"tympani" poems
Rhythmic tympani of woodland symphony,
His search for lunch in Quercus branch
Ads music to a forest glade.
Dawn's chorus would the poorer be
Without his insistent cacophony
Sep 8, 2010
Sep 8, 2010 at 2:21 AM UTC
It hits me,
Like the rush of a tympani
Unexpected, often missed,
Often lost.
Mind pushing back,
Pulling forth
Crescendos,
I do not fear you,
I could not love you.
And I certainly don't
wait for you.
An even change of direction,
Acceleration.
Arms, legs, heart;
Just one more stroke,
One last, desperate
Passion -
Synchronicity.
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 7:45 PM UTC
*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.
Aug 25, 2010
Aug 25, 2010 at 5:51 PM UTC
The air my lungs grows stagnant
Between heartbeats
Heartbeats that dance
As he pumps it in his hand
Squeeze release. Squeeze release
Slowly, fluidly
Keeping time with his own
Basking in the moments between moments
Increasing and decreasing at his will
By his hand
Rolling on the sea of tympani
The music of his heart
Bleeds life into my own
Riding the crescendo
Between the stillness
Hidden in the silence of time
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 6:51 AM UTC
I want to tell you that all's OK.
Oh yes, I must confess, things could be better,
but look. There's a whole cacophony of kookaburras
on my patio who couldn't care less
so long as I keep up my largesse.
And my flash friends, the rainbow lorikeets,
those lurid little lunatics, still keep on lobbing in
to lick up all the honey.
Not to mention the crazy cockatoos who want to
chew my bamboo chairs when I’m too slow with food.
So things aren't all that bad, really.
And I could genuflect,
even get down on both knees, to appease
that great spirit who breathes the symphony of trees,
and the murmuring of all those bees and breezes,
the tympani and tyranny of storms,
the heavy, heady scent of jasmine, heaven-sent.
Not to mention the awesome majesty of galaxies and stars.
And I applaud, each morning,
that old crimson king, my Majesty the sun,
who says “Right, we've had enough of darkness,
we'll have no more of that today”,
and then he has a knuckle with the night.
Of course, the darkness flees in fright again
when it sees that blood-red blaze of light.
It's magic when he brightens up the gloom like that.
He shows me every single day is sparkling, dancing, new.
So there's no good feeling blue.
And remember,
love is just around the corner, too.
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 3:41 PM UTC
*Happily self occupied, absorbed in my day now
I ponder the innocence of what I’m about,
Abstractions aside, there’s a sinister dysfunction
In gliding with Mozart and yearning to shout.
To whisper with wisdom in humourless spirit
Enables cognisance that all is not well,
To float with the Angels and dine with the Devil
Moots broaching with whales in a torment of Hell.
Oils on a canvass in broad strokes of muted
Cacophony’s clamour in tympani’s roar,
The contradiction of peaceful demeanour
When pulses ignite in a rage on the floor.
Then......
With impetus found in a midnight sonata
The calm of a full moon’s light on the face
Reason returns in a soothing dissention
Of kindness’s kiss and the luck of good grace.
This man can engender the passions required
To smooth the waters and calm the tides,
Intelligent catalyst found in a teardrop
Wherein lies the nourishment loving provides.
This man can engender the salve and solution,
Can rectify tormenting wrong in the soul,
With warmth in humanity’s lyrical laughter
In quenching the blaze of black anger's role.*
Marshalg
15 May 2014
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 2:51 AM UTC
Through holes spotted on my veins you sound like a mad river, telling me only the things I can never accept, shoving your voice down, ripping, crushing my fragile tympani into a freezing blood rain. Hey, here's your umbrella, the same as all those black parachutes bloomed on the day your father had married for the second time, leaving you and your mother assuming he was dead, and yes, he was. He was dead in your heart with all your unforgiveness disguised as a strangely unconditional love, just like one of your old shirts your mother had sewed for you now hanging in front of your beautiful neck, tied into a noose, a fascinating noose I would like to die for.
I am singing you a song of the ringing dawn, a kind of song which probably would only be played on the last day of earth when there would be no regret waiting, a kind of song which would be forgotten forever after its first note; no more swaying on the edge of the cliff, no more waiting to be pushed down, no more begging for the oven to be turned on.
I want ocean, and there you are out of my reach.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:27 PM UTC
Your tympani voice visits
Every once in a while.
And sometimes, when I hear -
What am I saying. Always.
I'm a lute
Outdated, bouncing soft off your skin
With no one to hear me
But plenty
Within me
To beat
With what's left
Of your
Vibrations.
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 3:40 PM UTC
Beautiful, brutal,
"...our business is rejoicing...";
strings being tortured,
trumpets scream in agony,
tympani broken at end.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 3:17 AM UTC
I have realized that all of the songs stuck in my mind are about you
Now, I don't want to put credit where credit's not due
But you might as well have been the muse
Of these tunes
Playing on repeat in my mind
You are like my favorite song that I play over and over
Until I grow sick of it
But then again, that's a poor metaphor
For how could I ever get sick of you
Your voice is the haunting melody
That I want to spend my life striving to harmonize
Your heart the tympani beat
That drives my feet
Leading you across the room
Your hand in mine
Like the needle in the groove
Singing out the beauty therein
The glow of your cheek and the gleam of your eye
Is the song eternally stuck in my mind
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC
separate from the swiss cheese tinderbox
in my deerskin hip fob... a white clot of cotton
and pistachio shells... milky with salt dust
and blind empty, like an open mouth.
separate from these. from the iron stalks of snow-melt
and the brittle tympani of my unescorted star.
from the compromise and the motives.... apart -
from all the art of my powerlessness.... [ and ] the polite dark -
of my open palm. like an open mouth.
I ***** for a river stone to whisper oceans too...
with a rope, and a loop. and a hole.
and always wanted too...
Mar 24, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 at 9:06 PM UTC