Music is not only for the ears,
But for the soul
For every emotion,
Every lonely night
It’s something that is shared
No matter what you look like
Or who you are
Music is for when you can’t find the words yourself
Or when there’s no one to dance with
Music will hold your hand during your darkest days
Music is for the soul
It feels a little surreal,
If I’m being honest.
Picking out a ring.
Giving ideas of how
And where
I’d like for you to propose.
Making comments
On who will be invited,
And who won’t.
Looking up venues
In my spare time.
On the journey to the end
he sought remembrance
for his life
He asked the statues
preserved and abandoned
“What is it to be remembered?”
Silence was all he met
so he moved on to
literary sets
Asked each book
he had come to read
“How do you live on with your author dead?”
Multiple words
but not an answer to his search
and time was ticking, what a curse
Time, time, perhaps that’s who should be asked
“Oh Father Time, how do I persists
when my flesh no longer exists?”
“You look to things for the answers you seek
but everything has its peak
then falls, remembered only in a memory recalled.”
“So, people is the answer?”
he asked, fervent,
dying gasp ever-present.
“Not quite,” interjected Death,
“for people expire as things do too,
to be remembered then is an errand fool.”
“So there is no answer to my toil
I am to die, with nothing of me
left in the Earth’s soil
just a husk of a body,
my soul departed,
some broken-hearted.”
Tearful, he looks to Death
a question unspoken
itching to ask
Death offers him a token
“I think remembrance is a chore,
it is love that has brought you much more.
It may not have lasted long
and will surely be forgotten
but it brought hope and happiness
in this world so rotten.
So what does it matter if you are remembered
when you had cherished times together?”
He nodded, appreciating Death’s words
then he closed his book
took a stuttered breath
heart gave out, but still searching
What was my life all about?
Coughing up the cheapest spraypaint
on the floor in a strangers bedroom.
The girls drank my watered down story,
they’ll think of you, continents away
parading your half-sung mania,
pitting cherries with your teeth
like some man’s wet dream, some
pixie girl with the dark-eyes, smile,
some bad replica of the better thing.
You’re only alive on camera, while I
breathe sweet cigarettes, wildflowers,
straight from the mouths of nymphs,
these girls, drunk and glimmering
attentively assemble likes butterflies
on my sugared hand, comb my hair,
mix me peach Lipton in paper cups.
When I say it out loud it makes sense,
in a foreign language trying to simplify
your existence, they’re sorry for your sins
like I feel anything about the bullshit
glossing my lips. You’d think I would’ve
gone home crying that entire spring.
It’s funny because I’ll forget every line,
yet the verses sit dormant in the blue glow
of my phone, weapons to protect against
ever changing my mind. What’s on paper
is out of my head, means I don’t feel it, so
when I’m done writing you’ll be forgiven.
You can’t change how you appear
charoaled onto my journal, not pretty,
each crosshatch growing into a monster.
Its a good story for the drinking game,
sweeter people whispering about how
even in this cruelty they’re better than you,
and at least they’re honest. The stars spin
falling arrows, I’m surrounded by archers,
who let me love everything now, much more
than pacivity, domesticity, more than you.
Sometimes when things come at you
from all different directions
you forget to take a breath
So, your mind spins and you
try to do too many things at once
and you forget to take a breath
When a phone call takes
your breath away and
you forget to take another breath
There is no easy solution to
the craziness of life, but the first step
is to take a breath
I usually don’t remember them,
trust them, listen intently to them,
have been known to blush,
been so moved to tears or joy
I had to go somewhere.
Be
by myself
to take it all in
smile on the inside.
There’s a few I do remember:
In fifth grade when my dad went to jail,
we all tried to keep it a secret
for the three month duration,
he sat around playing cards
in an orange jumpsuit,
Sister Amica told my mom
at a parent-teacher conference
where I waited just outside the door
sitting on a hard bench
in the hallway where the janitor
had just mopped,
not in the ugly green plaid uniform
I had to wear at that school everyday,
Sister told my mom I was a real good writer
and to encourage me to write write write.
In college, a grad student I had a crush on–
finally drank too much, took me to bed
placed a needle on some recording of a god-awful
Wagner classical piece that played over and over again,
while I tried to make love like a grad student,
he said:
You are a cross between
Sissy Spacek & Faye Dunaway
At least, I think it was a compliment.
Most recently, my 12 year old grandson,
who grows about 2 inches a week,
and loves to swear around me
because I let him,
said he would really miss
me and G-Pa when we died,
and then we made waffles.
after: The Disintergration of the Persistence
of Memory at the St. Petersburg Dali Museum
(refusing the docent tour
the head phones or even
to read the wall placards
my choice is to settle
down on a wall bench
face the painting
with the squint of blurry eyes
make out my own thoughts
while Dr. Hue & Penelope do
their duet around the glass dome)
Dr. Tom and ZZ viewed the original
Persistence at MoMA many times
so his words ring in ZZ’s ears
with the prejudice of foresight:
the clocks like soft cheese melting
an inside view of Einstein’s brain
ants on their modern march to watch
the old world end, a single tree
spent as if run over by humanity
in Disintergration relativity becomes
a quantum expression of Hiroshima
ICBMs on their way
the one lifeless tree joined by another
the whole scene flooded with sea rise
the melted clocks urgent, the dead
fish dead, pricked by missiles
and laying on the four square
structure of a spoiled sea floor:
it’s like clicking on today’s nytimes
it doesn’t take ZZ two hours to see
Dali as potent prophet,
when Penelope finds him
he’s slumped in sleep
dreaming of walking
hand-in-hand with dear Dr. Tom
down Fifth Avenue
Shortly after the dementia diagnosis, my mother,
who had always had problems telling a straight story,
became a most unreliable narrator.
She was convinced neighbors stole her newspaper,
emptied (or filled) her gas tank,
hid her mail.
She said, “Somebody somewhere.”
I should have known not to ask questions.
I asked where the little Christmas tree was,
so cute with the miniature ornaments
and tiny lights, the perfect size for her side table.
She said, “Somebody somewhere.”*
I wondered where her dentures had gone,
why her coat was covered with flour,
how her glasses broke.
I picked rice out of her hair,
scrubbed ketchup off her cupboards.
She said, “Somebody somewhere.”
I found loose meds in the teacups and in dusty corners.
The fridge held nothing but freezer-burnt fish and a root beer Popsicle.
She repeated the same stories in the same order over and over.
She wore the same clothes day after day.
The arrival of caregivers confused her, made her anxious.
They were telling lies about her to the priest.
They were pumping carbon monoxide into her house.
Somebody somewhere was out to get her.*
During that beginning of what was the end, I lay restless at night, having one wish for any star that would hold it.
Please let Mom remember that somebody somewhere loves her.
