When the music gets you

Poetry has been a bit thin on the ground for me lately. Which is weird, because after high school, before I graduated from college, it used to be all the writing that I was most proud of in my life.

And before that I was afraid to write anything–mainly because I didn’t want people reading it. I’m too much of a perfectionist. I didn’t like to think of people judging my heart like that. I didn’t like to think of trying to write something just so that people would applaud me.

Learning to write poetry changed my perspective on a lot of that. I found a lot of freedom in it, in the loose chain-linking of words. My favorite poems I ever wrote–or read–came from nowhere and ended up somewhere else entirely. I couldn’t look too hard at them, lest they disappear.

Poetry is a way of thinking around oneself–that’s why I think everyone should write it.

At the time I wrote this poem (around the end of my first year of college) I was stuck in a bit of melancholy. Writing it felt like a tiny rebellion.

Yellow Coat

The music is a story

to her.

Its bright, deliberate vibrations bounce

off her yellow coat,

singing of the sunset she wears.

Buckled black shoes,

step lightly, circling puddles

and leaves that lie downtrodden,

pressed into pavement

by the weight of persistent raindrops.

When I leave this world

I can’t imagine a better goodbye than the smooth, unencumbered sound of jazz piano.

Death by Jazz

It’s nothing dramatic, of course.

Barely even momentous; unobtrusive

as Bill Evans and his piano

and the subtly smirking Autumn Leaves.

You just lie there, arms heavy

like two lengths of rope draping

over the side of the bed

towards radio waves that shimmer,

individual stars dancing across the carpet

warmed slightly by the sunset’s glow

leaking in through the blinds.

They waltz on over–

a little out-of-time and probably

a bit slow, for a waltz–

brushing the ends of your fingers,

just in case you forgot

what you’d be missing.

 

Bill Evans sends his regards from inside the disc player

as the room breathes in around you–

he and the rest of his trio,

cloistered in an endless jam session

forever releasing impressions into the air.

They have nothing better to do

than shuffle along, each beat stretched

trying to catch specks of dust as they float, forgotten

alongside your hands dull

and dimmed,

hands that won’t move to clap

after that loose bass solo.

 

But no worries,

they’ll know you meant to anyway.

Words and sound

Poetry is life’s soundtrack.

And if this poem had a soundtrack, it would be Waltz for Debby (as played by the great Bill Evans).

 

Ghost

A smile is a funny thing

Immaterial, like the veil between life

and death

where, caught in its ripples,

Faded dreams coalesce

with tears–indistinguishable,

 

The weight of pain is not dead,

But living,

reverberates with gravity,

that universal constant.

A loss

Yesterday, my school music department lost one of the most talented and versatile accompanists ever to have graced a piano bench. She was a fixture of the department for many, many years and was beloved by all.

I didn’t know her, not really. But I know countless students and teachers whose lives will never be the same, all because of her. Watching them grieve over her loss, I couldn’t help but wish selfishly that I, too, had some tears to give.

I settled for this poem, a tribute to a sunbeam of an accompanist and to the miraculous burden of feeling.

 

The Pianist

The girl in this painting

strikes a melodramatic figure;

back turned,

gaze sneaking around curved shoulders

to reach past the painter

with his palette of dull earth tones,

on her face an expression of subdued wistfulness–

 

wide, innocent eyes that mask

blank canvas underneath,

dark eyebrows that betray

a certain irony.

 

Sensing the pang felt by her admirers,

of melancholy

and washed out regret,

she wishes,

for once,

to feel it herself.