west lake (demo)

45 record, 33 speed

Tiny scratch on the motorcycle gas tank.

I am caught on that insubstantial score 
that skips the record back—

Might as well face it 
might as well face it 
might as well face

the collection sewn together
with needles and handlebars
and parkin sons and bloodlessorders 
and aqua nets of age that catch all 
and never lose their hold.

This scratch joins the loop,
jarring at the start, jagged at the end
across one thousand eight hundred twenty five and two 
plays alike in the same,
the same, the same,
the same;

I watch the best go down,
the pure, the strong, the virtuous; 
slow, in a drag,

the world purges its favorites.

There’s a tiny scratch in every thing. 
Every surface,
every tank
wears an inscrutable flaw,
hidden to all but the eye 
fixed on the fissure
that some giant
used for a toehold
to kickstart his ascent,
listening for the right tune to ride. 

sandy strips

The façade slips off the building,
a satin négligée puddling on the floor. Opulence uncovered,
rich, dreamy areolae, browning pink seducing the eyes;
a lavishly appointed cross-section dances for the other half’s pleasure. Rain soaks the naked breasts
and floods the underpinning,
bulging with sudden fullness. Flashing lights, sirens
bring the heat, rhythm, danger
and all is swaying in unison
and touching itself
clandestinely,
titillated,
rapt,
until
a pair of eyes
catches the imperfection,
the stain on the dropped lingerie,
a tiny blood stain,
an unanticipated period stain,
the disgusting remnant of an unfulfilled potential,
a hand through the bricks,
a pimple in the pornography;
the carnality ripens,
the lust rots. 

forward

The future tempts like a gardenia

browning around the edges,

fragrance ripening into the

sweet rot of old bananas,

unappealing to look at but

overripe with potential,

add rum and flambé

for a favorite dessert,

concluding a sumptuous feast

that sits too heavy on the stomach,

edging toward repeating,

egged on by the tantalizing,

sickening smell of the 

favorite flower, the

gardenia on the table

that will have to be thrown out

tomorrow.

sarah lisanick

Sarah Lisanick

"Pick up your wrists," she told me again.
    She nodded her head with the suggested rhythms of the piece I was butchering.  When I blew an accidental and trotted past the legato marks, she circled them and insisted I repeat the surrounding four to six measures until I no longer needed the music. 

    Sarah Lisanick played the piano exquisitely.  She was a bespectacled, short-haired blonde with a love of floral prints and pearls. She taught more than technique; she nurtured the unteachable.

    In the second week of my study with her, she figured out my secret: I was a lazy sight reader. Instead of working out the rhythms and actual notes, I would ask my teacher to play a piece once for me, then I would play it by ear.  I had never progressed in my sight reading abilities because my old teachers hadn't figured out what I was doing.  Mrs. Lisanick nailed it in week two.
    The work of sight reading was excruciating to me.  I think it utilized a part of my brain that would’ve rather been left alone.

    She studied with Béla Bartók.  To me, this makes her something akin to royalty.  In the genealogy of musical training, this makes her my pedigree. 

    My ear pulled away from Beethoven and Chopin; no matter that these are the masters to learn when developing technique, she eschewed them for my sake and brought me Erroll Garner.  She filled my head and ears with Johnny Mercer.  She introduced me to Stephen Sondheim. 
    "You need to work out the counterpoint between the hands.  There is a slight syncopation toward the end of the measures that is truly his signature style."
    "I'm really not seeing it.  Would you?"
    She acquiesced and took the bench. 
    "Right here, and again here.  Once more, and then we repeat."
    And then I played it perfectly, not reproducing her nuance but creating my own.  There is great intelligence in the balance of Sondheim's harmonies, but the beauty of his lines can be devastating.

    I saw her for the last time a few months before she died.  Her ex-husband John had moved back in with her for the end. 
    "It's so sad," he told me.  "All the time we were apart.  Now something wonderful has happened, but it's too late." 
    She looked the same as I remembered; short, blonde hair, large, thick glasses-- except she wore a housecoat instead of the usual florals and pearls.  We sat for tea and I told her that while I was still studying music, I had switched from piano to voice. 
    If she was disappointed, she didn't show it.  I played a bit for her, to prove that I was keeping up with the piano, even if I was no longer studying formally. 

    In every musical experience I carry her mark.  I feel her love of music, I remember her emphasis on interpretation and her rejection of histrionics.  Interpretation, as an art of the musician, crosses the span of all instruments.  In the drift from piano to voice to guitar and around again, I have discovered something fundamentally changed. On the good nights, when the technique is strong and little more than impulse, my hands and throat have become conduits for something greater. Mrs. Lisanick molded me into an instrument.

the beginning of autumn

this is a piece I started working on last fall. It contains adult content, so read it after the jump.