"stravinsky" poems
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
*First light in the Hudson Valley
Arbor Day of April, 1970.*
Adrenaline coursed through our young
bodies, our hearts on fire with purpose.
As we rode our bikes, walked, or jogged miles
to our rural high school, red-winged blackbirds
called out from the misty swamps.
Beautiful but invading, acres of purple loosestrife
were rapidly taking over their wetland habitats.
Harbingers of the forests, blue jays issued
warning cries from deep in the woods,
where blights were killing our trees
with increasing frequency.
Three of us rode together, cycling in relative
silence, until we came to a meadow
selected for our early breakfast picnic.
We feasted on special fruits and cheeses,
hungrily stuffing in rare treats.
One friend began to send iridescent
soap bubbles into the chilly air.
Up they rose, up over the soft, puffy cloud
of her reddish curls, and into the dawning sun.
One bubble landed, unbroken, in the cold, dewy grass.
We stared at it, somehow understanding that here
was a delicate metaphor for our own fragile planet.
Approaching our school now, we breathed deeply the fragrance
of apple blossoms from commercial orchards all around us.
The spraying of pesticides had yet to be banned.
We were sleepy in our classes that morning;
most of our teachers understanding that we stood
now for something worthwhile, that we believed in,
and they smiled with kindness, some even with approval.
Our principal agreed to an awareness-raising slide show
designed for our fellow students, teachers and parents.
An intelligent man, he was admirably tolerant of the wave
of changes that our generation brought with us.
Smoke stacks, polluted water, and dying wildlife
flashed onto a screen in the darkened auditorium,
accompanied by the vivid symphonic power of
Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring'- a score so revolutionary
that a riot broke out at its premier, in May of 1913.
We had no idea then how much worse things would become.
All these years later, we each do our part, blessing
the efforts of our children and their children,
hoping fervently that we are not too late.
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 2:37 PM UTC
orchids,
alien and other worldly.
beauty,
bordering the grotesque and bizarre,
strangely exhilarating.
variations,
wild and uninhibited,
even orgiastic,
of a mind, as if,
not of this world;
shapes and sizes,
folds and spirals
colours and colourations.
at times,
more animal or insect,
than flower.
if a rose is Mozart,
an orchid, Stravinsky.
May 15, 2019
May 15, 2019 at 6:44 AM UTC
I was taken by surprise
when her Dad handed me the keys..
“I have a meeting in the City,
Could your drive her to school for me”
That day I had not thought to drive,
My own “K” car was in the shop.
I was having the rear brakes replaced
because sometimes I like to stop.
My car was an econobox
but for my purpose fine.
His car was a Red Firebird-
Top down, top of the line.
The day was clear and drenched with sun-
The perfect top down day.
We waved goodbye as Barb and I
pulled out and on our way.
We heard something from Stravinsky
On her father’s Classics station
As we drove across the Bridge
to her college destination.
The Cross Bronx, unexpectedly,
was light of cars that day.
Traffic on the Bronx River
seemed to yield us right of way.
I pulled in near Bathgate Avenue
And gave my girl a kiss.
I would have liked to linger
But that final she couldn’t miss.
The engine gave a gentle purr
on my return trip down.
I met up with her father
And he dropped me off back home.
With both hands in my pockets,
I watched as he drove off.
The car would prove a classic,
The girl proved, alas, aloof.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 10:51 PM UTC
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the George Washingtons
of my generation.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the Thomas Jeffersons
and the
Benjamin Franklins who
aren't afraid to dream of
words that haven't been
created
and things that have
yet to be
designed.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the
Revolutionaries who
have yet to be
born.
For the Paul Reveres
who have yet
to take their midnight
rides
one if by land,
two if by sea.
one if by land,
two if by sea.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the
modern day
Lewis and Clarks who
explored a land beyond
exploration's eye.
For the Sacagawea guides that
guide from a shining sea
to a sea of gold.
For the immigrants who
traversed waters of salty tears
made solely of their own fears.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the slaves held captive
not by their captors,
but by their own fears,
hopes,
desires
and dreams.
Afraid to pursue a land
just slightly beyond their own
R e a c h.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the conductors of the railroad
that was unseen.
The one that ran not on
coal and steam,
but the one that
ran on
Dreams.
I wanta write a poem for the ages,
for the Teddy Roosevelt
conservationists
and the Stravinsky
concert pianists
and the Maya Angelou
performers,
and the,
people.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the soldiers battling
for a cause they didn't
even start.
For the lives that gave their
lives for a cause,
because they believed in
The cause.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the Daddy who's still
looking for work,
For the Mommy who has
given up
Hope.
For the widow and
her orphan,
For the soup kitchens
that can't
stay open long enough.
For the failing
Economy.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the mustached
man in Germany
rising to a power
ever Grand.
For the nations willing to
ignore it if they can.
For the day that everything
changed.
December 7th, 1941
will forever live
in infamy.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
For the unconquered Jews who
fought back.
For Anne Frank and her
family.
I wanta write a poem for the ages
For the modern day
Martin Luther King
Jr.'s.
For the ones
who
Aren't afraid to challenge a
System designed to
fight against them.
For the
modern day
Claudette Colvins.
The ones who
aren't afraid to sit down
to make a stand.
I wanta write poem for the ages
For the modern day
Buzz Aldrins
who are
altogether underrated
Just
because they came in
Second.
I wanta write a poem for the ages.
A poem that speaks louder
than words
and goes beyond
generations.
So I wrote a poem for the ages.
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 2:06 AM UTC
She seemed to be like a delicate portrait
which had fallen from its gilded frame
Abandoned, lying face down on the cold winter floor
An elegant portrait once painted
In resplendent hues of indigo blue
Her eyes told a story of bittersweet
magenta colored sorrows bathed in tears
that etched themselves throughout
The frail intricately, woven canvas of her soul
Over time thoughtless hands had subtly
Contrived to manipulate the beauty
Of her painted portrait into a resemblance
Likened to that of a cold, chiseled statue
Carelessly molded by calloused fingers
Lancinating the fragile fragments
Of her spirit leaving her heart
With etiolated worn fabric - called her life
She dreamed of Icarus soaring down
on silvery wings of steel shrouded
in cobalt and lavender clouds
with outstretched, feathery fingers
lifting her up to dance a Stravinsky ballet
As it was meant to be - not how it was
She was a beautiful, fragile butterfly
bruised by a world much too harsh
for her diminished spirit
leaving her unable to fly away
from the skis thirsty rains
making it difficult for her to fly away
from the skis thirsty rains
It left her struggling to stay afloat
In the springs melting snow
Life had bruised her tender skin
Gnawing away like insatiable insects
On her delicate pink frescoed soul
Leaving her feeling
Like a fabricated manikin on display
For all to pose her as they may
Muddied soil was the blood that coursed
through her veins, holding her tethered heart
in fleshy, mounds of chocolate brown earth
It held her helpless in its hold
clogged by the silt which descended down
Into spaces of her soul…
Like murky strings of yellow tattered maize
Leaving their ragged tassels tangled
Throughout her life flowing veins
Choking off the blood she needed
To nourish her hungry heart
Mighty winds toppled her willowy limber tree
Snapping the delicate boughs
Of her outstretched arms
As they pulled at the tender fleshy bark of her skin
She stood cold and alone
In the icy winter night wrapped
Only in her wounded, naked flesh
With open, bleeding wounds
Under the icy blue mist of the winter moon
Her heart and soul painfully revealed...
In shades of indigo blue
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 6:19 PM UTC
I have always thought of home to be a place
have described myself within a myriad of
different protagonists, herbs and flaccid analogies
i have been birds nesting in rafters, wolves
and nothing more than a willowy spirit without a
body--
and i thought for a moment that people could be homes
too, the way you walk into hugs or are metaphorically
gathered, i watched him in the mirror sliding around
my waist, resting on my hips, smelling my hair, picking
me up to put in a vase, ridiculously pretty, you know that?
and it's not that I longed for more,
that I have longed for where, for a here that
i am acutely aware of how i vacillate between empty
and overflowing, of my own thoughts, i have heard
you think too much and maybe I do-- maybe too much
of me lingers
In dreams I unzip and turn myself inside out
like a dress, fold my shoulders down and the mountains
reappear, i am all the grass of a former self, before the tides and winds and men, before my choices bent me back
and took a swiss army knife to whittle me away
i think i am longing to be clean
to be over to breathe and not feel the strings
the way my voice splits into a rank of pipes swelling into a hundred voices and he only hears a few, i am many
longing to be one, he cannot twist the drawknob
because I am already filling the cathedral in the words of
Stravinsky, *the
m onster never b r e a t h e s*
and I feel like i never have
i am earnest to fill my lungs with air instead of water
join the present, but the Welsh knew me too well,
the portuguese, saudade and the Germans, sehnsucht
put a letter to the things that can only be described in paragraphs or tears or indeterminate intervals of time sitting on his bed while he showered, all the doors slammed, empty coffee cups,
clogged sinks, unswept floors, long drives,
shots of whiskey, withering glances held on tension and
te amo mouthed across the room--
we wonder, can we be reached? wrought? touched. found.
in our deepest hearts, wounded mysticism, an untapped sense of joy that can be lanced and spilled, I am wistful, anxiously waiting to be siphoned,
Hiraeth.
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 9:41 PM UTC
I've been lying here for 3 hours now
Staring at the wall
Stravinsky plays, but I don't listen
My eyes are glazed
My mind adrift
and I am in limbo.
Somewhere between fantasy and reality
Somewhere between elation and despair
Here I lie,
Suspended in time and space
Not quite sure how to exist
And ready to go home.
May 4, 2018
May 4, 2018 at 7:39 AM UTC
The exhaustion after the dance.
Aching of her feet, muscles stiff,
The pulsing of the music still there,
Vibrating along her tired young bones.
The Stravinsky ballet takes it out of her.
Coco sits on the bench, stretches out
A leg, rubs along the shin. Eduard would
Have watched, would have studied each
Step, each leap, each pirouette. She can
Recall his finger running along her back,
The fingertip easing down between her
Buttocks. Oh, she says, out load, the other
Ballerina turning to note, ah, that touch,
That invasion. The other ballerina smiles
And turns away. He will meet her after
The dance, will take her to the cafe, they
Will eat and talk and he will gaze and smile
And she will remember his touch and words
And the *** and the old woman downstairs
Banging up on her ceiling because of the
Noise of the bed, cries of joy, sensuous feeling.
Feb 13, 2012
Feb 13, 2012 at 4:19 AM UTC
This is a hieroglyph in the middle of the ocean,
a message to the center of space,
it is Stravinsky in a metal box;
a prayer in the grave.
It is not to be heard, read, or felt,
but is sent out into the darkness
like the wheezing breath from my last cigarette ,
the chill of the last river I altered with my step,
the forever in the space between our eyes,
and the time machine of you and I.
There is a snap of electricity that moves you from here to there
and there is our world in the hollow spaces of your brain.
You are the blood, you are the marrow,
you are in my depths and in my narrows.
There was a little boy who saw a tail on the sun,
wandered into the wrong back door
and stumbled out the front
with a pocket full of kisses,
and there was a girl who was far from home,
tiny hands and full of wishes.
Close your eyes.
Do not read this next part.
It's a secret I cannot share.
There is a picture that I look at often and it is of a ridge of mountains,
snow on top, jagged edges like a page ripped from a magazine
and I know now what I didn't know then
that after I snapped that shot everything would change,
that I would go home and become something I never could be again,
that I would discard gods like tissue
and drive my car as fast as it would go in the rain,
that I would share this picture on a tilting Saturday night
with a sigh and the subtle rustling of metal and cloth,
a susurration settling over us like a shroud,
and that I would surrender myself to the chaos,
lose everything within our delicious destruction
and spend the rest of my life wondering where all the pieces of me landed.
This is a riddle you are not meant to understand.
This is a Celtic Cross spread by a dead man's hand.
Jan 3, 2019
Jan 3, 2019 at 10:08 PM UTC
and the music trickled from his fingers
and transcended / ascended through the ceiling
straight through a cloud
and the stratosphere freeing
Jan 12, 2017
Jan 12, 2017 at 6:09 AM UTC
As the gramophone in the corner spins Stravinsky
i lie wake in a puddle of my own *****
I can wash off the smell of pubs and whiskey
but can never run away from it.
As the devil drags me again by my hand
to the tear-stained paper at my old table,
i could tell you that I'm keeping my mouth dry
but you wouldn't believe this fable.
It'd be just not to trust it, there is reason, for
a man who had tried drinking away pain
is a man who'd succumbed to a bottle before
and a man who will do it again.
one eye so nearsighted that i can't see tomorrow/
the other so farsighted i can't see today.
As i am writing this i am drinking my poison cold,
counting on gray hair all the years that are gone
liquor and love are the poor man's gold
and a man's wealth - dying loving or dying loved.
I don't remember if it was happiness
or of thereof lack
but the jack in the box looks
now like a box of jack
Mar 1, 2025
Mar 1, 2025 at 12:48 PM UTC
The house of commerce commercializes my vignette of nostalgia through various panes. As I am lost to the neon coast of degradation, a forward conquistador berates me for my due impertinence. This migraine doesn’t match my previous excursions, as it is lethargic and fat in deep feeling. My raincoat is a bed that remains a typewriter, that which I reject. I hate it with precision. “This is not an observation, and you are a boisterous fool that rests on the laurels of institution!” But lo’, I am not that impish man! My pen is renewable, unlike my reserves of happiness. If the Quotidian Cycle remains so mundane, then who am I to adhere to the seers of ingenuity? Planets ingest the polygons that compose my mind to the sound of Igor Stravinsky. The definitions of words coalesce into a redundant gestalt, threatening to escape my clammy grasp. Brats and weasels complain of their jeans and fur, soaked in brandy and tar. I live like a dissident; this vagrant is cold to the sickening nods of animals. God, don’t let me remain an anthropomorphic beast. The suffering is daily, the void is lonesome and lays my spine on stone. Melatonin is a pensive friend, a foolhardy palliative to the disease within a footstep. I’ve no footsteps. Not any of note or worth.
Not a single thread to pride myself in. Conversations and dime trades happen around me at generous speeds while I remain a stranger. Christ, I despise my face. I’ve dug my heels into depravity, the exile from woman’s hold is a wrench in my innards. O, to even think is a crime! Who could love the mind deloused, the small and prudent mouse (but little did they know, he facilitates a disease between him and the universe). Intoxicated, my love knows no bounds, but my lust is rendered sterile and sullen. Who can hold me? Who can hold me? Who can hold me? God god god god could hold me. He is not strong, is he? Somebody hold me, now.
Oh, I know yes I need to indulge in the incessant whispers, for my status of a guileless ***** will have to suffice. A cigarette leaps out at my cursed visage, a container of maroon liquid coagulates in mine eyes. There, voices. Cyclic conversations, cyclic conversations, hep! Help! Take me! Take. Take. Take. Me! I belong in the boon, mister fowler. Take me! I don’t hold weight in this world! So take. Sedate me. Please, almighty, nullify me.
Feb 19, 2020
Feb 19, 2020 at 6:26 PM UTC
A green light shone and like ectoplasm lay over Yesterday’s
intuition of the future. Tomorrow suspended in the wriggling
fate of jelly before colloidal dawn. it transformed
when Tomorrow leaked out and became an animal
of almost ravenous occasion. hungry for blood
certainty. A tooth fanged for the squalor of success
without colon for the enemy of despair. I was there
when Jesus Christ transmuted miracle
into a happening. when Freud proclaimed:
Dreams are the crumpled chickenscratchnotes
in the fist of all beginnings. when Charlie Parker
played Stravinsky to Stravinsky
at Birdland. when Borges transcribed
those notes. and heard Cervantes laugh.
When Woolf confounded Odysseus, and
found Homer, oldcouragebearded, grinning
on the other side of three millennia. Was I there
before the green light. yes,
we were all there.
Dec 20, 2021
Dec 20, 2021 at 4:39 AM UTC