Normally this isn’t the way it goes, but this time I’ll do differently
And so I ask who are you? What is your name?
Do you like running? I do as long as I can breathe

I dream of a day where I can run freely in silent poplar forests without my lungs weighing me down

What is your favorite kind of music? Do you like pop, rock, or hip-hop?
Is your soul kneaded and worked by tender hands like Jazz? Swing?

I may not look the part, but I love classical music; there’s something about listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes that makes me feel as if I am right there with him, sitting in the pews of an abandoned church whose dead parishioners long ago grew bored of contemplating their sins. I feel as if I am gently sipping his breath like one would coffee that’s still a bit too hot, savoring the stories he weaves out of thin piano strings that taste like moonlight
It is a flavor that seldom is tiresome
I wish I could cook some for you

If you could go anywhere, anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Would you roll into an airport with your luggage in New York? Tokyo?
Would you brave the crushing heat of Cairo for a glimpse of Giza?

I would go anywhere, anywhere you’d like, as long as we come home
I’ll open the door and immediately turn on the space heater—I can sense you hate being cold
While the tea is warming on the stove, we’ll talk about your favorite artist’s best album
Listening until we’re interrupted by the shrill shriek of a teapot needing attention
And that night I will dream that my footsteps will never be lonely

I’m terribly sorry, who are you and what is your name?
I do not know; you are there and I am in here; my mouth is so dry it hurts

Neither coffee nor alcohol can spur me to action
There is nothing I can drink
I can imagine, but I will never ask
I already have, so many times

Sometimes you can hear not with ears, but with a skin: with your fingers on fabric, with your hair sinking thought the palms, with your muscles on anxious joints.

Sometimes you can hear not the music, but emotions. Words, voices, harmony, rhythm, — all of them are spiralling into one multidimensional Rubik's Cube; all of them are thickening into a rich hodgepodge of colours; and then you can’t understand if the drums are ringing inside of your brains or if the song itself is closing its eyes with joy.


Sometimes you can hear nothing.

And nothing can sometimes hear you.


Today you hear winter.


Being on the ground floor it’d be like being outside.

Your elbows are on a windowsill. Your droopy eyes are chained to a sleepy late-night path.

You are therefore one short step from that path: just breathe and touch the earth with your cosy socks. The earth is chubby because of yesterday’s raindrops.

Smells like roaring lorry. Hears like water and warm winter.


The colour palette is in shades of a half past four morning.


On the opposite side of your street your neighbour still keeps Christmas: the garland made of white-blue lights flickers during four finger taps, and is lit during three. One-two-three-four, one-two-three. You can almost hear ‘Fantaisie Impromptu’ by Chopin. Right. Four. Left. Three.

That white-blue trembling sneaks into puddles along with the low smiles of lanterns further down the block. The blue glow is dancing, the copper illumination is dearer.


The cat runs — grey mouse — grey stain — on the canvas.


The windows are like card backs in Tarot spread on the walls like on the tables.

The windows are mirrors, and the mirrors are caves.

The windows run with perspective.

With the cat.


Tell us, sky! Do you exist? Have you been always franking us? Both on the left, both on the right one cannot find a difference. Your colour is lullabying.

Your colour is dual; at first glance it’s pure blue-plum gouache, but looking closely… The sky is scarlet. Scarlet as a wisp of a tapestry.

The scarpestry breaks through plumouache.


Suddenly a little white twinkle hops into winter, and suddenly dies.


Your heart has grown to your tongue root and to your little alcove under your ribs, and the heart is writing-writing-writing, and is escorting passing cars, and is fuming-fuming-fuming, and is sweating like in a sauna.

It’s dribbling outside.



Homely.


Nothingly.

A procession of pink lilies
upon a blackened road with
white dots on its surface
For what do they protest?
Dusk and twilight approaching
Everyone is holding a
black candle in its hands
The trees turned down
their blank stare and
lapsed into silence
Someone's playing Chopin's
funeral march on a piano
covered with ivy
It is a requiem mass about
the death of pure beauty

Down inside of me something untouchable preludes my grace.
Leaves falling down like Chopin's Nocturne op.9 No. 2.
Through the looking glass a sail boat touches your watery eyes.
Standing by you.
Life is in the vine.
Hues of darkness against the light.
A thousand lifetimes in the flash of your smile.
Swan flight in the open field.
Breathe in and breathe out.
The softness your smile against the cold ice of death.
How does beauty and grace carry on even after death.
Up above in the clouds,
floating down down a creek
till the tree of knowledge is reached.
The tree of all life.
That which yields the ability to choose.

I said it was not meant for me,
But what did I mean?
For any youth, any love,
Whose prey who might be,
On whom you’d lean,

In your semi-corseted skirt,
Or dressed full fig.,
Stalking into town,
Shocking men in wigs,
Luring them into false love,
As others had been?

Would you capture me,
Chaining my soul to your heart,
So I must carry on playing
At your command?
I see your dress under the piano,
And your boots and pantaloons;
The piano is not my voice,
Though you insist it is.

I shot a drunken man for you,
Which made me more your slave.
You woke urges I suppressed,
Too strong for one so frail.
With words you pushed me
But caused music to pour
From me as love did.

A storm of disapproval raged all round
Our Paris nest of love and art,
You came and went like a soldier, shielding us,
And at home you urged me on,
To impromptu inventions,
Yet causing us to depart.

Packed into a cabochon,
You shanghaied me,
Away to Majorca
And the wintry sea.
Your searing love and the island’s cold
Were too much for me,
And I escaped with my art.

the floating liquid pearls
from the Moon clouds--
and--
the smell of Sunday.

the window, a shield from the rain
yet I Feel it in me
as I drip out--Drop, by
drop.

through a cord, Chopin walks into my ears
and sits--
never begins but has been playing,
as droplets become piano keys.

far away, a chime Echoes
from a spiderweb of
iron, under a velvet sky
full of ghosts.

little golden moons line the shops,
and their moonlight blends into the fallen water,
and paints the Street
with an aroma of rose.

the dull click of shoes on cobblestone
crescendos
to where I linger--
i turn, and he takes me by the hand.

each step, a note--
we move with the Rain.
composing a piece already written,
already played.

in joins the rose, and the
watercolor moons--
two fragments of stars
dancing underneath the rest.

but I slip; fade,
a halfstep removed,
and like the cobweb clouds outside my window,
my mind rolls on.

ancient aches in chains
contained in the howls and hyacinth
the breast of syntonic refrain

halcyon honey hews sentience
with peals painting elysian fields
saturated in nocturnal opalescence

eclipse echoes along cathedral aisles
cleansing heathens in fifth progression
anointment of epiphany reconciled