"arpeggios" poems
Friendship
Friendship is not a jewel or a coin or a gift
Jewels and coins and gifts don’t die
Friendship is not a flower or blown glass;
Friendship is not fragile
Friendship is not a poem or a melody
Because friendship cannot be forgotten
Friendship is a symphony
With grand overtures
Melodic harmonies
and unforgettable phrases
punctuated
by
Attacking staccatos
Vibrant arpeggios
then peaceful interludes
And sometimes
rests
Followed by thoughtful segues
All held together by a coherent structure
called
Respect
Apr 11, 2021
Apr 11, 2021 at 8:55 PM UTC
This woman speaks in tongues
Foreign languages roll from her mouth
Like summer fog ladled over the rim
Of Candlestick Park
In the not-so-distant
Far far away of long long ago
This woman speaks in rotund sentences
Effulgent with vocabulary
That shimmers with the electrified joy
Of lights over Ghirardelli Square
In the not-so-darkness
Of the clammy and cabalistic night
This woman speaks with her hands
Impresciable, implacable, and inconsolable
As she tries to mold untranslatable words
From air that is as thin
As the promises she’d preferred
And purchased with the shards of her heart
This woman speaks in lyrics
Arpeggios of adjectives and alliteration
That tumble acrobatically with the intricacy
And grace
Of a hummingbird in spring
On the kiss of a blossom
Rich and fragrant and giving as
This woman speaking in tongues
May 30, 2012
May 30, 2012 at 4:35 PM UTC
Clasp of silvers twice as thin as each other
Both flat to end in its impact
Its echo does not repeat but lingers like static that makes you think of gold.
Drifting in an ascending melody that
Climbs the senses in your ears as much as your skin.
They lead us steadily
To the edge of the mountains and then stops abruptly.
Stopped incredibly as if it's afraid and timid.
Strings play so thinly as each are all skinny.
A miracle moving like smoke and gas welcomes her.
Slow dance in arpeggios, a glimpse of perfection for harmony, tip by tip
And in her quiver
She laments she'll wait forever.
Forever it may be til she is in the arms of the lover.
For the end of all thousand Decembers and Januarys
Undyingly and endlessly.
Anywhere you go
Seek the thunder you wander far and near, wide and narrow.
Until I hear you sigh
Until you stop holding your breath under the brim of our wishing well.
May 2, 2018
May 2, 2018 at 8:29 AM UTC
You've got lies
Like you've got acne
Raw and sour
They deform the skin of the room
Leave scars on its silence
Creep unbidden into pores
Brand themselves into reflections
Hung
Ugly as battle wounds
On the arpeggios of conversation
And you wear your lies
Like you wear acne
Smothered in pretty chemicals
You deliver them like scripted text
Into a world of disingenuity
The self-affected
One-trick-pony of your tongue
Plays them down with beauty
But fails to remove their aftertaste
So please,
Feel free to keep talking
But I thought you should know
That no one's listening any more
And we no longer believe in
Your cries of 'wolf'
Because we know that
No matter how you sing your lies
The world will not cease to orbit the sun
And then re-align itself to you
Jan 30, 2015
Jan 30, 2015 at 2:43 AM UTC
Eyes wide
you do not allow
oblivious sleep
shadows branded
on my retina
reveal all contrast
tattooed on my shoulder
a skeletal hand
*this illusion
pins me down*
your questions
have no answers
questions remain
asked again and again
*I swear
I know nothing*
You say everything
*is immaterial
subjectively real
ideas existent
in the mind
of the perceiver
I am*
(you insist)
a true believer
Parched and shrinking
I ask for mercy
you bring the cup
to my fissured lips
but it is empty
a vessel of air
you murmur
*there is only enough
for one
what will you give
in return?*
Heavy metal
arpeggios of wind
head bang
petulant faces
inured to rain
a repeating refrain
in falsehood
lies your truth
but even you
cannot halt the dawn
a dark horizon
pulls the strings
powerless
you sink
behind the cloud-
wall of your storm
is it safe now to close my eyes?
three times whisper
*be gone
bright fiend*
a weary incantation
spell of protection
the yawning wind
done with howling
hums reassuringly
*“a change is gonna come
imagine
peace in our time”*
Apr 10, 2017
Apr 10, 2017 at 9:58 AM UTC
With a cursory press of a key and arco of the strings,
They look at each other,
Determining when to start through what looks like telepathy,
But it is instead the subtle movement of arms and chest.
They begin.
With the movement of bows bouncing on metal,
And the dancing digits upon black and white,
Sound reverberates between the audience,
With eyes and ears in tandem absorbing the scene.
They continue.
As they pass over bridges,
And draw out waves with their hands,
I listen,
Swaying and breathing and performing as though I am beside them,
Despite being above them,
Yet feeling so below.
Becoming one with their instrument,
And bringing me along,
I smile,
As just like they pull beauty out of their tools with their soul,
They guide joy out of me,
For all of us.
They end.
Then again, they start.
With new sounds from a new person,
With new intent,
And new methods.
They change.
From haphazard joy and dance,
To somber death and confusion,
They become one with the music,
And follow in its suit.
They continue, anew.
As the sound changes,
So do I.
Listening with sharper ears,
Hoping to catch a different magic in my ears.
They continue, still.
As the cello draws honey,
The violin; its dew,
And the piano waterfalls arpeggios,
I am content.
They end.
Full of the food of life,
They stand,
To let us feast with them with our hungry hands,
Giving our own vibrations to fill our drooling souls.
They leave.
And so do I.
Both of us fed and quenched,
From the performance.
Sep 12, 2022
Sep 12, 2022 at 3:33 AM UTC
It is so measured that rising arpeggio, only to fall and rise again in quicker values, through the dominant seventh to the heartache moment of that minor ninth, a very apogee of dissonance. Then it goes higher still to the fifth, holding to that Phrygian harmony before returning to the tonic minor and a measured fall in the bass. This is a deliberate descent to the sub-mediant, and Bach’s touch of magic, the equivalence with the dominant minor ninth. But then he gives us hope: an extended and joyful play through sequences that rise and fall within each bar, to rest finally on the mediant’s echo of that opening, that measured rise and the quickening fall. We have hardly smiled with relief when Bach pulls us back into the insecurity of the dominant of the subdominant, that V of IV acting like a bridge to a long, long discourse in the dominant, a pedal E holding firmly to itself whilst rising arpeggios and falling decorations and sequences pull and pull through innocently related keys. Longer and longer play the rising passages until short motives of imitation interrupt, treble to bass, tenor to alto, until: a first inversion arpeggio of the dominant seventh measures out the opening rhythm. This happens twice in short succession, as though holding the progress of the music to account. A questioning perhaps before a four-fold sequence asserts the dominant and a chorded caesura. There is a pregnant, though faintly resonant silence as Bach spins the dice of tonality and chooses the subdominant to bring the music towards a waiting Allemande. The music moves through a play of subdominant to dominant, minor to major, the mix of flattened fifth and flattened ninth. It is those intervals that determine Bach as the father of ambiguity in the 20C school of jazz harmony, Arpeggio then a falling scale, and repeat and repeat again, but moving ever higher by sequence. At last five chords – merely a shorthand for closure via the expectation of a right display of the performer’s improvisatory prowess. They prepare us reverently for the tonic minor before the stately Allemande leads the music into the elegant steps of its walking dance.
Jan 5, 2013
Jan 5, 2013 at 3:13 AM UTC
Perish the thought that coats
Our tongues with hard harsh words
Inchoate reaching beyond grasp
Scantly strum our plush stairs
Scaling arpeggios
To soft crescendo as hands clasp
Gently brush angel hairs
Like magnet and shavings
Draw forged iron from gorgeous shrouds
Cherish the touch that floats
Like snowflakes whispering
In hushed descent from secret clouds
I will hold you in my mind
I will hold you in my arms
I will hold you in my time
You will hold me with your charms
I will take care of your memory
You will take care of my heart
I will keep you in my thoughts
Whether together or apart
Saintly calm amid storms
Whose roil-released crystals
On sprinkled tongues and cheeks alight
Enlace the fringe that frilled
Our sheer contours' luster
Emerging from dark thunder bright
Embrace the mists that build
Like cotton enfolding
Cumulative nimble and fond
Faintly kiss dermal forms
Like ghost lovers made flesh
Coaxed tumescent from far beyond
I will hold you in my mind
I will hold you in my arms
I will hold you in my time
You will hold me with your charms
I will take care of your memory
You will take care of my heart
I will keep you in my thoughts
Whether together or apart
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 2:48 PM UTC
this is the sound of the trees.
Its the same sound smoke makes, and the moon, and birds eggs and old clocks.
It is violins and percussion and arpeggios and singing like crying
it sounds like the Lion King, likes it the circle of Life.
But there are no baby cubs held up into the sunlight in this song.
There are no baboons who will tell you the secrets of life.
in this song, the zebras and the giraffes do not parade for the baby lion, they do not live peacefully with their killers.
in this song, all of them are dead, or have been trampled into the dust.
In this song, when your father dies, you are not allowed to run away from it with some happy strangers.
no, you have to bury him, and speak at his funeral, and plant flowers on top of his new home.
you do not get to become king over all the things he showed you as a child.
A cousin, in Scotland, gets that crown, because your father always hated you.
You get an old watch, and all the books on his bookshelf.
38 books on old comedians, and 1 on carpentry.
You read them at 2 in the morning, on the days you don't have to go to school because you punched the french exchange student, and you have been suspended.
None of them make you laugh, not even when you know it should be funny.
The next night, you build a bird house, with ripped up biology notes as the floor.
your mother complains about the noise, but when she looks at your eyes, she gives you back the hammer, and goes to bed with earplugs in.
birds really enjoy ******** on quizzes about recessive and dominant genes in farm animals
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 2:00 AM UTC
Dearest John,
Whats the point of writing something to you that you will probably never read.
if writing nothing to you is the only something I can write?.
Whats the point of writing nothing to you if I cant write something to you that's really nothing to you?.
Whats the point?.
A nightingale singing in the the Lilac bush
in my backyard?
Is that the point?.
saying hear me sing just for you--listener!.
A luscious Blackberry swollen with its lifes nectar,
dangling insouciantly, singing its song silently--
pick me--crush me in your mouth--
wash your tongue with my sweetness.
Is that the point?.
A Selmer hand made Alto Clarinet on its stand-
daring me to play the melody of the Isness of the Universe just for you?
Is that the point?.
swooping keening hawk like notes
flowing from my very beingness.
An empty canvas waiting patiently
for medium to be applied.
The Chaos of my emptiness
crying out to be stirred into the action of your Form.
Is that the point?.
Or just to say for your ears alone--I Love You!.
An unfilled pan needing filling
with hen ***** and milk and salt and pepper--
and then flamed into the tasty miracle of scrumbled eggs.
Yummy yummy yummy
Ive got food in my tummy
and everything is gonna be alright.
If I tried to write my life down for you
would you come to my waiting arms?
Would you end this cruel silence?
Would you commit a line of meaningful prose
to your keyboard just to tell me you love me?
But your gone to heaven knows where?
Memphis?.
Dissapeared into the maw of electronic death.
Leaving me bereft of your yourness.
No access to your body fluids.
No more your flesh to caress.
As if I could penetrate the skin
of your aloneness and merge into the Isness that keeps
molecules of your georgeous beingness together.
Walking talking laughing the symphony of life together.
Would you listen if I spoke truthfully to you
or would you prefer one of the many "truths"
of your multiple "religions" or "politics" or "philosophies"?.
But as I can only speak truthfully then I guess
youll hear but not listen.
Wasting your opportunities at Isness realisation
as you have done since I,as the Isness of the Universe,
brought into being voidness from my own essence
with time and materiality--hearing but not listening
to the Brownian arpeggios of the rising and falling scales
of the music of the spheres.
I play my horn of blackwood to the empty rooms
of my universe--
accompanied by the booming bass of harmony--
Amazing Grease.
India the Corrupted.
Moanin and Groanin.
Warm as Luke.
A Chicken Supreme.
Satis-Faction.
God Rest Ye Gerry Mandlebaum.
The Universe listens.
Everyone else hears.
I speak.
your ears are closed.
www.thefournobletruthsrevised.co.uk
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC
(start with a bow and a swish)
we are a thousand beating symphonies
variations of a familiar theme
treble clefs and four/four rhythms
chord progressions up to E
(sorrow and anger and love and hate)
arpeggios and interludes
minuets quadrilles and waltzes
the refrains, the fermatas, the reprises
we are a thousand sweeping overtures
(the last note rings through an empty auditorium)
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 4:48 PM UTC
Autumnal joy floats on the wind: it blows
A woodwind section through the buzzing leaves,
And gently rattles red arpeggios
That harmonise with mournful semibreves
Of ageing branches creaking in the breeze.
The forest spirits collectively moan.
Without the crunch of thund’rous symphonies
The rain can ****** on a xylophone:
The surface of a hidden woodland pond
Where all the stepping stones are so arranged
As keys of limestone next to keys of slate.
And all around the silence is estranged
And till the snow of winter has to wait.
We wave our sticks at where the air has thinned
And call ourselves composers of the wind.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 3:58 PM UTC
The evening is mine, and yet not.
A melody across the wall, born on the strings of a guitar
Is eating into my silence. Yes!
My violin waits.
Sometimes it takes a bit of silence, a pinch of patience;
To hear it out before you let it out.
It is music - alright - but it doesn't sing the notes my violin longs for.
The guitar breaks into arpeggios and a cascade of notes fill me up;
but the bass feels more like an unwanted knock on the doors of my ears -
An intrusion, A stabbing knife ripping through the canvas of silence.
I know! I know, it is a beautiful melody, but it is not mine -
I haven't felt my violin through the day and I long for my solitary rendezvous;
To hear my violin sing, nay, talk to me.
My violin waits.
How strange that I should ever cringe at music,
And yet, I am unable to contain the welling frustration -
A desire to drown whatever is coming piercing through the walls into my room
To decimate it till nothing of it remains - not a spec, not a whisper
Till all is Silent
My violin still waits.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 12:29 PM UTC
Oh, smooth, smooth unity
A stylistic rhythm penetrates the
boundaries of the world's
appraisal of orthodoxy
AVANT-GARDE
Lively arpeggios and Righteous
time lift the soul with
tones of emotion
LANQUIDITY
Transitions that manifest an
endless terrain of flowing
continuity
BLISS
An orange kite
swiftly descends
from the ominous,
yellow skies
Spontaneous strokes
of my brush dance in
a pool of glowing,
comfortable mist
The angry bullfrog
sits aimlessly in a
black lagoon, waiting
for the return of his heart
IMAGERY
You can see more than the eye
Music is your telescope
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 3:33 PM UTC
Crescendos and arpeggios alleviate the pressing
of residual enfilades of harmonies created,
raising the frequencies of thee.
.
Primordially placing seeds in the fertile heath
wandering with Orion's lead.
Sirius B'eing chronically appealing.
.
Our tranquility will rely on the apogees of the moon
and the crescendos of our eternal music.
A belaying maestro raising our moods with diction.
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 8:52 AM UTC
I sigh, my soul bubbling up from between
Rose petal lips,
Silent arpeggios of emotion falling from
Eyes, mouth, ears
Shimmering like heat waves on an empty road
I am in a mood for words
Deep words, warm and silty as a
River bed in summer
Quiet thoughts sinking like stones
Through endless evenings, barely rippling
The still, glowing sunsets
Soft words, like my grandmother's creased hands holding out
Smooth bits of sea glass for her granddaughter to smile at,
Clapping her grubby fingers
Dreamy whispers glide across silver lakes,
Reflections of dark velvet and diamonds
Stretched over the bones of the universe
I am in a mood for words
Heavy words and light words
Separating heaven and hell, I float betwixt
Drifting aimlessly in front of drowsy fires,
Pages littering my lap, books spineless from re-reading
My slow breath, thudding heart becoming a dictionary
My mind sleeping under darkness, softly
Gentle whispers of labyrinthine poems
Infinite, eternal
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 7:52 AM UTC
Invocation
this call to peace
does not use words we know
it is beyond language
we launch it
into the thin air of hope
where no echo lives
this invocation issues from our lips
our hands our movements
it is wholly transactional
this call to peace
Conflict and Resolution
it starts with uncertainty
continues with doubt
Can black be white
is day night?
We can make it so
and so it is
we say we write until
it becomes our faith
our truth our right
and so resolved
that black is white
and day is night
we soon forget
that others might
see it
differently
so to live in some accord
we have to temper
our resolve
(that day is night
that black is white)
and live within a twilight zone
a chiaroscuro world.
The Instrument of Peace
plucked from silence
the note of the guitar
resonates round its body
brought so close to the heart
held as a lover in our arms
the hands make harmony
sound out chords
for the singer’s song
Oh instrument of peace
hanging on the wall
of our simple home
play for us now
The Peaceful Mind
a template of fingers
intersect each sounding string
and with every change of shape
fresh possibility ensues
those re-entrant tones held above
the resonance of open strings below
set up rich suspensions
peculiar with dissonance
gently struck arpeggios
revolve in patterned repetition
this loom-made garment of sound
to clothe the peaceful mind
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 8:18 AM UTC
Dim, the stagnant booze-air clears;
thick velvety curtain lifts,
reveals
a not-so-grand
piano, scarred and dilapidated
under a single, cutting beam.
On the bench, the wrung-out crust
of a moth-eaten man
slumps habitually, his spine in a “C”
from the shouldered shackles
of negative meaning. Void.
He weighs the crackled keys
with weathered fingers; arthritically
knobbled notes float into the open air
hung with single malt fumes,
contained in vacuous walls.
Each hobbled finger-stroke and hammer-fall
morphs
melts
molds into agonizing chords, aching arpeggios.
Audible heaviness.
His oddly-angled fingers
abstain from all accountability
for the throb in his injured melody,
punctuated now and again by a dead note
on that neglect-yellow keyboard.
Longing plunks minored
on a downbeat, a song woven with
losing the blue of cloudless mornings
in her velvet passions. The her that’s missing,
that’s gone and packed the dog
and any solace against the pervasive storms
graying his vision, his beard, his hand—
mangled with grief and apologies—his hand
ever grasping for that lost shade
and the irony of intonating the only hue
his notes will ever know.
.
Sep 8, 2010
Sep 8, 2010 at 2:23 AM UTC
When your fingers move
within the betweens of keys,
white then black, scaling
and tumbling through and over
knuckles and joints and wrinkled
imprints does your chest flutter
arpeggios and dance along
with tender pale-pink ballet
slippers balancing, spinning
in a reflecting room of mirrors,
the echoes of a pentatonic scale
the pounding of parallel chords
nudging your toes exactly right,
do you forget your wives and daughter,
both Emma’s, when you let the genius-flow
and the grand piano waltz
with your soul,
do you fall in love with something
more I cant describe
in verse, delicate Debussy.
Nov 14, 2014
Nov 14, 2014 at 1:16 PM UTC
_He is a child who covers his eyes with peep-hole hands and thinks himself unseen; he talks softly when the multitude shouts out loud, and hums sweet tunes to
block the trembling arpeggios and clashing riffs of humanity in discord.
He is overwhelmed by the silence of life's unspoken words.
He is a listener who also has something to say.
He sees into the hearts of men.
Will you let him
speak?
Speak
if you will, Shy,
of what lies within the hearts
of men - unspoken thoughts and peep-hole
tremblings - the whole of life’s silent and unseen somethings.
Softly now; block out the discordant shouts of the clashing multitude.
Close your sweet eyes and listen to those tuneful arpeggios and undercover
riffs. Talk to me. Can you hear the sweet sound of humanity humming out loud?_
Oct 20, 2019
Oct 20, 2019 at 9:41 PM UTC
I hear the colors waving in my thoughts,
with yellows rising, reaching to the white,
and falling grand arpeggios to blue,
then burying to violet and black,
beyond the grave of my perceptions—gone.
The undulating rhythms flickering
like candle flames of solemn holy mass,
an everlasting birth-rebirth of life
in rampant earthly sprints that, to and fro,
arrive and leave like those we’ve met and known
who’ve disappeared and now simply exist
in just such thoughts, as colorful and vain.
(C)2004, Christos Rigakos
Sep 8, 2012
Sep 8, 2012 at 3:34 PM UTC
Man, he looks just like a boulder
Pounding those arpeggios into the piano
Hamfisting suspended chords
Breaking in the day
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
The light coming from the crooked paper lanterns
that stand in my bedroom
floats around me on my bed that has so quickly become an island.
Paper thin walls echo the sounds like paper thin lamp shades diffuse the light.
Tiny notes in piano arpeggios ****** from my computer as the dryer rolls along like the most familiar sound i’ll ever know.
The slight shake of a beautiful voice as it lays down its soul, the flutter of a heart that recognizes the plight of another.
With the door closed i am in only this world.
Until my favorite friend pulls me away again, in wait i lie holding my breath for the cacophony that awaits.
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 1:45 PM UTC
Time drips slowly down kitchen cabinets
Like cello music, sweet and dark,
Spilling over the edges of fingerboards and eyelashes,
Arpeggios of stillness cascading through the
Silence that is really music reigning the gaps between each whisper of breath and tick of the clock and soft drumming of raindrops on the street, an ensemble of intimacy.
I love it here.
I love the way it's vulnerable and honest inside your walls of false, forte confidence;
There are no cliché expressions of love at first sight, just the words of your heart,
Like notes played on an old piano, each separate and round and the tiniest bit halting but beautiful nonetheless.
They are rough truths, a little out of tune and not in quite the right key,
But they are the truth,
And that strikes more chords in my heart than a perfect rendition of well-rehearsed Beethoven harmonies
Fitting too perfectly to my rhythms.
And the cadence of your laugher flutters in my rib cage like
Triple-tongued fanfares,
The brush of your fingertips on mine
Sending vibratos of warmth through my soul,
Yours eyes, honey brown, speaking as powerfully as a Stradivarius
Without even the smallest pianissimo whisper of voice,
My synapses firing in double-time, heart thumping adagio, allegro, presto,
Neither of us conducting, just riding out the jazz and operas and fiddles and symphonies of our love
I wish for books of blank pages to keep composing the
New melody of our lips, dancing along crescendos of
Instinct and softly thrilling secrets
On the gentle sonata of a rainy day in June.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 6:02 PM UTC
She was a rest in a bar full of staccatos.
She was the note played pianissimo and the key that didn’t sing.
She had no forte in her soul, her steps were slurring phrases.
This girl was the music of a broken string.
Hers were the fingers stiff and cold; and the lip plate never kissed.
A metronome of self-doubt always ticking in her ears.
Never allowed a change in tempo, never shown to spread her wings.
Singing lessons from the deaf for 15 years.
The other was a pickup note, anxious to play the tune.
The dancer skipping steps up ledger lines.
The crescendo of passion, the diminuendo of a lullaby,
This girl no blaring trumpet could outshine.
But though her eyes were made of stardust her heart pulsed slowly, portato.
No accompanist, no duet, no conductor to keep the beat.
Her cheeks stung from the disguise, her worry slowed her, legato.
Compensating for loneliness with quick tempo deceit.
But, like broken triads, fate had it the two would somehow fit.
Drawn together as tied notes, destined to play their piece.
One so controlled by the orchestra, the other yearning for a duet.
The enchanting harmony within them had always burned to be released.
They played as one instrument, arpeggios overlapping in a heavenly key.
Swinging in synchronization, the melody swam magically through the night.
No longer controlled by metronomes, no longer stuck singing solo,
Forever, together, their own sheet music they would write.
- p. winter
Apr 10, 2017
Apr 10, 2017 at 7:42 AM UTC