisiac summarized in a single verse
when harmony and lyrics danced in the crepuscular crescendo

all of that needed to be enunciated is it is you
do not harshly let me be thy unrequited dilettante

Not quite enough light

as I rounded the corner;

distinguishing, at first,

a glint of kindness, then it's absence.

If I had danced a bit longer on the edge of your sardonic stage

I would've stumbled on a steady beat of naiveté,

always one note behind your calculating symphony.

The shallow beams from the timeworn ghostlight

cast elucidation on your conductorial robes;

it is not often that one sees

so well in the dimness of love's sweet fog.

Alas, the savage cadenza reverberates

as if a prophetic whisper, illuminated my secret fortitude.

I turned back, fierce with indignation.