By CJ Sommerfeld, Staff Writer
keyboard harmonics
sound so melancholic
played sedate
fingers linger
on the ivories
unduly legato
performance anxieties
could you remind me again, of the proprieties?
perusing the notes
on the manuscript
your stern eyes
are drowning their rhythm
making my consciousness constrict
inverting its image like a prism
in your eye I’m not fit
telling me about the fugues that the seven-year-olds wrote
the rules that I cannot omit
your words, I’ll never make bloat
do you know what it sounds like to clean the piano’s keys?
up and down octaves
different scale degrees
a rhythm unstable, radioactive
you relate to the way I play my songs:
why don’t you groove?
like this!
you want my body to move?
unease threw me into an abyss
I just want to play
sedate
laugh as loudly: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring
I just want to play
sedate
I once read that the offspring
of well-fed birds
sing more
than those who scavenged
for food
I just want to play
sedate
