LatinosUSA

Music Note Shaped Damnation

How can Bach
have more to say to me about heaven
and music note shaped damnation
in my forties than in my twenties,
when I thought I knew everything
from pretending the silence
was the only hell we needed?

~~

A Light Sadness

I can hear the empty beer bottles
in Brahms: a light sadness
like comparing beer to yellow flowers
so it’s more poetic
than the way a hangover feels
awful as someone who smiles,
as they dig out the roots of dandelions
on a sunny Saturday morning,
while humming part of a song
they can’t fully remember.

~~

The Dogs of My Soul

I’ve exorcised Bukowski’s ghost
again: his books sleeping
under a blanket of dust,
while a nearly-empty whisky bottle
has become a funeral song
for all the drunken nights
I want to leave buried
among canned goods
at the back of a cupboard.
But sometimes it all feels
like a shallow grave
the dogs of my soul keep digging up.

~~

The Closest I’ll Ever Get to Creating a Concerto

Bach making a piano
gives thunder
something to think about,
while my own fingers dance
on a computer keyboard
in a drunken pirouette
we call a poem,
because that’s better than dreaming
about my own gravestone
being knocked over
like another empty bottle
I thought was still full.

~~

Something Louder

Brahms thundering from beyond his grave
like a ghost who only appears
to those who believe in such things,
while my atheist soul
focuses on it being
just another thrift store CD
proving the existence of frugality.
But a 44.1 kHz afterlife sounds better
than the silence we built so many temples for
without really trying.