Just to prove I can write something other than moans

To give you a break from the constant ranting, I thought I would include some of my better poems on this site.  A bit random, I know, but who needs a theme.

This is a pair I wrote about my father.  Enjoy.

Etudes I

I cried the day

you played (at Charlotte’s wedding)

the piece you composed (or so it goes)

when you were only, eight years old.

To me, you were a child prodigy

I imagined you

A little boy,

sat there

on that piano stool,

your gangly legs not even touching

the floor, just dangling.

Beneath you, in the drawer,

Mozart & Haydn reposed.

The hood of the Steinway

a gaping mouth, exposed,

with its taut strings and hammers

ready to swallow

Like Jonah and the Whale.

Your face scrunched up with

concentration, as you wrangle

with the notation, your mother hovering

‘agitato’, as she would do,

 interfering, smothering.

Your father, not yet dead.

Did the demons in his head

render him helpless to praise?

You raise your face skywards,

Seeking inspiration, perfecting your creation.

Your fingers extend, stretched to

their limit, as you scale the keys

from C to B, and back again.

The familiar tinkling

of the charms on her bracelet

(and the ice in her gin & tonic)

a charming accompaniment

to your solemn march.

Etudes II

Age eight, I wake to the dulcet sounds

of a Chopin nocturne

somewhat tarnished

by having heard it

at least a million times before.

You labour tirelessly over one phrase

crazed by the need to perfect it.

The dog’s ‘singing’ becomes howls,

as the noise cloys at her bowels,

Finally, a crashing crescendo,

rallentando, then pianissimo

And ahhhhhh, at last…

Silencio.

Forty years later

Chopin tugs at my heart strings.

Revised memories,

where your tenderness on the keys

is what survives.

 November 2010