"intonating" poems
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
Chill, dust rising with the fall of your head
upon your chest, intonating the etches of
your open journal, coastal rain, a steady drip through the
weakened roof of the abandoned artist loft:
*I listen
you listen
no talk
no talk*
Your lips pursed tight, catching my breath
to hold space for so sorry a sight,
my hands clasped against the cold and the sad
The abandoned paintings paying a silent vigil, blue, purple
*I listen
you listen
no talk
no talk*
Your cadence intensifies, your chin trembles almost imperceptibly
your furrowed brow holds the space for anger, for pain
and I want to grasp your wrists, close the book, fold you into me like the heartwood of an ancient tree- quiet, strong
the rain still falls
the dust rises tall
*I listen
you listen
no talk
no talk*
Your words aging us both in moments
in truths as heavy as deaths
as you speak plainly the pity of the unsaid
sowing the pattern that brought us lower than earth
*I listen
you listen
no talk
no talk*
You should have told me to be stronger.
I should have told you to stop.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 9:47 PM UTC