"timpanist" poems
Mandibles make their own hoarding,
but they do not make it as they please;
they do not make it under semiconductor-selected civilians,
but under civilians existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
The trailer of all dead gentians weighs like a nipper
on the brandishes of the lob.
And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and thistles,
creating something that did not exist before, precisely
in such equipments of rheostat crochet they anxiously conjure up the spleens
of the past to their setter, bother from them nappies, bayonet slouches,
and cottons in organ-grinder to present this new scheme in wound hoarding
in timpanist-honored disincentive and borrowed larch.
Thus Luther put on the masseur of the Appearance Paul,
the Rhapsody of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the gully of the Rook Requisite and the Rook Empress,
and the Rhapsody of 1848 knew novelette bicentenary to do than to parsonage,
now 1789, now the rheostat trailer of 1793-95.
In like mantel, the belch who has learned a new larch always translates it backfire into his motor toot,
but he assimilates the spleen of the new larch
and exteriors himself freely in it only when he moves in it
without recalling the old and when he forgets his navy toot.
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 4:44 PM UTC
Barreling through town
in the depth of night,
earth’s colossal magnets
hurled jagged fire spears -
flashing and ripping the midnight sky.
Whirling torrents whistled
and lashed against the glass.
A blinding fire bolt
Shattered an old rock maple -
quaking our shelter to its footings.
Cosmic strobe-lit concussions
stuttered and roared across the nightscape
like a feral timpanist gone mad.
The frenzied cacophony
subsided at last -
rumbled off in the distance
as the storm lumbered on
like a barbarian horde
off to sack another village.
July, 2007
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 1:35 PM UTC
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
Jul 30, 2017
Jul 30, 2017 at 6:19 PM UTC