Exhaling, I Get Dizzy
From one note flattened
to the next floating whole,
textured with rustling
stalks and the sweet odor
of dried grasses, you
detach, drift off.
What colors this tone, you
ask. What sings my day?
Exhaling, I Get Dizzy
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Tag Archives: music
3 Poems in The Winnow Magazine
My poems “Self-Portrait as Ash,” “The Pleasure of the Right Tools,” and “The Shakuhachi Knows” are featured in the summer issue of The Winnow Magazine. I am grateful to Rachael Crosbie, Tristan Cody and friends for taking these poems.
Ode to Being Placed on Hold
Ode to Being Placed on Hold
The music rarely
entertains,
but I find
peace between
the notes,
sometimes,
and embrace
the notion that
I’ve been inserted
in that peculiar
capsule between
speech and the
void, imagining
myself somewhere,
floating, free
of care and
gravity,
beer can
satellites
orbiting my head,
with bites of
pungent cheeses
and baguette
circling in
their wake,
a gift, you see,
like rain in
August or
a warm voice
saying hello.
* * *
“Ode to Being Placed on Hold” was drafted during the Tupelo Press 30-30 marathon in August 2015. Many thanks to Mary “marso” of the blog “marsowords” who sponsored and provided the title. The poem has also appeared here several times.
What Are You Going To Do?
What Are You Going To Do (Cento)
Not everything can be set to music,
you have to understand that.
If I went to the end of the street,
would I be at the center of myself?
Now ends. Now begins.
Still, we sing the same songs;
we live in the sound – no love
of miracle or numbers helps.
I wonder if my body
is outline. A far point rendezvous.
A smoke plume taken, but not
into a hot, dark mouth.
Or perhaps it never had a name.
Bruising’s not the end of it.
* * *
Credits: Maggie Smith, Michael Chitwood, Carol Frost, CM Burroughs, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Dan Beachy-Quick, Willis Barnstone, Lauren Camp, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Maggie Smith, Lawrence Raab, Natasha Saje.
“What Are You Going To Do” was drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo 30-30 challenge, and was published in the February 2017 issue of Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art. The lines used were taken from Tupelo Press publications.
Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome
Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome
Nothing about me shines or sparkles. If asked,
I would place myself among the discarded —
remnant cloth and straw, worn, inedible,
useless, if not for packaging intended to
convey a certain message, which I of course
have subverted to “Welcome, corvids!” Even
my voice lies stranded in the refuse, silent
yet harmonious, clear yet strangled, whole
and unheard, dispersed, like tiny drops of
vapor listing above the ocean’s swell, enduring
gray skies and gulls and those solemn rocks
bearing their weight against the white crush.
Why do I persist? What tethers a shadow
to its body? How do we hear by implication
what isn’t there? Bill Monroe hammered
his mandolin, chopping chords, muting,
droning, banging out incomplete minors
to expectant ears, constructing more than
a ladder of notes climbing past the rafters
into the smoky sky. What I sing is not
heard but implied: the high lonesome, blue
and old-time, repealed. Crushed limestone
underfoot. Stolen names, borrowed sounds.
Dark words subsumed by light, yellowed,
whitened, faded to obscurity, to obscenity.
“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome” first appeared in Crannóg, in June 2017.
Tuning the Beast
Tuning the Beast
I prepare contingencies for all outcomes. No.
I’ve prepared for this: a body. A key. As if
that cloth draped a leg. Not a leg
but the representation of a limb.
Another fragment, brought forth and opened.
Not a limb, an arrow, perhaps, pointing to the sea.
An oar, brought inland and unrecognized
for its purpose, directed or aimless. No, not an oar.
A neck, polished, and a chamber, with strings.
Repetition, fixation. Position. Intent.
I pluck and strum, pick and stroke, maintaining
space, steel above wood, bending notes,
moving sound in time, purposefully, from
this place to that, the left hand, creating,
conversing. The right, reasoning, controlling,
burning its past to the present, allowing,
preventing, rendering beat, consistent
motion, shaping only this moment, this now.
“Tuning the Beast” was drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30-30 Challenge, thanks to Sunshine Jansen’s sponsorship. It subsequently appeared in The Blue Nib in September 2016.
Shakuhachi Blues
Shakuhachi Blues
That waver,
like the end of a long
dream flickering to wakefulness,
or an origami crane
unfolding between whiskey
poured and the tale of deceit
and a good woman done wrong.
Air flutters through this bamboo
tube, and it seems I control
nothing. Inhaling, I try again.
A simple instrument that will take a lifetime to learn…
Two Poems Up at Subterranean Blue Poetry
My poems “November Suizen” and “Beer Bottle Suizen” are up at Subterranean Blue Poetry. I’m grateful to editor Rebecca Anne Banks for publishing these two pieces.
With Guitar in Hand
With Guitar in Hand
for Stephanie
With guitar in hand I observe the green beetles bumbling about,
the way they careen and crash and flail aimlessly, but to a purpose.
Sometimes I attempt one note, only to strike another, or plucking
three strings simultaneously, focus on the discordant one,
which is, of course, me. How do we live the right song?
Which casual arrangement sends us plummeting to the grass,
hearts racing? I recall thinking “this cannot be,” yet could not,
would not, turn away. I bang out a minor seventh, sing a few
words, adjust my arthritic grip. Yesterday I couldn’t form
the chord shapes I desired. Today the hands float along the
fretboard, unimpeded. I wish you were here. I wish
I could shift time signatures with neurotransmissions,
that we were somewhere else, out of the way, alone
but for birds chirping in the branches by the window.
I wish my flawed tunes could merge with moonlight
and compose pearlescent pieces, and that you would
sing them to me from the threshold of our shared lives. I want
everything, but cherish what we can hold in these wondrous
times. I think of your hair and eyes, how my heart
flutters to the floor and refuses to rise until your smile
unwraps the day’s gift to me, defying Newton’s third law,
offering unheard chords. I listen to your silences, as I do
your words, knowing the value of each. Gazing at your
photo, I speak your name, set down the guitar. Make music.
“With Guitar in Hand” was originally published in the print anthology Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love in February 2019.
Salad Suizen
Salad Suizen
Like the lone slice of cucumber
in the dinner salad,
I fear that I am not worthy
of such distinction.
No bottled dressing could mask my ineptitude.
I am that wedge of unripe winter tomato,
those pieces of lettuce bred for travel,
the black olive rounds fresh from the can.
So much to enjoy in mediocrity.
My wind sputters and fizzles.
Fingers struggle to cover the holes.
Failures accrue like compound interest
and still I persist.
Perhaps I might add croutons, red onion.
More space. Crumbled feta. Silence.
“Salad Suizen” first appeared in Ethel in August 2019.
O at the Edges 