"atonal" poems
This one time, my mom
and I said goodbye
to Juan's mom and we
walked from her apartment
to wait for the elevator.
Mom didn't like it
when I wouldn't stand still-
sometimes she'd smack me
upside my head just to
make sure I was there
(accompanied by her
motherly calls of malcriado)-
so I'd look in any direction
for a distraction or two.
Through the window a few feet
from my left, I could see two
older ladies in curler hairdresses
bochinchando like caffeinated hens
about the awfully friendly suelta
living next door to gallina #1
(they hung their hand-me-down
nightgowns and their husband's
boxers with such professional care;
if any article escaped the grasp
of family clotheslines, it was
roadkill forever).
I turned to the right
of the elevator doors,
counted the tar-black patches
of decade-old gum on the floor,
finished the half-written
sentences sprayed in *****
rainbows on the sweaty walls
by the zig-zag flight of stairs.
A boom and a click,
and the door creaked open
with the sideways grace
of a crab.
My toddler's impatience
boiled past the brim, I
exclaimed "FINALLY"
and began to walk forward.
Not a second later, I heard a
"NO" behind me, my mother
grabbing the back of my
cartoon mouse t-shirt,
letting out an ay cono, pendejo
that echoed eight stories down,
past the empty space substituting
for an absent elevator shaft,
soaring down that rusty freefall
at ten thousand times the
speed of a human boy's body.
Letting out a long exhale,
my mother did not allow
her emotions to brim over
the barrier-she recomposed
herself, all the while silently
chanting hymns of gratitude
in dedication to fate
and her reflexes.
We decided to take the stairs.
In my youthful oblivion,
I noticed a toy store
right outside the building
from the corner of my eye-
I plan to start begging when
we're at the bottom,
if we ever get there.
My mother took her sweet time
walking down those many steps,
reveled in the scratchy bristle
of the concrete against her sandals,
cultivated a newfound admiration
for my atonal imitation of a
Washington Heights car alarm-
it was a sign I was still there.
Sep 9, 2010
Sep 9, 2010 at 12:14 PM UTC
Well, what now, hey?
I threw the dog overboard yesterday.
The day before, the day?
Where will you go, hey?
I heard the orchestra-man play
The same way,
Sanctum, requiem, asylum
All Latin in his French dog-eared play.
Hear the monkey, playing accordion play
To the whirling whirly-whirly-ghig
Tre dramatique, no? Today
I understand you're just as "tramatig."
I want to hear your Frenchmen play
Play ***** pipes play play
In his dog-eared French organ-man
Play
But I cannot, cannot say
Tears of joy, in hydrant spray
The Hyades triumphant rainbow stay
Cough your little fears away;
Hear the Star Spangled Francis Key play
Frenchmen play, play,
Little piggies counted play
Black white keys with little piggle-plumps play
Atone-al, A-tonal---atonal tonal sounds as if to say
"Getting married here to stay"
All alone and all today
Settle down if for a day
And who will hear the trumpet play
When organ-man Frenchman say
"Where? Home of the free" and stay
Keep your hands away
Never want to let you say
"Hear me, hear ye, all you weary, weary dreamers
But never left your confidence like Russell-rustle leaf-blown willow-white
You fill them up with seventy two pay
Make a kite, to(k)night, allRight
Thank god for the fleas in the right
Hairless creatures for to sway
I threw the dog overboard yesterday
The day before, the day
And if you'd wanted it to stay
You should've say, you should've say
But never let my hand betray
The vein, the line, the artery
Of arterial shells bombastically
Loquacious to a fault, this day
They say "You want another day"
They say "You never wanted say"
They say "You wasted every day"
They say "They say, they say, they say"
But e'er forget, ne'er forget
I'll despise you abandon heaven for earth to get
And leave your money, your millions behind
For mansions with my Lord to find
But in the ceiling never was a god to pray
Feb 29, 2012
Feb 29, 2012 at 10:16 PM UTC
Grandfather John, my mother's dad,
remarried later on in life.
When he passed on his vast wealth
passed largely to this second wife.
Thus did her children benefit
from the bulk of his estate.
My mother and my Uncle John
relatively little, sad to state.
Sometime after the internment date
a piano was shipped to our home.
A piece Step- Grandma didn't want
She didn't play and lived alone.
When my mother was a child
living up in Marble Hill
She'd learned to play the instrument
that now she merely wished to ****
In mortal rage she grabbed an axe
and like a batter swung away
It was a fair bit of exercise
(She had played baseball in her day.)
Such sounds that spinnet then produced
were likely never heard before.
such atonal melodies
as she ripped and smashed its core.
the Axe concerto was concluded
when only splinters still remained
She went and stored the axe away-
After than she never played
Dec 18, 2011
Dec 18, 2011 at 8:11 PM UTC
the Internet sets
higher aspirations
a teaching guide,
on how to
go beyond and deep into
the fast lane's curved and wide,
stretching
the straight and narrow
longer than lasting,
lasting no longer than
memory feelings
blurred overlapping burnt edged video recordings
pores pour oil and noise,
differentiating little between
beginning ending continuous
in the mind, from the walls,
Santana Rob sings "Smooth,"
but it is
the guitar wailing controlled penetrations.
a national anthem
of driven perpetual needy fomenting
outspoken physical truths
you don't care how you
got there,
where you are,
anybody's name,
high octane high performance
*** today,
is not for
the shy and the retiring, sissies,
we all got the necessary expertise,
with violin accompanist of pharma teaching aids
recalling first time tumblings,
exhaling
deep down throated rumblings,
rushing
fumbling ********* an ****** innocence
rushes of surprise and discovery,
success of feeling successful,
the shame of miscommunications
think I'm gonna watch me
a romantic comedy,
write her a love poem,
come up from behind,
caress her *******
kidding kissing her ear lobes,
then entering her entry point,
her neck
even when she is
armed
but forgiving,
busy chopping dinner's vegetables,
make them make them
give up the hidden
soft atonal squealing
like a
piccolo on steroids,
high pitch teasing,
pinched by air ****** intaking
I'll play the bass,
hitting those low notes,
********* my own strings,
deep ooh's and aah's
diode emitting,
the drug employed
is unadulterated
wanton but wanted
desire
this won't be the poem of the day,
no mind,
it already is was and
will be...
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 7:27 AM UTC
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.
The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.
The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night. Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.
O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 10:57 AM UTC
I used to be hidden in my room
choking at my mouth's roof
as if stuck within a stutter,
exhausted from existing, hinging
like a wind-chime battered by a hurricane.
Then a troubadour with honey hair
had me humming to his ear-worm
of a melody, depicting a choreography
that jolted my legs into frenetic mania
like an early talkie starlet's.
For years, I have memorized
this intricate chord structure,
immersed myself in its crescendos
until I could belt it backwards.
It's the only song I know by heart.
There is this one tune, though,
if you can even call it that,
this atonal reverberation that alerts
the darkest corners of my mind,
a slowly muttered siren song
leading to lands I never want to visit.
I can never fully decipher
the lyrics to an entire verse.
It's the excerpts, scattered
like dust mites in a concert hall,
that try to nibble at me piecemeal,
romanticizing the revolving door
of self-destruction, bruises
veiled as smudged calligraphy.
So please excuse the minor notes
that hiccup from my vocal cords
every other half moon or so.
It's just the ebb and flow
of awkward drumming
that disorients the ear,
causes me to trip up
on the patchwork of refrains
we've spent so much time weaving
into heavenly cohesion.
Above all, please remember
that no static or din
will ever shoehorn its way
into our ironclad harmony.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 3:53 PM UTC
Free as a bird
they say
To spread those wings and glide atop
the world’s walls
But aren’t they, too, caged by our fear,
wings beating to the rhythms of war below,
atonal music thundering ever louder,
drowning the notes they struggle to recall
and clinging anxiously to the harmonies of long ago
Land of liberty,
free as a bird we move about,
thinking that we know what we have lost
Flocking with the crowd from home to home,
stopping only to pick at the grass
for any semblance of meaningful sustenance
that our souls so desperately crave
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 7:28 PM UTC
Airducts
in homes of cyborgs,
Where they live alone-
Echoes drone, atonal, antinarrative;
The odds of still (standing), finding love.
In the impossibility of now!
Scatter,
prance,
clench warm hands.
Make room. New lovers will arrive soon.
Pupils dilate to pin ****** I see under water.
Pupils expand and I can hear.
Something is watching
inside of all of us.
We can hear.
We can see.
We can speak.
We feel the wind,
motion painting past.
Dreams mutilated,
the catharsis is
alpha and omega.
Our minds
know it.
Oct 4, 2012
Oct 4, 2012 at 1:18 AM UTC
I can hear it in the
Atonal scraping of my chair
Across the scuffed linoleum
In the cessant whirring of the fridge
And the dull hum of the fan
Familiar sounds
I have heard a thousand times before
They are nothing in themselves
Not happy or sad
Only known
And yet it is the same with your voice
Creeping out from under a prenumbral
A shy beam of light
I recognize its form
Though it is nothing in itself
Not happy or sad
Only known
A familiar sound
And yet I do not know you.
May 21, 2014
May 21, 2014 at 5:17 AM UTC
.
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.
The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.
The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night. Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.
O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
.
Jan 10, 2022
Jan 10, 2022 at 5:07 PM UTC
He's like a cat
creeping across piano keys.
Deliberate,
discordant,
and dear.
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 9:42 PM UTC
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.
The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.
The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night. Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.
O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
Oct 13, 2013
Oct 13, 2013 at 8:35 PM UTC
I saw a symphony
in your cascading hair,
and eyes twinkling
like sunlight on brass.
But when you played
the melody with your
tongue on mine it was
a sickening sound,
atonal and ugly.
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 2:10 AM UTC
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.
The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.
The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night. Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.
O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
Jun 13, 2015
Jun 13, 2015 at 12:23 PM UTC
Sometimes,
the sound of your snoring,
makes me want to run you through,
with a knife.
That atonal rasping and gagging,
penetrates every board,
every beam,
until this old house vibrates with it.
My rage is palpable,
a living,
pulsating thing,
It thrums alongside your ragged breath,
Dueling frequencies of dischord,
Your tortured sleep,
and my tortured nerves,
inexorably linked,
You choke yourself awake long enough,
to look through me,
Emit a vaporous moan,
and turn over.
I like it better when you're working,
and I'm more perfectly alone.
Nov 16, 2017
Nov 16, 2017 at 10:41 PM UTC
Slow whistle.
Atonal wind hums
through the naked
boughs of autumn.
Sunny November.
Hats and flannels
color the cityscape
under assumptions
of nearing frigidity.
But the sun still shines
and the wind goes on
humming, just like
it always has before.
Nov 7, 2022
Nov 7, 2022 at 7:35 AM UTC
i sit and strum my guitar tunelessly
listening as each of the chords
strike a dissonant
exclamation in my mind.
i play without intent,
letting my fingers
guide a symphony
of sorrow over
the frets.
it's not the kind of music
you listen to as you cry.
it's the kind of music you
make when you
can't feel.
it's not the kind of music
you listen to for pleasure.
it's the kind of music
you hear in your pain.
it's not the sound of the
oceans driving home
sense,
it's the sound of the desert
inside you drying
your soul to
a shell.
atonal
noise.
Aug 11, 2011
Aug 11, 2011 at 8:17 PM UTC
for Sia and Gia
~
actionable,
seeking perfection,
yet this morning,
an unnecessary.
lying in bed, window gazing,
Barber's Adagio for Strings
fills the inner ear's atmosphere
in tandem, in cahoots
with
a new day's pastel palette,
whose new hues
hew away
half-remembered distasteful recollections
of rapid eye'd drowsed darker dreams.
bereft of cares,
'to do' lists
do not exist,
t'is only merest minorest inconvenience called
gravity,
preventing,
my physic shell from
being jet seat ejected
to ascend heavenly sky'd
even love's labor lost,
a pained yet pleasurable strife,
the best of the best
of a worn and torn cycled life,
all shed, all put to one side
like incidental music.
seeing light earthed birthed,
perfection granted to the early risers,
Massenet's Meditation turn violins
from soothing turns to sudden orchestral tumult,
causing a misstep of doubtful questioning,
a momentarily soul stumbling
crashing cymbalic disintermediation
Copland's Appalachian Spring replaces,
retracting, sealng wax away
all concerning distractions
of my concerting pastoral.
and tho a season too late,
for this is my time,
summer time,
the time of my music,
my seasoned, annualized
concerto with the Earth,
his music is most
well come
these,
the Summer Man's
days of awe,
days of tranquility,
days of simplest tones,
no atonal atonement requests necessary,
for mellifluous harmonious in everything,
perfection is given, not taken,
well received
in calming serenity,
Bernstein's West Side Story then presents,
so out of place
to where I current am,
a natural sensational day beginning
on the very near-to-the-end
of a long isand
(tho the West Side, en veritas, was
my teeming small town community, my noisy, honking
rooting birthplace story)
Lenny composes a dance of reminder that
*somewhere,
there is a remainder,
somewhere,
there is a place for us,
even me.*
and it is
here, now,
in the uncontested sky
over my blue-green grass,
that leads to my Peconic shoreline,
where I hear a new world symphony
of cawing birds and silent bunnies,
dancing deer and zzzzing insects,
completing my
natural composition,
the playlist perfection of
me
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 6:29 PM UTC
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.
The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.
The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night. Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.
O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 4:47 PM UTC
Gratifying sounds...
Delightful notes...
Each mirroring a sonnet of faith,
All conducting an aura of afroth !
For how could She, be such a gifted one ?!?
Sui generis" is the word,
Lyrical bliss per a chord,
Beauty as such an award...
A delicate Goddess within Her craft;
Why can't I spot any blunder in it ?!?
Soothing, soothing, soothing...
As pleasing as it can be;
She's of a divine femininity,
Yet, not precisely picturing Her glory,
Falling short in delineating Her charm.
Woman... O woman;
A certain euphoria, You conceive,
An eyeful masquerade, You evolve in,
An addictive healing, Your manoeuvre became to me.
~ A. Rose
Dec 17, 2024
Dec 17, 2024 at 12:20 PM UTC
Music—the score of victories,
triumphant cymbals of success
of orchestrated histories,
to regal anthems to impress.
Music—scribbled notes to recall,
arranged in sync with beating hearts
resounding with clarion call,
of overtures meaning imparts.
Music—felt across Earth’s measure,
in staccato revelation
that accompanies God’s treasure—
the symphony of creation.
Music—God’s whistle in the wind,
that piano voice, in us He set
the atonal key, blessed or sinned,
music is our divine duet.
Mar 11, 2019
Mar 11, 2019 at 9:45 AM UTC
Help me shatter this day. Our bodies make
transitions unbearable. All of us here hiding secrets. By design,
we are silent. It takes me days to fully sing.
We think walls are our doing, bridges our undeniable shame.
There are things following me: the bird soaring, another one flat on
the roof, and the other atrill on umbilicus of powerlines.
This day is composition – let this day atonal. From where I sit,
daily pursuits key in difficulties – eyes closed deep but not aslumber,
are purblind: gauge me in this order: feel the world scabrous like Braille. In a world of continuing
breakage, what is there to hold together.
If not, a debris pattern. A held rigor in suffering – there is that
crisp, sweet taste in the air again like some air winding out of ***
Look at me through dappled windows as reflection of an oncoming storm.
Help me splinter this day. Placate my tremor of, and fasten me dearly
set beyond the grooves of this day. I teach myself a coruscating example – to reach for
and break. To stop you climbing, plodding your way to a conclusion,
waylaid you in your place and summoned your fiddling of chance – the duration is
lined by obeisance towards an endorsed situation issued, not accrued.
We are somewhat conveying this burden to equal our weight. Must we
be afloat, what hoists our rebellion? What must we be
to endure, to witness these wondrous beatings ballast our gravities,
no warning of, and against reliance. Is our being here what we determine.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 12:13 AM UTC
Sir Michael sat on the riverbank, quietly,
sure beyond question that he wasn’t there.
Feverishly he searched the running water;
There it was, his jumbled reflection, blurred,
he couldn’t trust his eyes anyway.
Michael perfumed his hands with the soft wet mud,
deeply inhaling the earth’s pungency, and there were his fingers, his palms—
faintly, unconvincingly, incarnate.
The odor pulsed with Michael’s breathing,
hands fading with each expulsion of air,
reappearing with the intensity of their scent.
Sound.
Pursing his mouth, Michael whistled loudly, and
basked in the physicality of his atonal cry.
Ah, he inhaled again, there were his hands;
exhaled through tightly sealed lips, there were his ears,
outlines in a coloring book, filled lightly for a moment with
a vibrancy, a shrill whistle.
Sliding closer to the edge now, peering into the quivering
canvas of hazy mirrors—this was not enough;
he held his breath, and let go.
Touch.
The icy water ravaged every crevice of skin,
each pore suddenly illuminated, existing.
Air! But there was none; Michael’s lungs
filled with his own reflection.
Air! But there was nowhere for it to go, Michael’s body
began in the water, and would end if he surfaced.
Sir Michael fell to the bottom of the riverbank, quiet as death,
sure beyond question that he was there.
Here I am, he thought.
Mar 22, 2011
Mar 22, 2011 at 1:40 PM UTC
.
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.
The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn souls' veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.
The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night. Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.
O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
Jun 19, 2017
Jun 19, 2017 at 9:09 PM UTC
So many words between us—
The caustic breech of abatement, ruin
Runs atonal, in recitals of indifference,
How even the ****** birds now sound
Discordant and rain crushes as it falls,
Ballistic.
The pinprick stars are merely eyes
Undraped to the worn soul's veil
And gorgon time roils setting our feet
In the crust of wishes and delusions
Kept.
The bullet riddled skies in absence
Of colour are but particulates of lime
To the moonless night. Words have no
Eyes, they can only finger.
O the sorrows of the untouched—
The cruelty of the sightless and bent blind,
Drab vermillion stars felled like forced tears.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 9:06 PM UTC