Diary of a tormented philharmonic

they pounded their bare feet
against the cobblestone
in unison

the bells individually tied
to their clothes
jangled in rhythm

as the song beat
along the walk
the voice of the troupe
rose
from the ruin of
their lives

vestiges served as
instruments for
their fractured melody

her voice raspy with
pain
it swallowed bitter
cold air
and erupted into
a warm wave
of dynamic symphony

hair chopped to the roots
skin browned to filth
she resembled
boyish prepubescence
and flung around
as if possessed by
the specter of
music
which careened
through the square
or heroin that
pumped violently
through her arteries

his voice battered by
the experience of
tragedy
somehow found
a tone of
tattered joy
as he gazed
into her

beard unkempt
left to grow
in against the elements
the hair of his head
unsevered in ode
to Sampson's strength
eyes crystalline
salvation
for passersby

their love
reverberating
the anguish of strife
yet undaunted
in the pursuit of
harmonic ecstasy

bodies dipped and swayed
sunken chests
heaved beneath rags
emaciated faces
quite obviously famished
yearned for a
morsel

diary of a tormented
philharmonic
is not written
but
performed

I drop
the coins in my pocket
into her
overturned chapeau

as I continue past
over my shoulder
I see
her pick up the hat
senselessly
fling the coins
high into the air
as the voice of
the troupe
crescendoed
into a cacophony
of unintelligible
rapture

one by one
the coins fell to
the ground in
rhythm with
the bells

their bare feet
pounding the cobblestone

I could feel
through my shoes




for Alex and Jade

Clean Cuts

the cuts are clean
  if a little misshapen

when nails need trimming

that of the forefinger chipped
  on the b string of an old guitar
    I was playing for my enjoyment
      while I sat alone in an empty room

neglected rats in stark cages
  bury their heads in the ground

probably to avoid the truth
  that life has its expectations
    but here I am recycling tired phrase

repetition is cycle management

back to waste expulsion
  toxic intake
    repeat

the death of the unsuspecting man
  is slow but inexorable
    and will leave him in want
      of an experience to call life

now I must wait for their regrowth
  so I might play once more

so I might have an experience
  so I might call it life

Tribe

Like flashing bolts of memory
                                                striking
against the walls of the skull
                                                coursing
through neuronal pathways
                                                electrifying
the remembrance
                                                of someone lost...

We too are
                                                saturated
with the blood of purpose

We too are
                                                emboldened
by our Warrior Spirit

Belle Saleté

As I find my daughter, clothed in an all-too-expensive yellow Easter dress, covered from head to toe in the mud that was previously filling a filthy ditch outside my mother's house in rural Kentucky, she looks up at me with her bright blue eyes, and says, "Life's a mess, daddy!"

It's 1964 and the street is covered in week-old snow that has been browned significantly from tires, which traipse around the dirt roads that scatter away from the city, between farm plots because the snow looks like earth-colored play-doh and never melts, due to the cold. Instead, it just shifts around, is remolded by force and contorted into the strangest of shapes.

I walk along a sunlit path. It follows the river which winds through town as yellow light reflects off its icy surface, painfully sluicing my optic nerves with radiation. It is then I see my friend walking along the other side of the river, just as young as I, but in the opposite direction. I don't stop to wave, or shout his name over the calm disturbances beneath the ice. I allow him to pass undisturbed.

The girl I have been seeing, not exactly my paramour, is pregnant. She will give birth, endow life upon my child. I am too shocked to know what to think, or feel. I suck down the warmth of a cigarette. It gives life to my despair, allows me to feel my confused contemplation.

Last week a man from my hometown was shot down in the alley behind a local bar, where I find myself behind the condensation of a whiskey glass nearly every time I return there alone and sullen. It's remarkable because I never would have taken him for a drunk, or a degenerate. Yet here I am, and where is he?

I kneel down next to her, wipe the dirt from her face, and say, "Yes it is sweetheart. Don't ever forget that." She looks back at me with more truth behind her conviction than even she knows. With annoyance scrunched across the bridge of her nose, she says, "I know dad. I taught you that."

I smile a painful smile. "Yes you did."

Habits of Romance

Lately my romances have smelled of lilac. They in turn remind me of my childhood, picking flowers and sipping on the stem of tubular petals, each imparted with only a fragrance of edible nectar that barely the tongue could taste. It is only after the flavor escapes your senses that you reach back to pick another.

I pretend to believe I know now what I understood then: that the scent of spring’s bloom is an experience worthy of indulgence. In contrast I have found myself with less desire for romance’s passions, as my eyes drift further and further away from where I am told they ought to lie… and they lie.

Each one of them smells like the taste of lilac. Each as sweet to the tongue during such transient moments that only seem to me to occur when scented with an air of imagination.

I used to think I could eat a pound of lilacs.

I loved the way they pretended to taste.

*

They say love is war

but I say love is lilacs—

pluck some petals

suck the nectar

and on to the next

flower, field,

alternate lilac universe.

I can’t say exactly

where or what the taste

reminds me of

but I know it’s fleeting—

it’s a fleet-footed Iberian lynx,

near-extinct,

I’ve never even seen one

except in some middle school textbook

and some movie and maybe

a few dreams here and there.

So I suppose love isn’t war

or lilacs or really anything

but preconceived notions

and cinema-spawned idealizations

and Muse-induced REM.

Anything but a momentary

cottonmouth-quenching sip

on my long kismet trip across the desert.

Author's note: This piece was written as a collaboration with another Denver writer and poet KG Newman.
His is the second half of this piece. A link to more of his excellent work is here.

Indecisive Victory

A woman's voice carried over the tumult in the bar, her ominous overture soaring in a wind of falsetto above the baritone of Chelsea's fandom, drinking to the success of the club, who had only just sealed their victory, and to their own health. Spiteful cursings from the lone German in the corner, rigidly upset with the second-rate Swiss team for not putting the match away, accompanied the clink of ice swirling around my Irish whiskey as I viewed the celebration (and dejection) impartially from in front of a mirror on the wall, splitting my consciousness along an existential plane, where I sat back to back with my indifference. The woman's voice carried through both realms, transcending this parallel barrier between both sides of myself, both sides of the match's outcome. Like the light that cascaded from dusty bar lamps over dark wood and golden tap handles, her melody penetrated the fabric of the moment in time, where I both existed and ceased to exist, both literally and figuratively, in either realm, respectively.

Paris

Portuguese, not quite French. She wasn't as beautiful as I would have preferred. Still, her body was built for making love. The clouds picked up drops of the Seine and sprinkled our faces as we stood on the Pont Alexandre III, staring at Eiffel's Tower, glowing orange through the night's fog. "The view is nice, but I prefer not to have rain in my face," she forced through broken English. I don't love her, and I shan't. The rain began to fall harder on our uncovered heads, the street lamps that line the bridge illuminating my fantasy. "You look happy," she said, taking notice of my authentic grin, spattered with rain.

The tower's flashing lights accompanied our ascent, as if proclaiming our arrival, or rather, mine. She believes everything happens for a reason, she's had prophetic dreams. The dates of our trip aligned, and that was significant, she told me. I looked out over the City of Light, nodding and mumbling my disingenuous agreement, unable to separate myself from my revelry, as she can. "Can you take of me," she inquired, holding the camera in the position she wanted the photograph taken, as if, because I hadn't brought one of my own, I didn't understand the process.

A September wind was blowing strong at a thousand feet, frigid against our damp clothes. The invigorating chill engulfed my senses and I breathed deep the life, the vigor that was my companion. "I am so cold," she complained, shivering as I put my arms around her. The moon rose out of the west and I could feel its gravity; my gaze drawn to its dusky radiance. She kissed me passionately, succumbing to the city's devastating romance. I was alone, and that is how I prefer to be inspired. My one true love, hovering ghostly through the sky, felt closer than ever.