I was watching the
Nutcracker,
stage drinking blue
The violins
pizzicato,
pizzicato
the wood sprung floor
breathing with the knock
of ballet shoes

I was watching the
Nutcracker,
sitting in the
mezzanine,
Mezzanine
the red kiss of
cherry wood and
green,
I live in
the mezzanine

I was watching the
Nutcracker,
peering into the
pit,
a small gap in the
stage floor where
I could see your
wrist,
holding your bow,
swaying your
bow,
pushing back and forth making my
carpal tunnel
ache, oh your
bow

I was watching the
Nutcracker
and you were playing
the score
Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky
beneath the
stage floor

I

Under a hollow sky
grey worn concrete listens
scream of a solitary car.

“Just want to write something. anything. been too long. Mind, liquid pencil. You know.”

Jazz tickets on the dash.
(solo performer – no net over absurdity)

“Write about that..”

Street lamps recede infinitely
fathomless ether’s lost
slipstream of rust swallows all.

“See what he’s like first.”…”Your call.”

There’s a tug, a pull towards
the light and motion
the swirling abstraction
luminescent dance in glass and shadow
seeping out of brocades of steel and concrete

the city at night
night tides thick with colour.

“Empty road, inviting city. Very Kerouacian.”

Car screams a little louder.

The outskirts come into view.

II

Empty streets repeat in circle
asphalt constant self devouring.

Neon hums, street lamps chatter
sidewalk smoke ripples
reflections upon reflections.

Jazz tickets slide across the dash.

Chicken broth of ancient forever
rides night airs
long ago memories
fast filing seats, flavours upon flavours.

Logic abandoned
signs abandoned
knowing abandoned
we just follow the way.

Neon roar echoes in hollow factory caves
colourless flames abstract burn.

There, under the
Ashen Dragons gaze
empty seats, luck that can’t be passed up.

We eat noodles under starlight.

Ashen Dragon, indomitable
keeps flickering,
and flickering.

III

Stage lights roll.

Red light
hangs in dust.

In the hall, over the seats, over the stage.

Jazz tickets now stubs now becoming cranes.

Silence, bass ambles forth.
First steps turn into
stumbles, tumbles,
scrapes, hacks,
accumulation of mistakes
collective hang in red dust.

He tries everything. Arco, pizzicato,
bass as percussion – devoid thumps.

He’s patient though. Amidst the inferno,
there’s the sense, the knowing, he’ll find the way.

He stops. Stops seeking. Turns to sought.

IV (Musical Interlude)

A thread only he can see
faint, and fainter still gossamer.
bow swish arc, tentatively ensnared
dark enigma thread entwined among bow strings
a weave drawn into a screen
across the stage wall.

Abstractions start to turn into form.

Pizzicato dance
chips away,
immortal peaks of gleaming jade.

Arco slide
carves away,
innumerable valleys of shining emerald.

Tips and taps
river flows, duckweed and herons
hermit huts in forest and moss
troops of gibbons with melodious howls.

Tunings align with heavens changes
cherry blossoms bounce on singing winds
oriole songs drift through five willow forests
recluse paths swept clean of tumbled pine cones
pines rest under blankets of silent white.

Across the stage
crafted in pregnant emptiness
the ancient forever
in a down town dive.

Two cranes rest on a table.

V

Re-emergence under the
hollow sky.

“…there’s truth in abstraction.”

Ashen Dragon
still flickers.

Chicken broth
still lingers.

Empty seats,
still luck runs.

Noodles under starlight,
and sky grey caravans.

“Nice title…hanging around?”
“Catch the train back, gotta write this.”
“See you soon. Stay safe kid.”

Ashen eyes flicker
words clatter by under a neon gaze.

Fall to me, all you streets of Rome,
With your embrowned oils from torched walls and breccia of shadows,
The pizzicato of stairways and afternoon slowly closed
Like the thick, leathery-echo from this book of all roads.

Fallen, smoldering empire of storefronts and back-shop heirlooms,
Your lupine hills unbound with milk of cur in the wind and woods,
To your fallow fields rowed deep by a conquest of oars,
To the deepest silence and soot-muted oneness of Pompeii,
And a sky that is an ancient coin, without worth,
But still rubbed smooth at the edges by overfond lovers.

The silent street erupted around me the moment I sat down,
a thunder rumbles in the distance
but only reveals a passing truck.

The white swan drifts past
without elegance.

I watch the youths drive by on fish lane
as the silent score of stoplights
play to an impersonal audience-
tonight the pizzicato is on time.

----

The air is dense with quiet conversation
of nighthawks
and the splash  of luck
on a steel  tray.

Elegant servants of style remove the unwanted things.

12:30
The air has cleared,
alone again
with two fat asians.

When did boring become stylish?

GET ME OUT  OF HERE!!

"It is truly a free nation that offers pancakes 24/7"

----

Normally, the solitude of wandering a sleeping city would elicit poetry.
Tonight only nothing comes out.

Not the people nor the smells or secret music. Only the flicker  of a dying neon sun assuring me,
that the parking is open.

----

1:00 am.

A woman in a pink burkha enters a white car, only to be driven off into the night, followed by two taxis.

There are ancient trees twisting their tops through the modern facade. For eras, much like fashion are discarded by finicky time.

They have stood as silent sentinels for longer than I have breathed, and with any hope, they will stand as soldiers long after I  come to pass. These reminders of the ravages of time.

I loved a girl who lived  here once.
She lived in an apartment that overlooked the city
and had  ******* like two soft moons
that tasted like honey.

1:40 am.

Other nighthawks wander as wastrels through the quiet Autumn night,
with a slow, soft  gait one never see's in the rush of day.
If all evenings carried a beat, it would be thus:
a slow jazz drum.

"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!...."
would sound the echo of every evening heart
throbbing slow with power.
"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!..."

The car's carry  white  blood cells to  the  suburban arteries.
Taxi's are cancer.

I walk
northbound.

----

Cold beer at 2am.

Faintly lit menagerie
an open cage containing
nighthawks.

Well spoken Eastern girls
corporate white boys
two old tradesmen,
one on a smartphone with a rosary around his soft large neck.
The antique street curves away toward the river,
sloping up
then down
I follow it with my eyes.


And run them back
to the fairylights.
They hang like glowworms
or constellations.

Glowworms hang like constellations, the inside of their cave  is the same fleeting feeling of being alone with the universe, it being caressed by your eyes.
For you are its lover and its mirror.
Inside the glowworm cave, I felt like the universe and everything reflected  itself in miniature. That to look upon their hanging, blue stars you saw everything else.

Sinbad’s sea-battered ship was
poised on the edge of annihilation,
The Sultan's brow furrowed with curiosity,
then without warning
Scheherazade stilled her narrative
and lived to see the morning sun.

When the moon and stars next owned the sky,
Sinbad was snatched from the jaws of death
then the saga of Prince Kalandar
seized the king's soul with wonder
but Scheherazade left the tale unfinished
and sang with the birds at dawn.

Rimsky-Korsakoff  turned the pages at his desk -
consumed by Scheherazade’s charms
then etched his pen across the waiting staves:
The violin must weave her spell once more
and bassoon and oboe take the prince’s part.

Trombone and trumpet led the martial call
and all the rest enlisted for the cause.
Russian bravura fused with the seductive allure
of exotic tunes born of the dust on the silken road.

A sonic whirlwind filled Saint Paul Church,
as winds and tremolos grew to cyclonic force.
A wall of brass completed Kalandar’s tale.
capped by an exuberant clash of cymbal plates.

The silence yielded to tender violins
chanting a hymn to the princess in all her grace.
Tambourine and winds wove a tapestry
of her debonaire and most virtuous prince.

As the final pizzicato chord faded, the Sultan
turned to Scheherazade with tear-filled eyes
and beheld his immortal princess
and she her valiant and eternal prince
and so it would be as long as night preceded dawn.

She kissed away his tears of joy and whispered in his ear,
“My beloved husband, I will tell you stories forever.
Tomorrow you shall learn of the Feast at Baghdad.”

Utterly enchanted 'neath
  mesmerizing constellations,
as an entranced blue moon
    swoons over sparkling
           celestial diamonds,
cello's were eloquently playing
  serenading starry stratospheres  
     within an endearing melody
           and milky ways of poetry,
simultaneously syncopating
   strumming pizzicato heartstrings,
tuning our harmonious passages
      of rhythm and rhyme 'pon
apricot mist sunset horizons &
   seraphic skies rendered of
          lapis lazuli sunrise grandeur

the wind whispers to you in furious ways,
ominous notes, like a dusty violin
stenciling finality into the air.

the percussion
of foot-soldiers trembles the grass.

  you have grown, my war-child,
  from the days of ****** tea parties
  to a diva guerrilla,
  terrible and well-rehearsed,
  your bulleted libretto close to your chest--

and as trumpets sound in the offing,
the curtain draws back.

AK-47, pizzicato--
gasoline breeds fire, incinerates woodwinds,
the wine of the coloratura soprano
melts into blood.

  witch, *****, daughter of gunpowder,
  bella contralto, your
  deep and tremulous vibrato is a
  grenade,

and as death crashes to a crescendo,
mortality in the tin frequency of cymbals--

the only armistice
is annihilation.

Walter, I just want to sit on my *** and **** and think about Dante.*
—Samuel Beckett

All this fractures the Wolf. The ancient leaves
amid the ancient woods, wind riffling wind
in eddies she can see but she can’t hear,
the braying of a fatted calf which she
could eat, if she could hear thy call, O Wolf.

The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin and viola—play the
pizzicato of rain commencing…

The Wolf sits to watch—what?—the floodlights fill
the stadium? the baton poised? the crowd
about to have their daily dose of not
quite silence served up yet again? She hates
that they have come to watch a prophecy.

It’s raining full blast now, the Wolf’s exchange
for music, how things balance out, how rain
fornicates in the forest, with its pools
and puddles, how it tenders lakes and rivers
and shadows… It can’t be! Ahead she sees him.

She sees Dante, the poet of the prophecy,
the one she has to drown.  It’s why she’s deaf.
She will not hear him wail. **** him so he will rot
in hell before the other poet comes. **** him
and spare the world another poem about

another world. The rain and music grow
so dense around her soul. She is so quick,
too quick for him to flee. She drags him still
alive, drags him to the lake of his heart.
Sink and die. In Paradise only bubbles rise.

The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin, viola—play it soft,
so soft, as if the rain is about to start…

The Wolf and I walk the slopes of hell.
When Farinata and Cavalcante
rise up to ask her, ‘Who were thy ancestors?’
and ‘Where Is *****?’ she howls. O Wolf.
O Tuscan. She howls.

Dear Mother

I must confess a secret sin
It may sound foolish
You might just grin
And should these words
Make little sense
Please tell me so
Avoid any pretense

I slipped into your skin today
How the weight of time wears
In memory's ***** I sought to lay
Antecedent memories I tried to bare

But I could not comprehend

A Pizzicato journey
Well-paved walkways
The darkest alleys
Waves of variations
Like the untried
Unconquered waters
Ripples and swells
Of every known emotion
And more

I slipped into your shoes today
Memory lane I threaded
It's not an intrusion I must say
But a lesson from the learned

Though I still could not understand

Interludes and episodes
I would never fathom
Actions, reactions
I failed to decode
Highroads, crossroads,
Byroads, no roads
Turbulence in truckloads

Pardon the rhyme
Allow me to switch modes

I slipped into your past today
And caught a glimpse of you
Like the most delectable spread
I feasted on the fleeting view

Yet that does not mean I comprehend

But when time unfolds
The truths to behold
In subtle forms
Or atomic bombs
Should I discern
The right lessons to learn
I'll go with the flow
I'll let you know

IV

Pizzicato pianissimo
its sound gestured into resonance
a slight plosive of winds sustained
Arco – a lament in falling thirds
whispering towards an upward leap and a hold
crescendo  decrescendo
Imagine his imagining in nature’s realm
(that patient catalyst for the solitary maker’s mind)
now guarding here its assembly in a sounding out
Adagio – in a three-fold telling
A measured preliminary to the music’s soon-to-dance theme
before rising scales and emphatic chords – Allegro Vivace

V

Words on the rise
bricks on the going
then in the hall on the wall
A poem you simply have to read so
crouch close to the Suffolk brick
don’t mind those  descending shoes
The verse is laced with words of sound
breaker march cry rumble clap
cueing memory into remembrance
And why why here
where formal musicking lives and rules
are we noised down steps by a boiling kettle?

VI

As the water holds its breath
so a dense cloudscape
forms and floats
Inverted
mirrored
wholly still
it replaces the water
with horizonless sky
and extended reflections of grass
But as water exhales
clouds coalesce
a right perspective restores

Cicadas pizzicato their magical violins
in sweet , whirling summer serenade
Field Crickets staccato their beautiful cellos
from the pink Dogwood Trees , Killdeer
swoon to the music of June , Mayflies tango
by the light of the Moon

i feel like:

a violin string
unprepared for pizzicato
plucked too sharply

the skin of a drum
after ten thousand songs
beat too hard

a piano wire
awaiting the strike
strung too taut

the singer's throat
called for an encore
too hoarse to scream

Take a walk to clear your troubled mind,
And hear the pizzicato violins
In the wind in the pines, and see
The flaming leaves
Brilliant orange, dying in a fire
Of hot colors in the early dawn
The grey sky, cold and smooth
The leaves gilded with frost
Fire and ice lying quietly
In harmony
On the forest floor.

Take the time to
Clear my troubled mind
Take the time to shut up
And listen
Normally I write, but now
I must be quiet. Just be --
As the sky
As the cold granite in this forest, and
The snow-glimpsed peaks.

Do you love me?
I cry into the sky
Too resigned for tears.
Do you live, is there life, must I
Always try to read
What you might say in the wind and the trees?
Will you ever speak to me?
I touch a coal to my lips
It is dead and cold
I feel no fire springing to life in my soul
No words of prophesy tearing out.

The morning is silent.
I am ashamed.
I walk back to the road
And look back over the forest,
Alone.

A slow and steady crescendo
Of blended melody and rhythm
Grips the edge of reason and
Pulls it softly, toward contentment.
It feels and folds its way through
Storming emotions and insecurities.
Ushering their voices to calm and follow.
Harmonizing against the pizzicato
Of over stimulated heart strings,
It flows outward from her core.
Its cadence steady and sincere.
As it rushes to alter her face,
The sensory orchestra of
Memory, thought, fear and hope
Culminates in the most subtle of smiles.  

She exhales.

This is LOVE.

Jazz…

Spontaneous! Unique!
You are certainly one of a kind…
The notes you play caress my heart…
Your words, they fill my mind.

Alto…Baritone…Upright Bass…
Your voice is an instrument…
My soul must embrace.

Pizzicato… crescendo…
Feel the rhythms sway us to and fro
Your eyes can say with just one glance
All that my heart will need to know

Profundo…staccato…
Why must this symphony come to an end?
So we may return once more to the notes we played
And perfect our love again!

Bravo?
Encore?
La Fine!

The violin plays a young tune
Turned panicked from innocent
The cello with plucked chords
Plays a pizzicato of black lungs and smoke
The bass plays a low tune of sobs
Somber over the lost viola

Se respira una brisa de tarjeta postal.¡Terrazas! Góndolas con ritmos de cadera. Fachadas que reintegran tapices persas en el agua. Remos que no terminan nunca de llorar.El silencio hace gárgaras en los umbrales, arpegia un pizzicato en las amarras, roe el misterio de las casas cerradas.Al pasar debajo de los puentes, uno aprovecha para ponerse colorado.Bogan en la Laguna, dandys que usan un lacrimatorio en el bolsillo con todas las iridiscencias del canal, mujeres que han traído sus labios de Viena y de Berlín para saborear una carne de color aceituna, y mujeres que sólo se alimentan de pétalos de rosa, tienen las manos incrustadas de ojos de serpiente, y la quijada fatal de las heroínas d'Annunzianas.¡Cuando el sol incendia la ciudad, es obligatorio ponerse un alma de Nerón!En los piccoli canali los gondoleros fornican con la noche,
anunciando su espasmo con un triste cantar, mientras la luna engorda, como en cualquier parte, su mofletudo visaje de portera.Yo dudo que aún en esta ciudad de sensualismo, existan falos más llamativos, y de una erección más precipitada, que la de los badajos del campanile de San Marcos.

Without warning, the house lights dim. Conversation stops mid-word, and instantly all eyes are on our orchestra, impeccably matching in black tuxedos and gaucho pants. I can no longer see my smiling friends in the crowd, just a sea of dark, empty faces staring back at me.

The yellowing, torn pages on my music stand read “Symphonie Fantastique -- 1st Bassoon” in bold lettering. “Watch!”, “Play out!”, and other enthusiastic reminders litter the margins. Behind me, the timpanist quietly tunes to D, preparing for the fourth movement, March to the Scaffold, containing one of the most well-known orchestral bassoon solos of all time. “Play it like a pompous king laughing as a criminal is led to the guillotine,” our short, Italian conductor insisted one day in rehearsal. Next to the fortieth measure marker, a doodle of a stick figure in a crown laughs.

I stare at the black scuff marks on the glossy stage floor as the orchestra swells around me. All too soon, the timpani rolls from underneath the angry violin pizzicato. My cue. I breathe in deeply.

first solo
heartbeat in time
with racing eighth notes

sometimes
I wake up and can't shake the feeling
the feeling when you're at the fair
slowly going up a roller coaster
teetering at the top

or the flutter you get at the pit of your stomach
butterflies eager to leave and
confess
your love?

little aches and pains
pizzicato my body
origin unknown
and unwilling to leave

I can't shake
the feeling that
that I'm forgetting something
that
I have to finish by tomorrow and I can't rest until I do because then who knows what will happen and the unknown is scary and
uncertain?

no
maybe it's all in my head.

yes
the doctors say
it's all in my head.

Strumming
off the cuff
diamond but rough
I die every time.

and every time she
brings me back again
for one more
painful
refrain.

I write love
in short bursts
the
scarred romance
in
thirsts which
I long to quench


and the notes send
shivers to bend my spine
one time
a thousand times
it's not enough.

she is the eternity
the pity of me
the life and the death
of me
where will we go
tonight?

slipping into the light breeze
on knees which have bent before
to initiate and to adore,
each chord
each sword cut
every if and but
I
have ever been
is seen reflected
in the reflections
we cast.

she writes love
staccato
her pulse plays
pizzicato

and I go
insane again
beg for one more
refrain and each
scar looks the same
as the one before.

Sur les lagunes.

Tra la, tra la, la, la, la laire !
Qui ne connaît pas ce motif ?
A nos mamans il a su plaire,
Tendre et ***, moqueur et plaintif :

L'air du Carnaval de Venise,
Sur les canaux jadis chanté
Et qu'un soupir de folle brise
Dans le ballet a transporté !

Il me semble, quand on le joue,
Voir glisser dans son bleu sillon
Une gondole avec sa proue
Faite en manche de violon.

Sur une gamme chromatique,
Le sein de perles ruisselant,
La Vénus de l'Adriatique
Sort de l'eau son corps rose et blanc.

Les dômes sur l'azur des ondes,
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
S'enflent comme des gorges rondes
Que soulève un soupir d'amour.

L'esquif aborde et me dépose,
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une façade rose,
Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

Avec ses palais, ses gondoles,
Ses mascarades sur la mer,
Ses doux chagrins, ses gaités folles,
Tout Venise vit dans cet air.

Une frêle corde qui vibre
Refait sur un pizzicato,
Comme autrefois joyeuse et libre,
La ville de Canaletto !

Through night’s body, day breaks –
a wheelbarrow of dreams transformed
to a pile of thoughts.

I want dawn’s gray curtains hung
upon high floods of air,
the pizzicato voice of tiny
brown birds replaced by
the shameless, noisy gull.

I want to wallow in the clumsy
freedom of steamy clouds
caressing waves, as you
touched me, so elegantly,
like the wings of the moth.

I want to paint away sorrow
with the green furze of spring.
I want the fresh wind but
also its still, breathless
moments.

I want to take part in
the year’s re-birth and
create you all over again.

The broken bells do try to chime
in horrid winds of broken times
hidden in the Abby there is her crypt
the place I leave her roses red and dead

Silent prayers form holy communions
as I sit by her coffin and weep
making shadows cast by candlelight
singing to her in numerous periods of sleep

I utter, Soon, my love, I will join you
just to hold you once again
in arms cold and unforgiving
we will dance the last waltz

The gales pluck at bindweed
playing pizzicato to our lost love
as I lay my head down on your tomb
for our slumber and eternal rest

Hear the voice of angels
they have come to us
just one more miracle
our last dance of death


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

Expectations not so much
Dreams to be conquered and enjoyed until new ones appear
Wet circles big and small syncopated as the umbrella plays pizzicato
as you try to stay dry
Damp and dreary for some
Invigorating for others
Leaving Starbucks with last sip of black iced tea in hand
Only walking in the rain

C@rainbowchaser 2023