Explore Poems: Music

울려 나오는 악성의
느리고도 짧은
애닯은 곡조에
나의 사라진 옛 꿈은
그윽하게 살아
내 가슴 아파라.

설움 가득한 악성의
빠르고도 더딘

애닯은 곡조에
뒤숭숭한 그 생각은
고요하…

i

Sonorous music for voice— I hear
a short but elegiac,

 pained

melody— for long discarded

dreams of a simple…

I created more loss where I meant to make less.
Created more debt where I meant to make depth.
Created…

It was written in the stars:
A child is born.
From that moment on,
I only had eyes for you.

What a …

            Tell me about the good things
you clappin & laughin

Will you remember
or will you forget

Forget about…

Even the earth dies sometimes
            when it is most alive.
            Walter Bishop Jr. slaying the keys, 
Harold Vick…

Fueron a cazar guitarras,
bajo la luna llena.
Y trajeron ésta,
pálida, fina, esbelta,
ojos de inagotable…

They went out hunting for guitars,
underneath the full moon.
And they brought back her:
pale, fine, lithe…

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell…

Gramophones were weapons, swallowing
the dying songs—
voices

are still muted
in the dust bowl
of those English libraries.

But her voice is clear
as the Chattahoochee,
wide and glittering,

breaching the shadows of the Blue Angel.
Oh, winged music,
red-tongued

notes on 55th where
red boys in strange cities once stopped dead
and...

Buenos dias and hasta lue$o in boardrooms and strategy sessions, Where are your grateful holiday smiles bilinguals? I've given you a voice, let you in
to hear old friends tell old jokes,
Stop flinching, Drink eggnog, Hum alon,
Not carols we hear
whimpering
children too...

She lip-syncs “Hello God,” then “9 to 5.”
She struts. Or does she fly? Like the soul,
a rhinestone, she tells us, will never die.
She’s a blush-pink Bible. Patched together,
she’s a cosmic doll. Mirror of a mirror,
she winks, her face the only...

Who named him Yard Bird?
He was a homing pigeon
With no home to fly to

Sky unlimited
Route uncharted
Eagle strong
He scorched his wings
Haunting the heavens
Buzzing the sun
As the feebler fowl
Looked up in awe
But played it safe

In the rambling sky
He lived!
Here he rendezvoused
With freedom
Flashing...

Her rum-brown rope of a voice
Fastens flannel strands
Around soft sides of staid notes
Sitting properly
On their oh so proper scale
She pulls
And the notes fall
Into her molten mold
Of flaming sound

I played a folk song once
                   so long into the night
                            it came apart.
           ...

notebook
divine love is so.
invisible.

notebook
november 1. all souls day. rimbaud-o. go
to hell. picasso knows. how he really fucking
knew knows. where can he go now.

notebook
picasso hoax: don’t nobody tell when he dies.
continue let time continue and move like myth.
till suddenly somebody rings...

The night ZZ Hill sang at the Club Tupelo
on the Westside of Chicago
he was built like a heavyweight boxer in a tailored suit
             bathed in a soft blue
light like the only thing
to see in that darkened
space where bluespeople came
to turn...

in the darkness
in the exile—there is a sigh, a number 9
there is a son borne of the street song, the injured timpani red drum
there is a town,  Jihlava, a make-shift theatre &
rough-cut street dancers, there is a sky that welcomes...

Mommy always wanted
To be famous

She would have us (my sister and me)
Sing
In all the talent shows
But I could not carry the harmony
Then she had me
Sing
Alone
Though The Isley Brothers
Always won
Ronald’s sweet voice and Vernon
Doing “the Itch”
Sort of like Michael Jackson
Doing “the...

I may take offense, may still your tongue
And your fickle ax willowing spastically
During unpredictable weather events. 
As sure as the influence of big Cat.4’s
Can be felt in hair, almost like a weighted 
Scent sinks itself deep into your lungs.

I believe your brain...