New thread: Your Poems Inspired by Music

Diminuendo in Blue

Duke. Newport, 1956.
Way before your time,
not mine. I didn't know
from jazz then; was unbaked,
just beginning to cook up dreams.

The centerpiece
then and there
was a tenor sax solo:
twenty-seven choruses
whipping up the crowd
into a frenzy
frothier than the foam
on Narragansett Bay.

This was the long bridge
before the crescendo.

Nothing like that
here and now:
the record, starving,
a definite diminishing.

Where was my feast,
my triumph,
my Paul Gonsalves moment?

Cheer up, they tell me.
Snap out of it.
There’s no use crying
over a spilled life.

Lately prophets
are predicting
that the world
will end soon.
True? Good
Christ! I'm not ready.

An improv in the interval,
staving off
the personal apocalypse
with table scraps of joy
from concerts of old tunes.




All Rights Reserved.

Unlike his devotees
who toast him with a glass
and a flute

across the centuries,
a life lived a cappella
bereft of composure,
this silence of a mute–

his own drums beaten,
his fists were shaken
at the sky, forsaken,

beyond passion’s fearing,
he himself beyond hearing
his own thunder and a sigh.

All Rights Reserved.

Oscar Peterson
(1925- 2007)

We've heard tunes
like "Tenderly" before
but never like this.

Your piano had a little blues,
a little stride, and a mystical
note like an angel's kiss.

I mean those crazy things
you did with the pedals
that gave the music wings.

Were you to write
Your own requiem
it wouldn't be a dirge--
it would swing.

O thank Canada for
sending this sound to me!

Farewell, dear maestro,
Oscar P.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Musi....ap/index.html

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AuntShecky

Oscar Peterson
(1925- 2007)

We've heard tunes
like "Tenderly" before
but never like this.

Your piano had a little blues,
a little stride, and a mystical
note like an angel's kiss.

I mean those crazy things
you did with the pedals
that gave the music wings.

Were you to write
Your own requiem
it wouldn't be a dirge--
it would swing.

O thank Canada for
sending this sound to me!

Farewell, dear maestro,
Oscar P.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Musi....ap/index.html

---

What a beautiful tribute to a beautiful person. Thank you, Aunty. :)

Thank you. Canada has much to be proud of!

I love Enya and one day while listening to her very beautiful, "To Go Beyond (II)", these words from my very favorite scripture about the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-32) came to mind. I had been searching for a song about Emmaus and these two things just seemed to meld together perfectly. These words are meant to be sung to this very lovely instrumental piece. It is important that you listen to the long version for it is at the swell in the music that carries the emotion of the line, "Now we see, Lord!" It is on Enya's 1986 CD entitled "Enya", track 15.

To Go Beyond

Walking along on the road to Emmaus,
We came upon a man we did not recognize,
He searched our eyes and our souls with his questions,
He thought us fools, slow of heart to believe,
We hungered for more of what he had to say,
Stay with us now for the daylight is passing,
Please bless and break the bread.

Now we see, Lord! It's you our savior!
Now you've removed this veil of mystery for us,
Oh taste and see how gracious the Lord is,
Blessed is man who trusteth in him.

Lord you are our way, our truth,
Our life, our light, our feast, our strength,
To go beyond with such mercy unknown,
We know God and love are one.

ampoule, December First, TwoThousand

Blues for the Bard

How oft I wonder ‘bout the music played
in plays Will wrote. Without a jammin’ sound,
the dulcimer and sackbut scarcely swayed.
What if our modern jazz had been around?
From hautboy or hurdy-gurdy tunes would leap,
not cranked but bopped by hipster’s hands.
Oh boy, what jokes from “virginal” they'd reap
if bluesmen had a gig at the Globe’s old stands!
It tickles me to think of Cleo’s ship,
its burnished decks all rocked with Dixieland,
or to see a scene with Falstaff’s ale-stoked lips
upon a horn that bounced in Basie’s band.
If jazz had somehow sprung from Time’s clock’d jail,
then Will, methinks, would've swung, perchance to wail.

AuntSchecky, you might enjoy this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S6IJ...eature=related

A modern day Romeo & Juliet

Countess Giulietta, for you the gentle
ruminations came in simple chords,
that rose and rose again in questions.

You and he in midnight air, wordlessly,
secretly, arm in arm, he in stride
and you reticent, corset and train.

Did Rellstab name it from a vision
of Lucerne? Or was Quasi una fantasia
for you, the love and dream.

What garden, walked in moonlight?
What visions came so hauntingly, silently,
beautifully, like the quiet wings of night birds

that nested in the strings, the grain of wood
that felt his ear against its subtle breathing,
when they sang of black fleeing into black.

His lamentation turned to prayer, lifting
to the night sky, descending to despair,
again demanding the air deliver its motion.

Giulietta, he did return to your measured step,
in its darkest paces, resolved that Schiller’s Joy,
astounding heaven, remained bound within him,

bound in silence, but for the unbearable sound of faces.

Gently I ask, "firefangled....who are you?
Where are you from and just how did you get to today?"
You know I don't mean Florida, but all those sonatas, those moonlit nights, those visions in your dreams.
I will never forget how absolutely shaken I was the first time I stood with a chorus and sang Ode to Joy with the orchestra going wild. Oh how my heart pounded.
What a gorgeous person you are and what a poem.....oh.....

AuntShecky...thank you for this wonderful thread. You are so very clever and talented.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ampoule

Gently I ask, "firefangled....who are you?
Where are you from and just how did you get to today?"
You know I don't mean Florida, but all those sonatas, those moonlit nights, those visions in your dreams.
I will never forget how absolutely shaken I was the first time I stood with a chorus and sang Ode to Joy with the orchestra going wild. Oh how my heart pounded.
What a gorgeous person you are and what a poem.....oh.....

AuntShecky...thank you for this wonderful thread. You are so very clever and talented.

---

Thank you , Ampoule. I wrote this years ago after seeing Immortal Beloved one night at the midnight show. I could not sleep that night as I cannot tonight. I am glad my poem greeted you early in the day. :)

" You'd never know it,
But I'm a kind of poet,
And I've got a lot of things to say. . ."
--Johnny Mercer (November 18, 1909-June 25, 1976)


Mercer, Mercy Me

Other than calling me “Lazybones”
My Mama never told me much,
Never assured me that anywhere
I hung my hat could be home.

(She wasn't big on e-liminating
the negative and often messed
with Mr. In-Between.)

I never knew that a glowworm’s light
in the cool, cool, cool of the evening,
could brighten like the midnight sun--
no matter what, come rain, come shine.

I grew up like that, day in, day out,
until I heard the songs
that Savannah’s favorite son
“borrowed from the birds.”

Though I hate watching
the autumn leaves of October go,

peel me another tangerine,
conjure me up those marvelous
words! Play me another song --
just one more --
for the road.



Tomorrow, November 18, will mark the 100th anniversary of Johnny Mercer's birth.
Here's a lovely 7 minute video tribute I found this am:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/jo...57343731?flv=1

This is as precious as it is artful. You weave the songs into the poem so seamlessly that we might need to ask which was the inspiration for which.

“As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;/The centre mov’d, a circle strait succeeds,/another still, and still another spreads. . .”
--Alexander Pope

Spheres of Influence

With your chords so angular, so oblique, Monk,
those tome-bound terms like “crepuscule” and “Epistrophy,” Monk,
and those asymmetrical lines ending without finality, Monk –

did they all come from humor or from pain,
or merely quirky probings of your mind?
We felt like fishermen coming home with empty nets,
or astronauts marooned by space, by time.

You jumped from a circumscribed orbit
too hip for the room – and then
your supernova exploded
like an ever-widening sphere.

The other day I splashed a rock
into the kill just to watch
the ripples swirl around.
Then I looked up through the blue
at the brilliant corners of the sun,


and there you were.


April, 2008

There is something wonderful, is there not, in paying heartfelt tribute to an artist one admires?

I'm especially taken with

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

We felt like fishermen coming home with empty nets,
or astronauts marooned by space, by time.

---

and

Quote:

---

The other day I splashed a rock
into the kill just to watch
the ripples swirl around.
Then I looked up through the blue
at the brilliant corners of the sun,


and there you were.

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Marvellous, thanks.