First a self-referential shout-out:
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.
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
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.
Awakening Beauty
She woke up choking on it
the seed still stuck in her throat
hungover from drugged sleep
and a dream of seven mad kings.
An apple martini, a song beat cue,
everything leading to a man.
She found her dress on the floor
and her purse missing $20
but the keys intact.
The Dream of Walking
Without preamble
as to why I haven’t been doing it
I begin to wonder if I can walk again.
The details come back to me in retrospect:
an accident, perhaps a wheelchair,
perhaps an eternal afternoon on a couch.
But I can stand,
I reason to myself, and
the memory is equally clear
standing up to shave, or speak.
The mundane reality of the afterworld,
of life after the thing that happened.
When I was in the hospital I dreamed simply
of walking, waking to find myself on fire
with pain, tied down with tubes.
I wake needing to urinate.
I stumble to the bathroom
before realizing the mundane reality.
Mark Van Doren
The deepest dream is of mad governors,
Down, down we feel it, till the very crust
Of the world cracks, and where there was no dust,
Atoms of ruin rise.
– The Deepest Dream – Mark Van Doren (1894-1972)
He appears, inexplicably,
on a panel talking about the death of JFK,
the day after, late in life, surely years after
he wrote The Deepest Dream.
Marker
Here
some famous people lived
before they were famous
or for a brief period
where they hid out from fame
and did ordinary things:
dishes
a slow dance to the radio
taxes
each other
A bus rumbles by each day
on the last leg of a crosstown journey
stops before getting to Walgreens
a man picks up his backpack
which rested against the sign.
Donut Shop Moment
nothing can ever taste
as good as the smell
pavlovian anticipation
of red flashing neon
green glass
and white counters
Pentametron
I wish I could say I thought of this, but you can’t make this sort of thing up.
Handwritten
for M.B.
A handwritten note I found
that had nothing to do with me
and wasn’t particularly wrenching
or well-enjambed
still startled me
because the handwriting,
the blue lines and charcoal grey
reminded me of days in school
when you would write to me
thinking about me instead of
world geography.
poetrytech 