The story is that Rachmaninov was depressed for three years from 1898 to 1901. Eventually he sought the help of Dr. Nikoli Dahl who saw Rachmaninov daily using hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. Rachmaninov responded favorably to these treatments. In 1902 he composed his Piano Concerto No, 2. There are, of course, many great and beautiful musical compositions.

But Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2, along with Beethoven's 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th symphonies, together with Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and his Toccata and Fugue in G Minor stand at the pinnacle of the world's pyramid of great music.

I have written poems since my early 20s. A poem is not a symphony, but it
is a work of art. Do I ever feel the way Rachmaninov felt when he heard
the deafening applause after No. 2 was performed for the first time?

Close.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

SNOW FALLS

She wakes to a morning
with no reason for living

cries in the mirror
to be forgiven.

Puts on her make-up
takes off her clothes

sits there & bleeds
until she can’t feel

the blood in her veins
...runs cold.

The razorblade
bleeds...bleeds.

The cat cries
to be fed.

The batteries in her Walkman
go dead.

The Rachmaninov stops.

A letter she will never read
drops on the Welcome mat.

A mobile rings & rings &...stops.

A member of a minor political party
looking for her vote

rings the doorbell twice
slips on the ice    &   ruins his coat.

Curses.

A man laughs at another man’s joke.
It’s a big laugh...he’s a big bloke.

Laughter invades the square.

There’s a chill in the air.

A friend calls for her
(to go on a blind date)  

...she doesn’t hear.

Snow...
...snow...
...snow falls.

Radio
was playing Piano Concerto
by Sergei Rachmaninov,
and I felt like passion and love
were filling my heart.

My heart is like a dove.
And I'm off,
I'm off to Paradise.

And it can rain
and it can snow,
and Fate
can tumble the dice.
Nothing can stop me now,
on my way
on my way to Paradise.

She was a friend of Amber Clark
You know, you've met her before
She's the girl who listens secretly
To Bach behind the door
The Closet Classic ******
Who wears shirts of the Ramones
But listens to Rachmaninov
whenever she's alone

Jennifer McSweeney
known by all upon the street
She had kind words for everyone
She liked everyone she'd meet
She ate meals at Giannis
Knew the Pawnbroker, Old Cy
She listened to the bluesman
Whenever she came by

Like all the folks upon the street
Jennifer was dark
Not gothic, but you could say grey
She was set to make her mark
She was going to be famous
Her face upon the Silver Screen
She was going to be a movie star
Like The Truck Stop Beauty Queen

Jennifer loved movies
Not the ones that can be found
At the local dvd store
She liked the movies without sound
Her little quirk was that she
Liked the movies from the start
They told tales in black and white
These were strong in Jenni's heart

Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd
Fatty Arbuckle, and more
Zasu Pitts, Charlie Chase
They struck her to her core
L and H, The Keystone Kops
She loved to see them grapplin'
But none of these compared to her
deep love for Charlie Chaplin

The Cineplex would show a film
They would host a special week
When silent movies were the shows
When nobody did speak
Jennifer would take the time
To watch each film they showed
She was so happy when the week came round
She positively glowed

The kids she knew, all thought her odd
Because of what she liked
But, when the silent week was here
Jennifer was psyched
One year she went to the next town
To get a small tattoo
It was all done up in black and grey
It was what she had to do

Like other girls who have been inked
It was in the same place
But, it was little, very non descript
Of her favorite actors face
She told few friends about it
And though she never did get violent
If you laughed at her tattoo
Like Chaplin, she'd be silent

She kept it to herself most times
Her little bit of ink
As she aged she'd show it more
For the cost of just one drink
She would take them to her bedroom
And by the light of her small lamp
She would show her tattoo proudly
Chaplin....her little ***** stamp

It's the thing that she is known for
She's the girls with Charlie's face
Where others all have Chinese Words
She has Chaplin in this place
She is known for loving movies
In black and white, and though it's camp
She gives a whole new meaning to
Having a ***** stamp.

I’ve been walking down IKEA
however dull it sounds
I saw a girl
Round my age, maybe younger
With eyes as melancholic as mine
She was tapping Rachmaninov on a wooden table
with tears dripping down her hollowed face
And I shivered
Because I used to be her

Armchairs and whiskey.
Bottle on the side table.
Eyes open wide, unable
to sleep. Thoughts creep
into his shaking skull.
Hands shake and grip the bow.
He pulls his scream across a string,
because his throat won't voice his wearied woe.

The sound's more than just pain,
and it tells more of his aching bones
than it should.
He plays the tears he can't show,
and it's understood
as the instrument moans.
That's all he needs to show a world
that doesn't know what his pain sounds like.
He'd talk about it if he could. Rachmaninov understood.

no. poetry can be swirling
across the keyboard like a Rachmaninov
order from chaos
no meaning or rhyme
no rhythm all the time
idolising Bukowski
ending abruptly

Pianos and keys
ink
and the words start to play

She's down with the beat

Caffeinated dreams where Rachmaninov
seems really quick,

Sheet
music
from the music box maker
take a look inside the factories
pianos and
keys
ink by the litre
I meet her
at ten
pianos again
key's in the door
she
plays me some more
Bizet
she'll say something
I'll hear her,
comfortable and confidante

In the stuffed easy chair
content to be there
with her
the piano
keys
she's
comfortable too.

I  MET  HIM  WHEN  HE  WAS ONLY  EIGHTEEN MONTHS  OLD,
WITH  DARK  HAIR AND  EYES  THAT  LOOKED  SO  BOLD,
STAYING AT  HIS  GRANDPARENT'S HOUSE  FOR  AWHILE,
NOBODY KNEW THAT  HE  WOULD  BE  SO  TACTILE;
HE  GAVE  ME  HIS  TOYS AND  MYSTERIOUS  LOOK,
HE'D  TURN  OUT  GREAT NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TOOK;
MANY YEARS LATER WE SETTLED IN THE CONCERT HALL,
WE DIDN'T REALIZE THE EVENING WOULD BE SO MAGICAL,
HE STRODE ON TO THE STAGE WITH BLACK SPRINGY HAIR,
BOWED TO THE AUDIENCE AND SAT DOWN AT THE PIANO;
HE STARTED WITH RACHMANINOV CONCERT IN C MINOR,
AND THEN CONTINUED WITH CHOP'IN NOCTURNE OPUS 15,
GOD, IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL, IT MADE YOU CRY - THE MELODY WOULD HANG,
I REMEMBERED THE SMALL BOY I MET CALLED YANG YANG.

My tears can't tell

the depth of my pain

in throes it breaks my heart

again and over again



yet there's no escape

and for love I'll die in vain

oh let me sleep, sleep away

to be forgotten in some unknown plain

I could play violin for you
or knock out a hymn or two
just give me a clue what you'd
like.

A gravy boat sailed at dawn
into the eye of a storm and
that was the day Jesus
was born,
coincidence?

She winks at me
thinks I'm Nijinsky
and plays the piano
like Rachmaninov.

Seamlessly dreaming
she brings me
coffee with cream in when
I only want milk.

I could play violin for you
or knock out a hymn or two
just give me a clue what you'd
like.

A gravy boat sailed at dawn
into the eye of a storm and
that was the day Jesus
was born,
coincidence?

She winks at me
thinks I'm Nijinsky
and plays the piano
like Rachmaninov.

Seamlessly dreaming
she brings me
coffee with cream in when
I only want milk.

Today is July 4, 2020. There is not much to celebrate. **** Trump leaves us in a Polynicean gloom. Fireworks remind me of wars. I would rather, and therefore will,  listen to Rachmaninov's PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 tonight.
I will celebrate beauty rather than killing. And I will give thought to Antigone as well, for she willingly gave her life for doing what was right. I shall listen to Yuja **** arpeggiate notes. I will again become fixated both by her light-
ning dexterity and the glorious sounds to which she gives birth. Humankind has this dual potential:  it can either **** or care. So why, I ask myself, does it always choose the former? On this national holiday especially, why do we now not celebrate Thomas Paine and Walt Whitman and Harriet Tubman and Eugene Debs and Martin Luther King Jr.? We do we not collectively ask forgiveness for all the covert, sinister, malevolent interventions into the affairs of other nations, resulting in unjust overthrows and war crimes aplenty? Fireworks? July 4th? We did defeat the evil of ****** and his unspeakable genocide. Let us be sure to give unending thanks to all those who lost their lives in this moral victory. But Viet Nam? The lives of 58,000 American soldiers lost for the lies of our leaders? And Kissinger and McNamara and the Bushes and Cheney and so many others in our government never held accountable for their war crimes? And yet tonight we have fireworks instead of Nuremberg-like trials. Antigone knew she would die if she buried her brother, Polynices, and yet she went ahead and buried him and died for doing it. And the 4,000,000 blacks who were slaves in 1861 and the 500 indigenous nations that covered for centuries from sea to shining sea what we now call America--did they have anything to celebrate on this day, on this date? Fireworks, that's all.

Copyright 2020 Tod Howard Hawks

Andrei,

I was a child
when I read
a piece of paper
& you died.

You were a telegram
falling from the air,
a moth, a stray dog,
a liner note passing
through my hands.

I pressed play
& Chopin unwound
like a serpent,
the mood shifting
like the rainbow
that feeds on oil's skin.

I went out
& found more.
Rachmaninov attacked,
a chess game
where the pieces moved
ten at a time.

& the Prokofiev,
followed me
around the house.

I was a child
when I saved you
with my ears.
Let me save you again.

Come, revenge
yourself a little while
in my old records.

Not wise, Dr Sellars ,but curious, imaginative and quite intuitive.

Life is too complex and reason has vast limits. Some ignorance is healthy, too much knowledge is a burden as it encourages rumination and speculation (this wasters time) and also often leads to pride,  arrogance and bigotry. That's why the intellectual mind is not a happy one.  You well know geniuses and the smartest people suffered/suffer from mental problems----Schumann, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven,  Donizetti, Mahler, Ivor Gurney, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, John Clare, Churchill, Lincoln (he contemplated suicide), Wittgenstein (I thought of suicide every day--2 of brothers took their own lives), John Stuart Mills, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway (too his own life), ......Back home, Les Murray, Michael Leunig, Sculthorpe, a former Premier of WA.....suffered/suffer from depression......more next time.  I gave 6 talks on happiness in 2018, not as a guru but as one who talks from experience....when I launched my 5th book IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ZEN- THE PATH TO A CALMER AND HAPPIER LIFE, sold in 14 countries and rated 5 star by 8 book-dealers.  
Please excuse me,  I got carried away.....

sincerely Peter

SNOW FALLS

She wakes to a morning
with no reason for living

cries in the mirror
to be forgiven.

Puts on her make-up
takes off her clothes

sits there & bleeds
until she can’t feel

the blood in her veins
...runs cold.

The razorblade
bleeds...bleeds.

The cat cries
to be fed.

The batteries in her Walkman
go dead.

The Rachmaninov stops.

A letter she will never read
drops on the Welcome mat.

A mobile rings & rings &...stops.

A member of a minor political party
looking for her vote

rings the doorbell twice
slips on the ice    &   ruins his coat.

Curses.

A man laughs at another man’s joke.
It’s a big laugh...he’s a big bloke.

Laughter invades the square.

There’s a chill in the air.

A friend calls for her
(to go on a blind date)  

...she doesn’t hear.

Snow...
...snow...
...snow falls.

a study of incremental autobiography:

    because in the english speaking lands:
to have lived... and then to write a book...
never is a life to be lived:
in order to produce a book...
somehow everything happens a posteriori...

no one writes anything: "informal"...
   all has to be lived prior...
and then the crown - the book...
to glue the pieces together...
a book like a forgotten cinema of memory...

i have here... an autobiographical sketch...
working from...
            doomsday rejects - six hundred...
but working back to
reading about the hellraiser movie...
from screenrat.com...

        because it wasn't christopher young's
soundtrack...
that was to be used... that came later...
but... coil's: unnatural history II: smiling
in the face of perversity...

gul'dan...
               sounds a bit like... doomsday rejects -
six hundred...
i will not... use the necessary...
diacritical marks to summon the turks:
for their advent of the balkans...
teasing vienna...

the old continent breathes...
while the new girth of a swelling of the birth
of h'america is: loaded with burdens
of its own making... for once...
the world is of not concern for these people...
iraq can fall asleep in its turmoil...
afghanistan can patch itself up to
the guard the Raj...
              Libya will burn wood once
more... to light the fires to brush
against a satisfying warmth come the dune
nights of teasing metaphors of...
siberia... the transition period from:
ex azia: ex azoth...

                      nouns are seemingly cheap...
no wonder the hebrews
decided: to cover their former
beloved in:
tetragrammaton and ha-shem...
emperor nero didn't see...
it wasn't about a fire...
a mythology of some prometheus...
already a new mythology occurred...
who stole the staff of zeus
the blink sharpening of odin's plucked
out eye: as... eaten by...
      huginn & muginn...

                  we are learning that some things...
are best left... unresolved...
i leave behind the hope for a romance
of dreams with arabia...
         i have written these letters down
on my hand... hours later i solved
a sudoku and ascribed them...
2, 3, 4 and 7 status...
               2 was the false h'eh (ה)
mirror bound inverted...
   i guess the remaining letters were
arabic...
         (ل) was 3... (el)
   (ك) was 4... (katta)...
    mirror mirror on
the blank canvas... ⅃ - (ך) or
the copernican gamma: Γ
                       or (ר): the rest...
                               and 7 became... (ز) zord...

in all the autobiographies you might read:
in all the autobiographies
of the "celestial" beings:
none could match... Octavian Augustus...
roddy mcdowall: mark anthony is dead...
is that how one says is... it?
the soup is hot... the soup is cold...
mark anthony is living... mark anthony is...
dead...

you don't read in an autobiography...
a monument of incremental addition having
taken place...
take a harold norse: memoirs of the ******* angel...
monuments to... a inch of snow!
a cry for help of a stone...
strapped to a... landslide!
a truly democrastic detail! away from...
the ego: emperor and life:
that last colliseum's worth of an audience!

i had to finish the day off...
by having a little bonfire...
enough... to clear the way for 2 tonnes of soil
coming tomorrow...
and the grass... and the new shed...
and a patch of felt...
to measure up... losing a shadow...
anything... absolutely everything!
to escape the hideous formality of language...
from each... and this day... to match:
an escape from this day...
ironing my father's shirts etc.
in anger... teasing a clenched fist...
against a wall to extract plums of hue
on the knuckles...
no... listening to jazz didn't help...

i started with shostakovich...
oh hell no...
i moved toward rachmaninov...
nope...
    wayne shorter: ju ju?
you ******* kidding me?
    infected mushroom - converting vegetarians...
after that... i figured: just listen to the iron...
pretend you tamed a dragon or something...
jazz might have been the modus operandi
of escapism of the beatnik poets...
well... if you had to escape...
music akin to... vera lynn...
                       frank sinatra...
                  leotard liberace...
        jim reeves... he does moon river...
better than anyone...
        bobby vinton - blue on blue...
   jazz the bet...
          who the hell thinks of escaping when
listening to classical music...
probably anyone...
who hasn't listened to...
the meat & gravy of... what came out
of... prog rock... attention span of listeners...
        escapism music...
   1950s pitch-perfect pocket-load
of the dream that could never leave the shores
of a... dying embrace...

and then of course... there's the little bonfire...
some slightly wet juniper branches...
and drying... roots of a yucca...
the white smoke... and walking into
it and walking out of it...
coming out stinking... suffocating...
revived... baptised by the smoke
and the smashing of mirrors never peered
into...

minding to have this burning done...
when the neighbours do not have
any washing out to dry...
a mini-event of democracy: retracted...
bold: loaned... words...
to cry and at the same time decry freedoms...
to lick the fire would imply
to have had a beard-trimmed...

escape? o.t.t. - younger brother...
              demdyke stair...
            and now coil...
the soft moon...        
     i could have wished to have escaped
with jazz...
         if i were trapped by jim reeves...
and classical music is...
the base: not the bass... point of departure...

but i have had my bonfire...
it did feel like...
   smoking a packet of cigarettes...
but there was no nicotine...
i saved 2 slingshots for now...
and...
                     a baptism of having
walked through the burning
of yucca roots and juniper...
               if a man like me would ever have
the blessening of a yesod: a foundation...
a throne...
his throne would be a dead oak...
and he would be hunched on top of it...
looking to the hour where his shadow would
tease the height of a mountain
in the fountain of naked eyes that peer with...
obnoxious scrutiny for: "truth" and...
child-argue "dialectics"...
    for the crown: the keter?
       i can... fathom... the pain...
                 of omniscience... mingling with...
telepathy...
       after all... is it... so... unwelcome...
one has to either suitor...
the discomforts of a crown...
                    with the comforts of the throne...
or the comforts of the crown...
with the discomforts of the throne...
           few: if they are not...
    ever managed to match:
the discomfort of the crown with the discomfort
of the throne...
i am indeed working on...
converting myself... back toward...
how the new testament is not simply
a greco-hebrew propaganda tool against
the romans...
            blah blah...
         but... point being...
how am i... to somehow... write in...
any other... ha ha! helpfully provided tongue?!
dig me from the trenches of...
what you wish to usurp...
and look how fiendish this will: per se...
this per se that crowns itself above your
omni- litany of ultimates!
breeds!
ha! convolvulaceae: morning glory...
  it will take... a ******* meteor to... rid your
quest to vanquish rome...
  ancient or modern...
                  you could... with... egyptian
hierogylphics... with babylonian cuneiform...
but... these letters: even i were to envision
what you came to perform...
the symbiosis found - your people:
the enriched people... who are blameless...
        ask the greeks: they'll simply yawn...
they'll sooner find the original...
in line with a greco-cyrillic parody to amuse
themselves of:
how the slavs entertained communism
that was tested on the mongols...
and how... for all the progressive allure of "left":
in the west.... blah blah...
         i can't undermine...
the ALPHABET!
              for the worth of an idea...
   it's hardly: the same as... the standard rubric
measure of spelling...
         the arabs find spacing a problem...
between punctures of digital roman...
it was always a problem...
  
              the hebrews knew it... they didn't need
to find the Ned or: keeping up with
handwritten scribbles...
the hebrew were waiting for the latin script
men to abolish handwriting and come to terms
with: letters = numbers = digits...
not chinese ideograms...
but no ******* fiver-river-flows of the greeks...
the arabs tried forever...
to imitate the weaving of the hand that
was writing... cut them apart...
crude... crude oil... about to be bull-whipped
and litmus tested... yacht *****-boys...

               ثــاـت

   (that)... i can't undermine the latin text
when i'm given no alternative to write in...
   glagolitic script? really?
  so what... bombard me
with angry-albino-*****-цeppelins?!
blitцkrieg my *** to what?
hopes for the polish-lithuanian times...
and the cossack uprising...
that... romance... sort-of... novel?

what's being question in... zee vest?
cheap ***** history novellas...
less nomad and more undercover work...
about to be subdued...
or not...
          less the diaspora as work...
and... waiting for the diaspora...
                      
thus to the lottery of *******...
the concept of...
    the gravure model...
            say... ai shinozaki...
                 beside the crude base...
page 3 milk cow **** of the eyes...
and the otherwise: niqab blinking and
touching in the dark...
a blank a limp biscuit worth
of phallus...
the collab. of iggy pop and 'avid bowie
in berlin...
ms. porcelain...
   gravure models and...
the joy of insinuation...
**** as... the mona lisa efffffffff
ffffffffect...

how... somehow: the display of feeding pouches
of seranading... buttocks inverted:
pouches of... ****
is to be mis... categorized...
as such: and not as such:
cushions...
better that i am deemed simply to exist...
rather than have... any sort of life:
abounding in me...

*** as an insinuation...
not this... perverted third person:
**** in the way sort of...
"oops"...
       i much prefer the asiatic:
nuance toward the credibility of
any ****** encounter...
the nearly squinting over the arabic
load of make-up and excess
of niqab...
           priest over pin-head...
and much more... hovering like a noose...
a halo... above the suffocating circumstance
of the ditto-head...

   that somehow the milk vessels
are topsy-turvy:
*****-**** one minute...
and... 12" ***** looking to preserve
their *** sit-on kumbayah
for the... the last lost genius
of the zodiac killer...
                  i have pardonable proof...
the crusades never took place...
or never is the never of:
finding... the philosopher's "stone":
the antithesis of res cogitans...
res vanus...
the unthinking "thing"...
       the non-thinking...
clues up horizontal...
laying back: vertical...
              
        i have to allow my shadow
this much... space...
paintbrush and canvas... and....
limits of a grief...
one that anyone can succumb to...
but: so few: fool-hearted
devolve to express...
            
   it's not that the language
is so bothersome...
but the **** is... has...
reached a fever...
       the white fluid of a woman
of body has been excavated far enough:
what ****... what *******...
what joke... what village bicycle...
harem of the eire and the ******...
what...

i like the affairs of the gravure idol...
this to tease: this to taste...
this to cleave to... this leads to unrest...
because i am never...
the third party: the culprit ******...
better than a *** doll...
and it makes you "think"...
the european counter-brave...
forward... come einstein-frankenstein...
"ism"...
              some of these...
gravure idols...
they're not photoshopped...
they're... genetically improved...
aesthetics of man...
losst count at 100,000 million...
and ther are a billion worth
of replicas...
it's not that there's something cheap
to concern oneself with...
it's that... there's always room for
improvement...
          they're not photoshopped...
inclined with liquid dead...
jelly confied... ***** wanks...

            i much like... *** as an insinuation...
rather than... being "date-*****"
by an image...
    that ball load of phallus
in the way of gratifying me from my
one true: serial trace of metaphysical
translation of: hunger...
there's that... there's also...
the concern for... a canary...
and the cage and the wolf and the world
that: just so happens...
cried a privy demand for:
being looted with one's intestines
being... untangled and readied
to compensate one's concern for
making it an item:
for clarifying: ....      measure!

who is... "ralph phiennes" without...
psychiatric membranes...
without: prescribed... limitations of...
chemical soups?
     the same as a john malkovich?
who is... "ralph fiennes"?
          lord voldermort...
but as an amalgam of...
         francis dolarhyde and...
                   dennis "spider" cleg...
what is also a bride & groom...
of beckett and kafka...
                         and... that...

  one sometimes... would wish... to know...
what one's prescribed medication are concerned
with... and what... they're... not...

yes... this is enough; for the worth
of a day: and now... a... towed....
today.

SNOW FALLS

She wakes to a morning
with no reason for living

cries in the mirror
to be forgiven.

Puts on her make-up
takes off her clothes

sits there & bleeds
until she can’t feel

the blood in her veins
...runs cold.

The cat cries
to be fed.

The batteries in her Walkman
go dead.

The Rachmaninov stops.

A letter she will never read
drops on the Welcome mat.

A mobile rings & rings &...stops.

A member of a minor political party
looking for her vote

rings the doorbell twice
slips on the ice    &   ruins his coat.

Curses.

A man laughs at another man’s joke.
It’s a big laugh...he’s a big bloke.

Laughter invades the square.

There’s a chill in the air.

A friend calls for her
(to go on a blind date)  

...she doesn’t hear.

Snow...
...snow...
...snow falls.