After a Year of Drought

We went to my friend’s lake house
hoping the water was still up to the dock.
It was, but mud ran alongside the pilings,
made it look like a construction site,
with bottles, cans, and one boot
of a sort fashionable among young girls
in 2003.

Or as if the land was creeping back
to reclaim its own, after
the Hydroelectric Act of 1939
or whatever thing the legislature enacted
between dime-cigar bets and happy girls

flooded the land between two counties
mocking that part of creation where
dry land divided the waters and it was good

but it was also good to get out
on a boat and see the pine trees whizz by
like a flooded out interstate,
or Venice writ large and southern-style.

My friend pointed out trees
hanging on to dry land
roots leached out of the water
like receding gums,
or an uprising.

written in response to a dVerse prompt.

July 27, 2013 9

On the Anniversary of Coltrane’s Death

First a self-referential shout-out:

Dancing about Architecture

John, I wish I could tell you I understand
what happened when you played
either spiritually or technically
I know just enough to see the promised land
but may not enter.

July 17, 2013 0

The Dream of Tartness

Often after a trauma
there is the mundane revery
if I could only
mine was a dream of an unbearable tartness
in a drink of volcanic coldness
I sipped metallic hospital crushed ice water
tried not to vomit up the simplest of soups

normally there is the gift of not desiring
the smell of nausea clings to things
that can’t be kept down but

I conjured up something like limeade
as a nuclear bomb is something like a firecracker
while the tubes of lukewarm glucose, morphine
and hot piss kept me alive.

written in response to a dVerse prompt

July 13, 2013 10

Conductors and Composers

My worst experience had to be in high school playing Duke of Earl on the flute at football games, I’ll never get those precious hours back. Why do conductors and composers torture musicians? Were they inspired to become parasites and see if another family would claim them as their own?
– Anna Montgomery

We like it better when the composer is dead.
– The wag that sits third row in every second violin section in every orchestra, ever.

For A.M.

Conductors extrovert their will on the wanna-be.
Composers sit alone, some scheme in mind
some puzzle without the parts
until those pieces forge themselves on the framework
of theory problems that arose along the way.

Continue reading →

July 7, 2013 5