Orchestra

Musicians are made of music,

As though there exists a music gene.

For accomplished artists, it's no trick,

But benefit of exquisite training.

You feel the presence of votive force.

The notes, even the shaping of line,

Are pleasing, like a poem's off-rhyme,

But talent, not music, is their source.

The players make of air a force

That governs the fluidity of time.

They understand that beauty is fleeting,

That this song, now, is their only chance,

That perfection seldom knows repeating,

And thrust at our hearts like a lance.

Melody

The orchestra is silent,

No vibrating instrument,

Nor air, sweet or dissonant.

The players left the stage

Striking one note — of rage.

An object of odium,

The conductor sits the podium.

The composer’s score,

Scattered on the floor,

Will not be heard anymore.

Hate

A black and bloody flower

Blooms in the hearts’ bower,

Its scent poisoning the hour.

Its thorns, proliferating pain,

Stab the heart again and again.

Words wound us without stint,

Hot soughing winds by dint

Of battering the heart’s cage —

Like a billion moths of rage

Demanding the end of the age.

Insomnia

I wake at two. The dreams rewind.

The day now past is redefined,

Its cracked and slipping gears grind.

Remembering will not bring sleep

And to hell with counting sheep.

Getting up to read only prolongs

Alertness — as do regretted wrongs.

You try to empty out all thought,

But find what’s unwillingly sought;

What can be quickly flung away

Returns in images you cannot say.

Soon you’re even more woke up,

Like an overflowing coffee cup.

You change the me from you to I —

That’s worse, like the grasping “my.”

Take all these memories and desires

And drown them in oceanic fires.

Breathe deep until thought expires.

Number

The number of dates

Ever proliferates.

Each, pinned down, waits

Until all are done —

One and one and one.

We wake and sleep and wake

Without the slightest break

In the dropped mirror

Of each memory’s error.

I remember tomorrow,

Waves of it, row on row,

Just within my reach

On this particulate beach

That myriad suns bleach.

Dreaming

Dreaming isn’t thinking,

That hypnogogic sinking

Into the unblind unblinking.

Its images are un-clocked

Memories, mostly mocked

Distortions of what we are now,

Hurt children crying “Ow!”

We meet there the half known,

Not projected but shown

Us for no intelligible reason,

A fifth, black and white, season,

If wish fulfillment, unfilled,

Or a silent movie unbilled.

Though occasional nightmares

Will scare us with dead stares,

Only awake will we, screaming,

Take for real the seeming,

Mistake the dream for meaning.

Parallel

Parallel lives will never meet.

They walk on a different street

Though both are equally fleet.

Perhaps at the vanishing point

They will end, a dovetail joint,

That nothing can pull apart,

Not a hawk, nor a work of art,

For there’s no change of mind

Can allow thoughts to unbind.

All, futile conjecture.

(Is the math of parallels pure?)

Lives do cross, were meant to,

But in sum they are so few.

So many hearts do not reach,

Not even trying, each to each.

Rolling, rolling like train wheels,

None knowing what others feel,

Each of us made of flesh and steel.