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Crystal June Jul 2016
There is no experience in the world
      that I cherish more
            than hearing my father play the piano.

It's imperfect and beautiful and
                                                       sounds
                                                          ­     like
                                                            ­      home.

The notes are often choppy, and there are pauses
      as his mind turns over what keys to play next --
            sort of like our lives as a family.

We're awkward
      and have
            broken             periods,
but altogether we're making music.

Every breath a note,
      every laugh a chord,
every      "I love you"      a harmony
            that
only our family
      can hear.

And there's staccato! arguments,

and there's fortissimo days with pianissimo nights,

and there's repeat on repeat on repeat,
      making our lives seem
      constantly       andante.

But life is like a series of randomly placed fermatas --
unpredictable, yet musically enriched because of it.

            And I wouldn't want it any other way.
The day my father stops playing piano is the day a piece of my soul dies.
(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)
Sam Moore Oct 2013
1.
you said falling in love would be
that breath before the fanfare,
that clap of thunder that starts
at the timpani and catches in
the space between the horn
and your fingertips
before sending soundsparks shooting
down the finished brass.
you said it’d be counting measures.
said i’d feel it at my core like
the first chord after two-for-nothing,
something crashing through me
same as a conductor’s stick;
one and two and one and two
and one, two, three, four.
instead it tasted like stale
cigarettes and the halfbreath
you only remember to take
after the orchestra has started
without you.
2.
i’ve been trying to remind you
of when we waltzed to minor chords
in our best friend’s basement —
his piano fingers were rusting away
so all we said was keep it steady,
keep it three-four.
you danced out of time
and stepped on my toes but
by the end i was still reciting
"i’ll do better next time,"
one, two, three, one, two.
3.
when you weren’t looking
i circled all the fermatas
on your sheet music.
you found out and said
i didn’t have to,
you could remember
on your own.
gd Jun 2015
Sometimes you meet people that you grow to love.
And then other times, you cross paths with some
that just click with your senses;
heighten your emotions so high everything else seems to disappear.

But beware of those who just snap into place
for they will inject their venom
into the depths of your heart
and leave skid marks on the surface.

They will plaster your atriums with Picasso murals
and sheet music from Bach
only to cover the walls with kerosene
and burn it to the ground for the sole soul-wrenching sake of "art".

And that's okay, you will live on.

But there will still be scars at the entrance sites from every drop of poison.
There will still be scars from the train tracks he carved
from the bat of his eyes and the pucker of his lips.
There will still be scars from the blaze

because when fire burns it does so
passionately
carelessly
wonderfully with furiosity  

And you will find pieces of clay under different piles of ash;
You will find treble clefs and fermatas
hidden under every ember that was left to die.
You will still find beauty in the destruction.

And maybe it's still okay to admire the ruins,
even just for a little while.

gd
{"if someone makes you feel, let them"}
gd Mar 2014
He's got me singing love songs, and I never
realized how foreign they became until
I was holding a brush in my hand, half-naked screaming
at the top of my lungs that maybe love is an open door;
an open door without an obstacle screen, and faulty locks.

And when the song ended on a high note, I realized
that I was so used to wallowing in the bass chords
of another sad tune to realize that this door was wide open -
past all the piano acoustics and vocal cracks between sniffles;
past the stressed fermatas and slow tearjerkers while I screamed

Mayday, please do not rain on my Parade again.

And in the first time in a long time, the sun is shining
and he looks at me everyday like you've only done once
or twice. And maybe, just maybe, I'm willing to break
the doorknobs you once taught me how to put together
just to keep this door slightly ajar a little while longer.

gd
gd Mar 2014
You see, I'm quite the forgetful catch.
It'll take me an hour to remember the chart of scientists that
they claim to have contributed to the understanding of my evolution,
oblivious to the fact that I have evolved in many ways when exposed to    
sound           touch           scent           taste           and           sight
It will take me the entire day to count the bobby pins I've lost, and the
pieces of paper I've magically vanished; maybe even a year of
long drunken laughs to memorize your birthday.
But it seems I've found an exception.

Your body is like a canvas:
entirely used to replicate sheet music in its originality
and intricate messages hidden behind staccatos and fermatas.
See, I've memorized the back of your head like a tune on the radio
replayed      over      and      over      and      over
­until it was the only melody I began to hear from morning till dusk
(with the occasional masterpieces that leaked its desires)
(and romantic words past my subconscious)
(and into my dreams)

I'm a forgetful catch, darling.

I'll forget the day
we first locked eyes, but
remember the hour you carved
h   o   l   e   s
into the bark-like exterior of my
heart and outlined your name
with a needle.

I'll forget what you had told me
you had for breakfast, but remember the
minute it took for you to fill my stomach with
b u t t e r f l i e s
that late autumn afternoon just by the baritone
of your laugh. Sad to say, I'll probably
even forget your birthday.

But I will always cherish that extra second of serenity
the last time you held me tight within your arms
[and fought the urge to let me go]
[but you did anyways]

gd
Because I'm listening to the type of music you would be listening to, and wondered if maybe one day you had come across songs of mine and felt the same way for even the slightest second during that last chord.
Penguin Poems Jan 2020
If we were a symphony,
Bach or Tchaikovsky
would have so much trouble
writing you and me.
Obscurity and dissonances,
memories of resonances,
held together by half cadences--
for we know a perfect cadence ends,
and our piece isn't finished yet.
Appoggiaturas to the next beat,
steps and skips short and sweet.
No need to hold fermatas long
we've got more time and more of a song.
the ending kinda ***** but lets call this a draft for now
Ryan O'Leary Jan 2021
I simply could not write a
poem about a river, a song
yes, but honestly how would
one put cadence on water
using words, it's impossible.
Poetry is for ponds or pools.

Liquid movement needs to
be represented by activity;
an attempted onomatopoeia
from the glossary of musical
terminology and not a mere
element of vocal expression.

Our meandering aqua-ducts
are conducted by nature, part
of a symphony, an orchestra
accompanies them every step
from their trickling springs to
les grandes fleuves à la mer.

I couldn't write a poem about
a river, rhapsodies over rapids,
frothy fermatas, prestos, tempos,
streaming ouvertures, dammed
ritardandos, torrential tremolos,
catchment syncopations, sand bars.

What about swishing droplets from
the metal cymbals of mill wheels or
hanging branches flapping in rhyming
meter or clapping swan's encore echoes
under arched bridges? Yes, Tennyson
wrote one; But that was just a Brook.

— The End —