A Poem in 7 Parts
Cell
Haven
Space
Lovesong
Overture
Player
Lifebeat
Comments about this poetry.
Cell
Go ahead.
Take a step forward.
It's not so hard to be bold.
But when the music gets a hold of you,
There is no escape.
The cells are mine
To walk through, freely.
(But all are within the prison's locked doors.)
I have come to enjoy captivity.
I find I'm protected here.
And when I retreat to
The innermost passages,
No one can hurt me.
It is a painless torture,
Being here.
One can stand
At the golden gates of Heaven
Or at the threshold of Hell.
Sometimes both.
The hardest part,
I think,
Is becoming your prison.
When its moods become your own,
You feel all the hate,
All the grief,
And all the pain,
As well as the love
And joy
And hope.
Being here will probably kill me.
But on the outside,
I would have been dead long ago.
Haven
Sound in my ears:
Waves crashing onto the rocks
Or gently caressing the soft sand
Becoming,
As so many others have
So many times before,
A part of me.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Breathless I open my eyes;
The memory of it lingers
Like the aftertast of some
Sweet fruit;
And I cherish the feeling.
When the Shadows close in
At Nightfall
I go back to the special place
In my memory,
A secret place
That harbours
Not just a picture --
A whole world lives there!
It encompasses
A universe full of feelings
I love you
I hate you
And why does the world
Want to see me fail?
And when it's time for catharsis
I go to the same place.
In joy or sorry
It welcomes me.
The music takes me in
And I emerge --
Whole again.
All my dreams lie
In the space and time
Of a note
A phrase
A song
And through the music
Which is my lifeblood
My sanctuary
I can cope with a world
That hates me
That loves me
And even wants to see me stumble
And fall.
Space
In a simple note can be found
Infinity --
A space bigger
Than space itself.
In the infinity and wholeness
Of the music,
You can sing inside and, if you wish hard,
And watch hard,
The stars will dance for you.
The power it lends you
Can be seductive,
But always unable to be possessed.
(You can't own freedom.)
The power is lent freely, though.
You need only desire to receive.
If you want to badly enough,
You can reach the farthest limits
Or beyond....
Is it a Black Hole
Or a Lightless Gate?
Only your imagination can decide.
And when you've acknowledged your boundaries
(Or lack thereof),
The music will take you
Through the world you've created.
The power of movement,
Of creation of destruction,
Can be found inside
And in the song that holds you...
Fly!
Lovesong
You come to me
A lover
Soft and tender
or
Fiery and passionate.
You call me --
I can't resist
When you sing to me.
You can send
From across the room
Messages
That seduce me
And I am under your spell.
You make love to me
In a touch
Or a sound
A whisper or a scream
A caress or a grasp
And the world stops
To enjoy the moment.
Heaven is in your embrace.
Overture
As soon as I let him in the room,
I knew I was in for a struggle.
And I had way too much to do:
All these writers were waiting for me,
Spread out all over my floor,
Ready for me to turn their pages
And discover their secrets.
So, he left me alone --
But for just a few minutes;
And after a while,
He demanded my attention again.
I did my best to ignore him,
Shutting him out as much as I could.
But he suddenly lunged playfully at me,
Nibbling on my ear,
Until, smiling, I relented,
The way I always do,
Ebracing him,
The way I love to do,
And he draws me in and in
Until we lose our separateness,
Blending -- Blending --
Blinding me to all else --
Player
A note
Produced on it
Screams all the frustrations
Of being here and now,
Of being powerless
Amid the violence,
Of waiting for hope to arrive
And stop your shaking.
Scream for me.
Laugh with me.
For the life of me
I can't figure out how you can make a guitar giggle like that!
It's let itself loose,
And when you tickle it a certain way,
It becomes hysterical.
It can speak so gently
Or take me and shake me
So that i don't know what hit me.
And I'm fascinated
By the way you stroke and soothe
The mourning beast
When it huddles against you
And you caress it
Into sweet, sad song.
With your guiding touch
It heralds its arrival,
Dancing into my mind
With amazing agility and grace.
It draws me in
And I lose control.
It holds me,
Leaves me breathless
And I am baptized.
Every time.
But without you,
It cannot make me weep.
Lifebeat
I feel your beat
Inside me,
Dancing in my bloodstream.
It eventually finds my heart
And requests audience,
Then bids my heart beat in time
With your drum.
I willingly succumb to the rhythm you provide.
I stumble along
After your shifts and jumps in time,
Or let the steady, pulsing rhythm
Command my whole body,
While my mind sails away....
Your beat awakens in me
A spirit that calls me
To imagination,
To flight.
And always my heartbeat
Is shaped
By the sound of a drum.
Comments
I wrote this poetry beginning in the late 1980s. I was living alone at the time, and although studying took up some of my time, I spent a great deal of time reading and listening to music.
Listening to music, to me, is not a passive experience. It's very active. Even studio recorded music is active for me. The music plays; I respond viscerally. There is a sensation that I get when just the right note is hit, or when I hear a particularly beautiful passage of music. It's like a thousand needles prickling my scalp, only not painful. This reaction to music could have something to do with the fact that I used to be a dancer. For me, dance is a physical expression of music. The body's physical movements should reflect and complement what the music is doing. At any rate, I think this might be why I respond so strongly to music.
So strongly, in fact, that I wrote a series of poems trying to articulate how I feel about music, how I interact with it. Yes, all of these poems are about music. Strictly music.
During this time, I listened to the Canadian band Rush quite a bit. They're just so ... articulate, intelligent, talented. They are as excellent live as they are in the studio. So, much of this poetry was inspired by listening to their music; and when I talk about music being captivating, I often mean their music.
"Player" was written in response to one of the most amazing songs I've ever heard from Rush (well... it's just too hard to pinpoint one amazing song of theirs). The song is "La Villa Strangiato" (live).
"Lifebeat" is pretty self-explanatory. It's about drumming in general. I am completely seduced by the drum. Sometimes it's rock drumming (but it has to be VERY good) but usually it's tribal drumming. Listening to Neil Peart (from Rush) has spoiled me completely.