"beethoven" poems
ignore all possible concepts and possibilities ---
ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust ---
just make it, babe, make it:
a house a car a belly full of beans
pay your taxes
****
and if you can't ****
copulate.
make money but don't work too
hard --- make somebody else pay to
make it --- and
don't smoke too much but drink enough to
relax, and
stay off the streets
wipe your *** real good
use a lot of toilet paper
it's bad manners to let people know you **** or
could smell like it
if you weren't
careful
80k
my fingers have become bored with
the quicksand of routine
they prefer to dance erotically over my typewriter
frolicking like naked ballerinas
over an ancient stage
spilling their secret thoughts
onto blank page,
after their day job
threaded together
over my lap,
or bending over to
reveal the contents
of my burlap sack
they have taken instead
to jumping over cracks
in the nothing of night
stifling the sound of silence
with assortments of clicks and clacks
punching in the perfect pitch of keys
to leave Beethoven blind
from this symphony of notes combined
and just like that at last
they have unfolded some rhyme
unachievable with ink and pencil,
without the stencil of time
dictating to work inside the lines
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 7:07 PM UTC
homeless, no
metropolis without a home
blaring and clinking and laughing
lights sharp like daggers
me and strange men—and
you
blinding
motorcycle
red, yellow, purple, neon
all blurs together
then, music, like iceland, like
a flooded jungle, drowning
I let go,
take me away
you are my key,
---
gun in hand
orchestra in other
and bach and beethoven in between
I'm sure we heard the same organs that day
but you, other hand on bible
prayed
why hadn't I?
my actions will have consequences
.
---
my only chance
test after test
failure after failure
higher
and
higher
suffocating desperation
I
grab on and
never
let go
**** you, and
I'll
be
free
Aug 30, 2020
Aug 30, 2020 at 4:06 AM UTC
I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible--
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.
the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.
finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take away my hours
break them
**** on them.
now I work for the editors the readers the
critics
but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.
11.2k
In 2005 The Piano Man was found wandering the streets of Sheerness in a soaking wet suit and tie
he didn't say a word.
When presented with pad and pen he simply drew a grand piano.
His nurses sat him in front of a beat up old upright
he played for four hours straight;
for four months his hands were the only things to break his silence.
Alexandre Dumas said "man will never be perfect until he learns to create and destroy."
Do you ever think about how Beethoven hacked the legs off his piano so he could feel the sounds he couldn't hear in his head, through his chest?
And Van Gogh heard the sounds his paintings made but kept going until his sanity
was just a memory floating on a distant river under a tired Milky Way.
And you see, like a Gaelic folk song blindness runs red through my family,
so I know it's not much but I'm here, still trying to mould my hands to say the right form of 'I love you'.
And did you know that the human heart beats over 30 million times a year, but we still have a hard time keeping our feet on the ground?
And did you know that the act of breaking in a horse is actually the act of breaking it's back?
Like we can't sit without sitting on broken things.
And did you know that every time a mobile phone sends out a GPS signal a bee loses it's way home, and every bee that doesn't reach it's hive dies?
So on nights when your pulse matches the beat of my favourite song
you don't have to wonder if it's me matching the syncopation of your silence --
and I wonder if you ever found what you were looking for.
And I wonder if you realise that on days you're not here I roll up my sleeves,
count the beats without you,
sit on the backseat and miss you.
And somewhere The Piano Man rolls up his sleeves
creates the Big Bang under his fingertips.
And in 2005 on an April morning in Sheerness, a suited piano man walks straight into the ocean,
begs the current to take him.
I send you a message
a bee loses it's way home.
I send you another
another bee dies.
My chest cavity is a bumble bee crypt,
my tongue a honeyed graveyard.
Another message.
The Big Bang.
The hive.
A suit.
That ocean.
Another back is broken.
Another message is sent.
I fear I am more honeycomb than heart.
To create is to destroy. To destroy is to succeed.
And would you just look at what these piano hands have finally done.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 1:28 PM UTC
The power of music
and friendship
heals dead connections;
a well-meaning member
of a jam session
offers me a guitar.
I politely decline,
embarrassed by my disability,
and they shrug. Your choice.
The familiar curves
beneath my arm
like a woman
from my past,
my amnesiac left hand
reaches for the
muscle memory
of fifty years' practice.
After an agonizing minute,
the G chord miraculously plays,
as I played it at five,
the three big fingers alone
strong enough to hold it.
The switch to C impossible;
so I play a variation.
Doesn't sound bad with the group.
My God, I might play a D7
by the next time it comes around
in the song.
The gang is playing old standards,
Ohio State music;
three chords and a cloud of dust,
which suits my present skill(?) well.
I almost cried when a few tunes later,
we sang A Horse With No Name
to my accompaniment.
Beethoven was deaf, yet heard the Ode To Joy.
Hawking is paralyzed, and travels the universe.
I have three good fingers,
and no good excuses.
Sep 5, 2016
Sep 5, 2016 at 11:45 AM UTC
A mother whispers into the fire of Night
I hold a match
I hold Yarn
I Am Wool
Shrinking to the formation
The intricate designs of your rib cage
of your brother's belly
of your Grandfather's waist
Am I simply a fool?
And Who
Doth I ask This question too?
A Torn book
A tattered sonnet of Man's sore feet
blistered eyes that are Green
That are Brown
That are Blue
I Lay with myself Tonight
I am Awake
I am Loud
In your Night
I Am the Janitor beneath the hardwood floors
of your Dream
I am the
Poorly Waged Electrician
With Shoes that resemble an old dog
I Light Your Highway
Your Street
Your Morning coffee
your
cigarette
Am I The Child?
I fall in love with women I see on the streets
Their Wavy hair
like a French sea
Her pale complexion
the Brown Glimmer in her eyes
And I paint on her on Tombstones
On Coffee Mugs and on carpets rolled up for the Dumpster
At Nights
I prefer to dream awake
and sit with a BathTub of words
of stories that melt like cheese
that stiffen like Ginsberg ****
that Shriek and Strum like Tom Waits stomach when he starves on backroad streets
And when I cannot
reproduce
I make love to a woman
And a poem is made
and I kiss her
and my lips say 5 am
and I wish her not to go
But the Dog
is waken by Robins
by the Pigeons
by the digestion of night to day
by the Greek Gods and Goddess' Light
That Falls down
like long hair of woman you have so longed for
and you kiss her chest
And there is no Death
There is no Sleep
or ****** addicts or gasoline or paved roads or shaved faces or mothers or Dostoevsky or Beethoven
There is just her
and you run your fingers across her skin
through her hair
She is the bottom of the Ocean
You are a homeless crab
a Shellless Clam
falling down
down
down
to the bed of the great ocean
and there she lays
With a reflection of Youth and Beauty
And her complex simplicity makes me think of
me as a boy
running behind brick collapsed business buildings
Kissing a girl behind church
Buying Icecream with Josh in Winter
That's what a woman does
She erases Death
from the palms of your hands
and your thoughts
and you sink
to the bottom
and you watch the Coral
The other fish
swimming along
and you laugh
Because you do not know Death
And Death does not know you.
Apr 28, 2013
Apr 28, 2013 at 3:16 AM UTC
I
From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,
The substance of my dreams took fire.
You built cathedrals in my heart,
And lit my pinnacled desire.
You were the ardour and the bright
Procession of my thoughts toward prayer.
You were the wrath of storm, the light
On distant citadels aflare.
II
Great names, I cannot find you now
In these loud years of youth that strives
Through doom toward peace: upon my brow
I wear a wreath of banished lives.
You have no part with lads who fought
And laughed and suffered at my side.
Your fugues and symphonies have brought
No memory of my friends who died.
III
For when my brain is on their track,
In slangy speech I call them back.
With fox-trot tunes their ghosts I charm.
‘Another little drink won’t do us any harm.’
I think of rag-time; a bit of rag-time;
And see their faces crowding round
To the sound of the syncopated beat.
They’ve got such jolly things to tell,
Home from hell with a Blighty wound so neat...
. . . .
And so the song breaks off; and I’m alone.
They’re dead ... For God’s sake stop that gramophone.
5k
I like hearing you talk about Mozart
Because it means you’re listening.
His piano keys are no different from mine.
I like hearing you talk about Mozart.
I used to play his pieces before I sleep.
His arpeggio is my lullaby;
His laughter, a sombre tune to which I tune
My keys.
There’s no denying that you like Mozart;
Never mind his spending habit.
I sometimes think you are Mozart.
I think Beethoven was fad gone true because
He was deaf to his laughter,
And Schubert was too old, too young to remember
How to step on the pedals
While he tried his many operas
On his baby grand piano.
I think of Mozart in my sleep, in my dreams,
On the toilet, while eating.
I think of Mozart and his young son
And the requiem he stood dying to finish.
Mozart became a
One night stand, and I am not proud of that.
I majored in advertising, God knows why, and maybe
Mozart had something to do with that.
I factored one and two equals the sign of what digit,
And maybe Mozart had something to do with that.
I wrote a story once,
About a starving artist;
Maybe he was the force behind that.
I filled my library with fiction,
And fiction became a running schedule for me.
Maybe Mozart had something to do with that.
I’ve grown roots and sprouted horns listening to Bach;
I don’t think Mozart knew that.
But it was the size of the shoe that never fit me in third grade,
And the roots run as deep as a well of Hope grown asunder.
I knew Mozart would not like that.
And it was holy.
We are holy.
He was holy.
Mozart was holy. Mozart was holy.
Mozart was holier than a cow gunned for meat turned to steak
And corned beef on my breakfast sandwich.
Mozart was holier than a dishwashing paste advertisement
That promises oil free, squeaky clean Experience.
Mozart was more than a religious façade played in the sala
Of some affluent geeky teenager’s house
Where no one bothers to eat the garnishing.
Mozart was holier than Bach, Chopin, Stravinsky, Wagner.
His flute promised a princess to remain priceless.
Mozart was holier than Salieri.
Mozart knew better than Salieri.
Mozart played better than Salieri,
And he got the better of Salieri when Antonio himself said,
**** that Austrian ****** who plays, lives and howls like a show monkey.
**** this court.
**** this Emperor who can hardly keep together his fingers to play.
**** Austria.
**** Vienna.
**** this era of opera played in German that hardly sells a ticket.
**** this requiem and this boy,
This mad man, pint sized and hardly put together like a china doll.
**** this piano, and to hell with his lovers.”
I saw Mozart once. He waved at me.
I turned and looked away because I was listening to you talk about Mozart.
And I like hearing you talk about Mozart
Than Mozart talking about
Himself.
Apr 20, 2012
Apr 20, 2012 at 6:46 PM UTC
"Sorry, Austin...not for us...Best with it."
"Four Verses of Inexpressive Groaning,
and 15 Ughs to be Sung in Beethoven's 9th. "
Ughghghgh.
Ughyughghg.
Eighghghgugh.
Myeeeghghg?
Eeehghghg...
Myegghghugh.
Ghghghghg.
Huhhghghg?
Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.
Shrug- eh?
Uhhhmmm...
Eghghghghg....
Myughghghg...
grughghghg.
Gaaah...?
Blughghg.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 11:09 PM UTC
me? these days?
i have to bribe bonsai tigers
to fall asleep by giving them
excess treats,
drink myself to a limit
and then take insomnia tablets,
glance at the stars
and gag up a bolshevik black hole,
think about russian
newly-wed millionaires
spending so mcuh the taxes go up,
testifying: well when the full circus
with elephants and missing acrobats
comes... and there's no french revolution
versace... we're in bigger crap
we thought we were...
so i took to peddling, keeping heart
rate with feeling rather than
a heart-rate keeper on the wrist known
as apple / iWank...
you'll never believe the amount
of creativity that comes from Onan...
it's like that story of onan and samson
like it's that story of cain and abel...
you'd have to be a mozart to find a creative
continuum in women rather than
beethoven in the hive of being deaf...
say rich and thus say spend...
say poor and thus say like a primate
with two flint stones... what the hell is this?!
japanese crow reduced their beak for
nut crushing purposes into a car tire.
FIRE! FIRE! PROMETHEUS!
so came the world favouring thought
from prometheus' liver
when in diaper-shelter postman pat delivery
by a stork... but each of us that got the slit
of liver never claimed origins in the apple
adam ******* out when eve forgot
that satan's singularity was expressed in
a pluralism: eat this apple, depilate,
and you and adam will be like the gods...
but then the metrosexual emerged
with shaved legs and a shaved chest...
down the drain that dream went:
as long as you eat the apple and know
you have hairy legs... i'm sure whatever you
say he will be ordained with pleasure to perform...
eve - i need a hammer
adam - here babe
eve - i need a nail
adam - here babe
eve - i need five planks of wood, four legs one like an abdomen
adam - here babe
eve - mash it up
adam - hey babe, what's that?
eve - a ****** table, tapestry for porcelain!
adam - woah! that's great!
eve to god - this adam is a ****** robot!
satan to eve - well... get ready for ******
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 8:48 PM UTC
“My sole goal in life is to keep racing
down the interstate without a clock
so I can keep going until people forget who I am.”
In my head I knew I was wrong
hypocritical, insane, illogical, but above all I was still
humane!
This, yes, this sole fact is what keeps me
separated from you
draw a straight line down the road we lived on
the squares and the circles.
You, with your fancy plaque and NHS bumper sticker
With the family of four and no reason to feel failure
With your perfect scores and magnificent vernacular
Who let you have it so easy?!
Me, with my Jimi Hendrix poster
family of who knows how many
and the chance to earn my GED in a few years
Why was it me?!
You met your wife in the 10th grade
You gave her a promise ring and everything
Even took her with you on spring break
Who said you didn't have to try?!
I was placed in the wards that year
they said it was insanity
I thought I was just thinking ahead
Why can’t they understand?!
BUT THEY ALWAYS UNDERSTAND YOU!
You, your Shakespeare perfect jargon
Mr. Right, Perfect, next coming of Beethoven
You were made to please everyone and become important!
And that’s what separates us.
Even though it’s the same street that raised us
I bought the Harley and your parents got you the Chevy.
And I recall the one time I was flying down the interstate
And caught up to you as you were going nothing higher than 70.
I stared at you and you kept your eyes on the road.
I don’t blame you, I knew that you just wanted to see my bomber jacket
I have a skull on fire on the back of it
So I gave you a great view
hope you enjoyed it.
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 1:40 AM UTC
She wears t-shirts of the Beatles
And she loves the Rolling Stones
She wakes up to David Bowie
And she dreams of the Ramones
She goes out to dance clubs nightly
Till her ear drums both get blown
But, she has a deep dark secret
That her friends will never know
At night when she is by herself
When the room is nice and dark
She slips beneath the covers
With Johann Sebastian Bach
She's a closet classic ******
And her name is Amber Clark
She just loves orchestral music
The rock and roll is just a lark
Her friends think something classical
Is something for your folks
They cannot play an instrument
They cannot read the notes
They think that chamber music is
What people play on boats
But she has a deep dark secret
She loves the stuff that Chopin wrote
At night when she is by herself
And her friends have gotten ******
She slips beneath the covers
And she listens to some Liszt
She listens to it many times
In case there's things she's missed
She's a closet classic ******
She has "Baroque" upon her wrist
She listens to the music
That her friends like to be cool
If she told them what she listens to
They'd laugh her out of school
So, when they go out clubbing
She will join them as a rule
But...ah that deep dark secret
This girl is no ones fool
She listens to Beethoven
And she knows each piece by heart
She knows where one bar ends
And another one will start
She can play most every instrument
And she knows most every part
She's a classic closet ******
But she still knows Boyce and Hart
She has cds in her library
And most sit there untouched
When her friends are gone they don't get played
She doesn't like them much
She would rather hear a symphony
By a composter who was Dutch
But there's that deep dark secret
And she won't use it a crutch
At night when she is warm in bed
She listens to Mozart
She needs a little Nacht Musique
To open up her heart
It's a piece that sets her mind a blaze
It hits her like a dart
She's a closet classic ******
And she keeps her worlds apart
By day she sings Bruce Springsteen
At night she listens to
Composers that her friends don't know
They're so old they're new
So she keeps her world a secret
For she knows what they would do
If they found she didn't know
Where were you in sixty two
But at night she is a ******
And she listens to Mozart
She needs that piece of music
To shoot an arrow through her heart
Eine Kleine Nachmusic
She conducts every part
She's our Closet Classic ******
shhh.....the song's about to start...
May 4, 2012
May 4, 2012 at 11:35 AM UTC
Long and thin,
Claw like,
Like spider's legs
Frail
They run
Faster and faster,
The talon-like nails tapping
The table,
Mimicking Beethoven's fifth symphony
We grasp
We clench
With white knuckles
a cold white
A hard white
An icy white
Holding onto the last life we have.
Without fingers,
We cannot hold each other's hands,
We cannot play music,
We cannot write our thoughts.
We are not human,
Without our
Fingers
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
I thought Van Gogh had it figured out
he fell in love
and cut off his ear
he died july 29 1890 from a self inflicted gun shot wound
He painted
He painted the sky
He painted men women bedrooms flowers shoes street corners chairs boats and fields
I thought Basquiat had it figured out
******
NYC
He painted memories in the present
August 12 1988
NYC apartment ****** overdose
I thought Picasso
I thought Warhol
I thought Stalin
******
Buddha
Had it figured out
but sand fills our shoes in dry texan sun
and the dog howls
howls for its mother
howls for its brother
howls for its sister
I thought the dog had it figured out
eating insects
smelling my hands
eating the ham on the floor
I thought Hemingway had it figured out
Late at night
reading Old Man and The Sea
Suicide July 2 1961
12-gauge English shotgun
I thought Fitzgerald had it figured out
I thought Ginsberg
I thought Kerouac did too
drinking across the neck and back bone and gutter lips of America and back
I thought Bukowski had it figured out
the cigarettes
the wine
the women
the type writer
the sad nights accompanied by cockroaches and a city that is indigestible
I thought Phillip Glass had it figured out
Beethoven
going Def
Mozart lost in his grave
writing symphonies for Death and his cruel tripled eyed angels
I thought
The drunkards were lost
The Junkies were ankle-less
The Mothers were done for
The Fathers had given in
The Young
True
The Elderly
gazing through the bifocals of heaven and hell
The Prisoners cemented in Time
I thought the Dead
were the ones who published our Dreams
I thought the painter
had it figured out
So I painted
I thought the pianist
had it figured out
So I played the Piano
and listened to the bilingual codes of the keys
I thought the Ballet dancer
had it figured out
So I watched her
I studied the movements
and the bruised toes
looking for a design of an answer
I thought the Poet
had it figured out
So I wrote a poem
and I saw the world.
Apr 4, 2013
Apr 4, 2013 at 12:13 AM UTC
Short sidedness,
blistering thoughts;
selfish predisposition:
What a world!
Hypocritical claims
about profound lack of wisdom
and fear of loneliness;
Deeply ironic statements
about some lust to be alone
that you felt as you ******
Your words seem well chosen and articulated,
and perhaps in time will become true;
but it seems to me that they right now
are as hollow and transient as the space
between your actions, logic, and resolve:
I've found very little
that can make me stop
to laugh and cry all at once,
perhaps a few pieces of Beethoven's music and some really ******* good metal;
but you sit atop that short list
on your rather gorgeous and elegant hubristic throne,
mocking the progress I've made,
oozing with scorn and spite:
You have so much to learn before you will be regarded as you like to assume you are:
"Responsible"; word around the campfire is: hardly.
"Honest"; perhaps in words, but apparently not actions.
"Mature"; physically, it seems, but mentally? Not so much.
"Respectful"; only to yourself, and seemingly not even that.
I tried to help, and clearly failed.
If it were a test, you cheated;
didn't bother to see how it could've been,
but hey:
at least you were honest.
At least you told the Truth,
though your actions were untrue.
I thought I loved you;
I thought I needed you.
Perhaps I did,
but it has run it's course:
you killed it on purpose.
I suppose it served it's purpose to you;
that I have served my purpose to you.
I detach myself from you,
and from myself, in the process,
and in the process, I fall in love
with those aspects of myself
I so seek in others:
Darkness; honesty. Honor. Intellect.
Humour. Creativity, balance. Respect.
A level of elegance, but an amount of **** it";
Mental maturity, to an extent.
A moderate badass. A **** badass.
Though, it seems,
the path to Heaven is paved with good intentions,
and is built with the bones of the hopeful,
and is illuminated by unfounded faith
in ****** ******* people:
A mandala of Irony.
Jun 20, 2013
Jun 20, 2013 at 9:46 PM UTC
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
Sometimes the rain doesn't tell a story,
or maybe it does.
It just cries out loud from nothingness,
yet it always was .
I think it yearns a friend or something,
but I never endure.
It plays a theme from a Beethoven's key,
melancholy to feel.
Cynical for ones who betrayed its trust,
surging ire it last.
Then tranquility had ended its rhapsody,
gone is her misery.
Iridescent hues formed the aurora sky,
rain bids goodbye.
Neither You and I can't even fathom,
the rains Delphic reasons.
For the rain only comes once a season.
Jun 24, 2017
Jun 24, 2017 at 1:36 AM UTC
On the first day, he was pushed
robust in his stance, the other forced,
this boy down the spiral staircase
of the Catholic church, the school
had renovated, the Spring before
Isaac had begun his studies,
at the high school.
Ballet was his passion, Latin was the
language that so effortlessly, fluently
was spoken from his lips in class
as he smiled at his Professor, another
victory accomplished in academia
so proud were his parents, of their
blue eyed boy.
Jonah was the reject, the older brother
he had been kicked out of school,
not once, but twice, and was often
found with a joint, his unshaven face
wrapped around one of the girls,
from the all girls school that ran
alongside Isaacs all boys.
Issac was hurt, a further blow to his
stomach, rendered him broken
as a waterfall of tears ran down his
bruised and cut face, so ashamed
as other pupils laughed, staring, pointing
until the final bell rang as they fled from
the high ceilings and narrow corridors.
Wrapped in a ball, he waited for all
halls and students to clear, and as
he rolled over, picking himself up
he took to the washroom, knowing he
needed to be presentable for his mother
waiting for him at the school gate
brimming with pride, at her boys scholarship.
All his dreams, mystical and serene, Romeo and Juliet
fluid streams of poetry of Elliot, Poe, Hughes
and of course Wilde and those love letters of Beethoven
math, biology, all paled into insignificance
he was born a writer, a dancer, a drawer,
sketching and typing his heart to a page,
prose a future love would read.
Johan saw his mother's car pull up
as he raced and giggled with Saskia
leading her astray, he promised her all
the things those boys always did, and of course
not to break her sweet sixteen heart, unlike other boys
as his mother smoked another Camel, the two lovers
jumped into his truck, Johnny Cash blaring from speakers
laughing hysterically, the world at their feet.
By 4pm, Isaac was ready to leave school,
tentatively walking out the main door, down
concrete slabs as steps, no predators in sight
he couldn't hide the dark circles under his eyes
that formed as bruises, knowing he was fortunate
to have not been damaged further
by the haunting before last period.
Walking to the gates, he listened through
headphones; Tchaikovsky
his release
his home
his saving grace.
© Sia Jane
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 6:53 PM UTC
I am the mutt mix ****** soul'd ***** tongue'd,
Animal boy,
Feverish *** green like February Tree moss eyes,
Siren song blink of a kiss,
***** yellow dress,
around her knees,
king,
Queen,
Peasant,
peasant,
going def like grandfather Navy Time,
like Beethoven's 7th dream,
wine induced inspirational serene beauty,
with a sharp stale touch,
of old leather,
boiling like Texan Hot weather,
****** orange lipstick,
No food,
only the bacterial salt,
left on the pistachio shell,
That some,
Hispanic goddess,
For an hour,
200,
dollars,
left as she,
got dressed,
and fluttered away like,
smoke,
like,
memory.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 2:19 AM UTC
Who on Earth were these people
From the past, who made sense
Of a world without iPods, iPads or plumbing?
What’s up with those towering minds of yesteryear?
From where did they come and how come?
Goethe standing so tall
Voltaire you tower!
And bend over Beethoven,
I can’t reach your low five.
What grant of Gods favor gave them sight?
Awesome mighty minds of the past.
Descartes, I think so you are,
So smart that I think I am not.
Galileo you saw heaven before I had eyes.
Einstein, Da Vinci, Archimedes
You and your kind will all live forever,
Men will stand upon your shoulders
And then die.
Dec 11, 2012
Dec 11, 2012 at 10:00 PM UTC
(Scene by the brook)
He came seeking solace to Heiligenstadt
and walked alone by its crystal stream
welcomed by songs the nightingale taught.
Its cheerful waters made Vienna seem
a distant, cool and forbidding stage
where few would embrace a pastoral dream.
He dotted his sketchbooks on every page
with earthen tones born of peasant heart -
(though fare rich enough for any age) .
He poured from the stream the fiddle part,
and woodwinds sang with the birds in the dell -
all "choired" together by his masterful art.
At Heiligenstadt Beethoven attended well
and bequeathed us his golden 'Pastorale.'
July, 2006
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 10:53 PM UTC
Symphony No.9 in d – minor, opus 125
Allegro ma non troppo
The silence gives way gently
to quiet tremolos rustling
beneath the beckoning
call of distant horns.
A melodic cell, nascent in violins,
spirals down to the somber depths
of cello and contrabass.
A sudden cataclysm
shakes the hall like thunder
heralding our universal birth.
Gales of sonic force
splashed like turbulent waves
against the rocky shores.
Drifting sans glass or sextant
on a sea of expanding mystery,
we gaze to the heavens
in hopes for a glimpse
of our father’s aetherial dwelling.
Molto vivace
With hands intertwined,
we dance in a ring
to the capricious airs
of the laughing gods
with Zeus himself on timpani.
So pass the wine and kiss your neighbor
and fill your glass to the brim!
For today is yesterday’s morrow
and tomorrow’s history.
Adagio molto e cantabile
There is no greater and more healing light
than the candles that shine
in the eyes of a friend
or loving spouse -
tenderly lighting our paths
through the storms and fogs
that cloud our lives.
Peace abides in a friend's embrace.
An die Freude
Against raging storms of
strife and sorrow.
we hear a healing voice
A calm cello hymn -
that migrates up to higher cords
of violas and violins -
breaking into joyous song
sung by trumpets, winds and drums.
Casting all shrillness of discord aside,
a baritone lines out Schiller’s ode -
and sings of Elysium’s daughter.
Quartet and chorus enter in
proclaiming hope for the human family,
A tenor raises a stein to valor
in the company of his friends.
The quiet pulsing of horns and winds
ushers in torrents of ecstasy.
Arms clasped in communal embrace,
we gaze to heaven on bended knees
then rise with a majestic fugue
that illuminates our souls
like a blazing Alpine dawn.
In a cyclone of passion,
Schiller's words and Beethoven's notes
entreat us to restore
what custom has rent apart
that each of us may live our lives
as brothers in heavenly sanctuary.
May 25, 2007
Sep 20, 2013
Sep 20, 2013 at 1:33 PM UTC
Beethoven choral racing through frozen forests
through rain and frost storms
We are carried on fast horse through winter
against furious Beethoven
Making love on lost sheets of saffron and straw
a frozen speeding vision explodes into your corner
racing fierce on pianoforte
Beethoven one note pure
against humanity
Feb 5, 2012
Feb 5, 2012 at 2:16 AM UTC
never hearing the applause
or the symphonies he orchestrated
amputating the legs of his piano
to feel the vibrations on the floor
only to get down on his knees
for music
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 5:51 PM UTC