The birth of tragedy
We change our days to night
and survey the alterations:
war into opera,
streets into dangerous doors
and blown sand into the word Love,
for dancing and singing
would spoil the music.
Poems on the topic: music
Poems on the topic “music” on Poets.by.
Music lesson
Music: the first clock,
before time had discourse
with arms.
A bridge in the night.
Hanging jack
My lute an office
where I expect to walk.
I found a stone in mourning
for the temple.
Bread and butter were discoursing
of the great eater.
I remember a hanging jack
to roast birds—that heat.
I played a while on my lute
and could not kill anything.
Interiority complex
For kindness I stumble
and tell not heart but harp,
give the country of my mind
some night notes.
A minstrel’s life
I drink with a seaman,
a half moon and a barber,
play harp for a bit of meat
and send broke thoughts.
Rainiac
In the house of rain, all are kin. Consider the toadstool releasing its spores when the rain comes knocking. Many of those spores drift up into the atmosphere, where they become cloud condensation nuclei and give birth to new raindrops—with moisture released by the trees. I recite this true fable to myself as I trudge through the downpour.
that scent
of wet rhododendrons—
Pop-pop’s place
I like how the world is textured.
Visually and aurally and in food webs and ecological niches.
The endless intricacy and beauty of it.
It’s utterly entrancing sometimes, like the best rave ever.
Whatever i tell myself, it’s never enough. Understanding begins with listening.
Classical Muse
the classical hides
within the vernacular
like a clutch of eggs
wood-winded
or unreedable
all flesh is brass
shivery
with bowed strings
and ceremonious mallets
an attenuated conductor
bobs in the dark mirror
of a piano
a piccolo shrieks
like a rabbit
caught by an owl
clarinets
* * *
cold snap
the one-take tune I make
breaking icicles
The Song of the Womb
The song of the womb begins
on a minor key among the bivalves
and sea cucumbers, whose tunes
are all palindromes and serve
a purely decorative purpose.
The song of the womb sounds best
played by a full orchestra, despite
the many adaptations for solo flute.
It’s got rhythm—that probably goes
without saying—and sheet music.
It can be used to communicate
over great distances underwater.
Scientists say the song of the womb
may predate the evolution
of consciousness! It is not, however,
the first choice of the womb itself,
One-hit wonders
the bad penny
the wooden nickle & one
lousy dime
met up in
my pocket & tried
a trio gig
but as
you might expect
the penny kept returning
to the same tired riff
the nickle was dread-
fully flat
the dime couldn’t
keep time &
they all struggled
to make the changes
Notes
How many notes to self can you take?
A road nobody drives for pleasure.
Scan the dial for something
sung in drawl. Get out & walk.
The older you get, the fewer options
still tempt you: the wet membranes through which
light enters our heads versus the eardrum,
coins in a fountain versus coins in a jar.
And if you want to feel every note
you find a desert, even one small as a banjo head
or unreachable as the moon.
You go to a tattoo shop
& ask them to take dictation
on the parchment of your arm.
Don’t try to explain.
This isn’t that kind of trip.
Open-Backed Banjo
I am untroubled by serpents
or the marinated feet of pigs.
I bear no antipathy toward bears
or the bees they bedevil,
& the devil never tempts me
to any evil I can’t invent on my own
(forgive me if I don’t delve into the details).
What makes me break down is a banjo,
lonesome as our only god the clock
but with two hands, both of them fast.
Looking in its open back
can be disconcerting: What makes it go?
There’s nothing but a bare rod
& the smell of rain.
Where’s the balance wheel?
The escapement?
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: