I know a place we can rest
A place far away from the world
Where the piano sound never ends
Where we can be happy

There lives all the animals we cant see
All the geniuses who disappeared
There the music never ends
A smooth melody fills the air
It reaches us all

The piano notes move with the wind
For some it might look like a mess
But to us
It's paradise

This song is written on my heart.
Each note hangs in the air before turning to smoke
and we inhale it here in your little bed,
breathe it in as we have most nights since you were born.

Not so long ago
I was someone else
Who was not your mother.
You don’t know her,
the Me who spent months of her young life poring over the sheet music.
I still have it, teenage pencil scratch covering the entire first movement.
“Sticky top notes” and “written when he was going deaf!” and rows of chord forms,
glyphs,
a cipher.

(Did you know:
Beethoven was dead when Ludwig Rellstab compared the famous first movement of his Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor to moonlight shining on a lake?
The sonata previously entitled “Quasi una fantasia.” Almost a fantasy.
The sonata written in blood from a broken body and a broken heart.
Poor dead Beethoven. Our art is truly not our own).

It strikes me odd
that a song such as this one
has become what it has become.
Radiance in despair, I suppose,
is universal in its bright raw frankness.
We stare. It stares back.

Tonight, blessedly,
that chasm of grief alive still and forever in the delicate weaving vines of plaintive melody stemming darkly from it
is far from your door.
Your breaths are slow and even now.
The song closes,
as it always does,
trying and failing to claw out of the darkness.

But you don’t know that.

Tonight it’s just a beautiful song.
And I am no one else
but your mother.

Man oh man, it’s been too long
Since I heard your piano songs
I used to hate them everyday
I’d rip my hair out when you’d play

Each time i’d take a bit to read
Your notes would play, my ears would bleed
They’d send me right around the bend
To loonie bins and back again

But man I miss your stupid songs
Though they’d have any crowd soon gone
To hear them once again someday  
I’d sure cut off my arm n’leg

I never got much time to sleep
While hearing your piano screech
Each time I’d try to take a nap
You’d give those notes a violent smack!

But man, I miss your slammin’ hands
Though no one’s ears were quite a fan
If you could play for me once more
My smile’d reach right to my core

Each time I’d ask for “quiet, please!”
You’d play like cats dancing on keys
Those horrid notes would never stop
Like nails scraped down on board for chalk

But man, I miss those melodies
Though they’d have made a deaf man flee
If you could spare just one more tune
Your notes would fill this sorry room

Man oh man, it’s been so long
Since I last heard you play a song
I used to beg your notes would go
But now I hate this hollow home

I hope you play still in the clouds
And make birds from blue skies fall out
Go, keep on gifting garish tunes
I know you brought them to your tomb

Dad,
Piano music always reminds me of you.
I picture you playing
On a cloud so white
The very air twinkles
With the sound of your
Perfect tune.
It fills my heart
With a love so heavy
My whole body becomes light.

What I wish I could say,
What I wish I could do,
If I saw you on that very Cloud
Playing only for me
Can't be predicted.
Even in my imagination.

If I could run to you,
Wrap my arms around you,
Listen to your love song,
And sit beside you
As you played,
That moment would be
My clarity.
My heart finally at peace.

I would never want you to stop.
I wouldn't say a word.
If you just kept playing on that heavenly cloud.

Because I wish I listened more.
I wish
I could hear you play again.
Not just in my mind,
Not just in my dreams.
But on our own little cloud
Just you and me.

I love you, my piano man.

1
On that night, pierced by the sound of rain,
Everything is possible...
When one is washed in cognac,
Drenched in sorrow,
Haunted by the unknown...
And when one refuses to remain a stone.
So why—
Do you consult the coffee cups?
Why—
Do you ask the endless questions?
And why—
Did you come to the sea,
If you fear the journey?

2
Between October and October,
Like the warm sugar flowing from the heart of fruit...
Leave your fate to God, and sleep.
For your ******* come into this world by destiny,
And by destiny, they fade away...

3
Love will come in its time...
So wear your Egyptian caftan.
I now recall the cotton fields of the Delta...
Sit wherever you like,
For the piano concerto
Will erase time,
Erase you,
Erase me,
And erase the burdens we have carried since birth.
Love will come in its time...
And passion will come in its time...
For the piano concerto
Washes all things in camphor and oil,
Melts the ice off the faces of lakes,
Summons strange butterflies,
And brings forth fields anew.
So let things be natural... effortless...
For the piano concerto
Finds its own solutions.
Love will come in its time...
And the piano...
Will call us into its watery chamber,
And I do not know what it will say...

4
Everything is possible...
On that night, pierced by the sound of rain.
Tchaikovsky—
Now passes like a bird through Petersburg’s squares,
Slipping like a green dream from Montparnasse,
Drifting through the memory of roses,
Gathering the yellow leaves of Europe's forests,
Praying in Hagia Sophia,
Weeping in the sacred halls of Najaf,
Between mirrors and golden domes...

5
Everything is possible...
On that night, pierced by the sound of rain.
So wear your Kurdish caftan...
I do not know why—
But I recall Mosul in spring,
The water reeds swaying in the marshes,
The orchards of Al-Rasafa,
And the writings God inscribes
In roses and gold,
Upon the palm fronds of Shatt Al-Arab
At sunset...

6
Good morning, jasmine... are you well?
The piano concerto
Lit the fire for us... then vanished.
Now, I recall the orchards of Al-Rasafa,
The shanashil that line the banks of Al-A’zamiyah,
And the writings God inscribes
In roses and gold,
Upon the palm fronds of Shatt Al-Arab
At sunset...

7
Good morning, jasmine... are you well?
The piano concerto
Lit the fire for us... then vanished.

Ebony and ivory.
Intermixed clefs.
A landscape of sound.
Not paint, but vibration.
Stories woven in air.

Imagination ignited.
Tales spun from silence.
Love, a melody repeated.
Swooning, a chord held long.

Emotions, a full spectrum.
Darkness, a low rumble.
Light, a high trill.
Hard, a percussive strike.
Soft, a gentle sustain.

Symphonies, vast and sprawling.
Rhapsodies, wild and free.
Logic, a precise sequence.
Mathematics, a hidden structure.

A language without words.
Universal, no translation needed.
Across every boundary.
No wall can hold it back.

Species, all ears attuned.
Culture, a shared experience.
A resonance that binds us.
A bridge built of notes.

Eighty-eight keys.
Eighty-eight possibilities.
Each a doorway.
Each a journey.

From the quietest whisper.
To the loudest roar.
A universe contained.
In the space between.

A heartbeat in rhythm.
A breath in harmony.
The soul expressed.
Pure, unadulterated.

No need for explanation.
No need for justification.
Just the sound.
And the feeling it evokes.

A timeless current.
Flowing through us all.
A language of the heart.
Eighty-eight keys, infinite feeling.