184. 2/3 Oranges

You are peeling the
orange
I have given you

The director
has my attention,
but my mind
follows the segments
torn, ligament
by
ligament.

The dressing room is
a circle of
smiling bodies...

Notes are done:

You are already
leaving;

All I see is your
backpack
out the
navy blue
door.

From the
hindsight of the future
you will
later thank me
for this
little
orange, but

as you sing your
aria do you
remember
the tender hand
which has
fed you?

Aug 6, 2017
Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS

181. Torontonian Months

Sushi without
fish and
water without
ice!

Lessons back-to-
back and lessons just
alone;

Sweat and smiles and
suitcases and
backpacks -

birthdays and
cards and
Australia and
San
Francisco -

restaurants and
catching
up:

new friends and
old ones -
new buildings and
old -

smoke and homeless and
pizza and
LV:
these are the sights and sounds and
smells!

178. Torontonian for a Year

 

I am
full
of
goodbyes –

you
are full of
                 none!

I
  take

one
photograph for
posterity

in the room where
I would lay
wrapped with
you, early
mornlight
shadowing our
blind-checked
hearts

This –
room:
where once I played you
simple
Satie
while it rained outside,
and you were designing;

home of so many tears and
smiles and
ecstasies
and pains –

today I walk past
the apartment:
you are no longer
here, but here I
am,

waiting,
thinking,
remembering.

Strangers walk
by;
the time is long
past-

and yet the phantoms of a
desk, a bed, a bookshelf
                                       linger...

do buildings
                     stir
hearts?

Where was
yours?

177. Stubble on Adonis

The Magic of a
Body
is
self-made

lifting,
cardio,
jumping
rope;

so the stage is
also
craft:

sforzando,
cantabile,
da capo al
fine:

words and terms
and
counting
calories:

yet why is
magic
Magical?

171. The Opportunist

American Robin at Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park

San Dimas, Southern California

Image Source: Two Birders To Go

Noble:
red head
raised high,

the robin
bounces
steadily, beady
eyes glimmering
with the
spring rain

in such splendour,
lone on the
beaming emerald
do I notice:

Stringy worms
dangling from
its resurfaced
beak;
munching, it is
a mortal like any other;
the rain,
fortuitous

Cantopop sails
in from the adjacent
living room;
eyelids painted and
eyes scrunched in
synchronous exertion:
dolled-up girls
and girly
boys

Things
seem not so
cheap
anymore…

170. Crabmeat

Scuttling over,
puts my hands on her
waist

“Breathe.”

We do so together.

Master and
novice,
experience seeping
through her
pores to
mine.

“Feel the depth of the
breath, it can
colour our
phrases
too.”

Soft flesh,
ancient and novel;
polyester fibres
crinkly and
taupe

As I am
processing,
understanding; we
breathe,
feeling the
depth,
discovering the
beginning

150. Com’è bello!

Unassuming,
silently presuming –
Two arachnids
tranquilly enslumbered:

Victim huntress,
paused the murderesses;
gentle yearning,
mute the Mother doting:

Golden doubles,
resting, still as marble:
Eight-fold digits
still and softly sun-gilt.

Se il destassi?

In the noontime daybeams
Venetian spun,
Gemini lay, Roman.

145. Shirley

R.I.P. Shirley Verrett
(May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010)

Teetering in at
half-past-ten,
old Shirley
appears –

shopping bag draped over
one arm, pink jacket
dotted in faux
crystals:

rolling my eyes,
I grin over at
Mark at the
shelves,
stocking;

Shirley has caught
as victim some
helpless mother,
baby slung over her
front side:

she is being assaulted with
ornery small talk
interspersed
with
diva-tales –

I’m not quite sure
(half-the time)
if most of these are
true;

sometimes it all seems
so wonderful
I think she’s
senile;
or maybe lives like this
existed:

Carmen, Normas,
Ebolis; her latest
unruly
soprano –
some language I don’t
quite
understand,
standing here in my
green-and-white
grocer’s uniform

puzzled, and
perplexed.

137. Icarus

 

Curious,
the brown and grey
fruit fly
slips quickly
into view;

perched briefly
on the
tumbler’s
edge –

Plip!
Hops, indiscreetly
upon the
untouched
water:

Terror at being
trapped;
or to human
eyes
trying to remember
the breastroke,
quasi-comically:
limbs flailing as
wings begin to
sink;
milliseconds
before the struggle

ends.

An imperceptible
hush
and there is
Ophelia,
laid calmly to rest
in the still
liquid

Thomas did not need
write a mad
scene;
Shakespeare, a
play,
nor Berlioz, an
art song
or
Delaroche,
a painting;

In grim
fascination
have I surveyed
this picturesque
suicide,
having the power to
inform, yet
powerless
to save;
a strange sadism and an
equal
guilt:

129. Un giro sol

Dawning on me

there are eyes staring back;
that what I thought was
vacant air is
occupied
by eyes and a
soul

Startled,
I am caught in a strange
reciprocity
and idle musing is
no more

Here
for only a slice of 5
minutes, it impossible to say
more, to do
more

Yet it is precisely
this impossibility of a
mutual stare,

resounding through the
lutes of centuries
that fill our minds with
perplexed obsession and
our hearts with
unexpected
longing

Dark stranger on a
spiralling bike:
snow-tipped tree leaves shift their
skirts
and uncommon beauty
glints in the
dappled light;

126. Callas Cries

So tired –
it is past anyone’s
logical bedtime

The crowd is still
cheering
the cast and crew
all
jubilant

I am so tired

Tired of E-flats
and flute cadenzas and
blood-soaked
gowns

I am tired of this
migrant
life,
receptions,
recitals,
rehearsals,

(Hear how the
audience roars –)

I missed a word tonight
in the duet with
Edgardo,
ran out of breath in the
mad scene…

Audiences hear
what they want to
hear:
success is in their
eager
hands

Roars of lions
today
jeers and boos
tomorrow –
what is success?

I failed today,
I could have done
better;
I can always do
better –
is it all absolute?
Is it just
subjective?

124. Infinite Possibility

Amidst these grayscale skeletons
the mysteries of life are
solvable

Entwining voices, produced of
searching fingers,
dancing, inextricable

Counterpoint and
imitation, sequences
up and
down;
modulations,
stretto,
Tierce de
Picardie

Predictable,
inexplicable!

A mortal
who,
inspired by some grand
device
set forth these
mystic harmonies and
countersubjects

How small we
are,
fumbling with a simple
fugue, one
of a
lethal oeuvre
none can quite
explain!

116. Zerbinetta

Callous, cold,
and full of spite:
degenerate, the
courtesan is teasing
once again…

We were all of us
Ariadne,
pining after one such
demigod

Retired
to a life of trickery, cheap wine, and
heroin:
they are all the same,
one after another,
wicked,
implacable.

It is a life of
hard tales,
lost hopes, and
splintered dreams.

Yes,
some are meant to
saunter aimlessly on a
ridiculous pedestal,
Emilia Marty in her
39th century, gazing over
blazing lights
into an audience who is
not there.

111. Irresolution

Photo by: Steven Hausler / Reuters

Something is lost in the
delivery:
cold words.

Unresolved cadence of
distant trains whistling;
the world becomes real when we step
outside, the searing
pitch
tugs at skin,
sketches
eardrum

Cold words cannot make me cower
unintelligibly on the
carpeted floor,
huddled in strange
depressive ecstasy

But it is the beginning
of that,
the start of something, of
everything;

little muddy footprints on the
Colorado snow
plains,
insignificant, leading
nowhere, leading
somewhere

106. Insensatez

So soon forgotten,
nylon strings drift out the other
ear,
scarce registered
by one.

Bathed in the exotic, balmy
air,
sun-soaked and
carefree:
indeed these are sweet nothings,
measured not in single drops of
liquor caressing your
throat, rather
a forgettable nectar,
enigmatic, ephemeral.

It’s Portuguese to you,
it’s all the same lithesome
beauty that is so
foreign, so
unintelligible.

It is what tourists
accept, yet do
not seek,
experience but do not
remember.

I could not expect more:
sitting like Turandot
enshrouded by cross-hatched
palm-leaf shadows.
As one breeze carries my
voice, futile, one shadow
to the next, I am
the only constant,
alone in my
impossible artistry.



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85. Mogliettina

When he was here, he would
call me “piccina mogliettina”,
“olezza di verbena”,
charmed me with his suave
Italian, American English, or
whatever…

Where is he now, Butterfly,
where is he fucking now?
Butterfly, you are young, you are
lithe and
beautiful;

take these foolish dreams of
youth and pretty
words, and live a long and
happy life.

As you enter Act II,
don’t you realize, he’s
boinking someone else
back in the States?
Isn’t this how it always
is?

84. Tosca is Lost

Tosca is lost:
Tosca is lost!
Tosca is lost at the grocery.
Tosca is lost;
Tosca is confused –
the flyers said the mushrooms were on
sale today;
Tosca does not even like mushrooms,
but Tosca does not like this new diet
either;

Tosca is lost:
Tosca is lost;
all is lost at the
checkout line.
Tosca glares enviously at the row next to
hers;
fatsos with pounds upon
pounds of
FOOD.
Tosca wishes she could still eat that much,
picks up a magazine to distract
herself;
skinny bitch, this is what she’s become
too;
Tosca throws it down;
gastric bypass wasn’t such a good
idea…

Tosca is lost,
Tosca is lonely.
Tosca is not liking the piles of music left unread on the couch.
Tosca takes her up her
Scarpia (little yipper) in her
weary arms;
groceries will wait…
Tosca is lost,
but Tosca listens to her
doctor.

Tosca is lost,
Tosca is out of breath:
Tosca has gotten herself lost in -
Central Park; Tosca is not used to this -
exercise thing -
Tosca sits on a bench,
jealously watching the runners jog
by.
Goddamn, your glistening bodies are
perfect, stop flaunting them at
me!
Tosca does not -
understand -
why people continue -
to masochistically -
put themselves through Hell when -
they already look like the -
Greek pantheon,
maybe
better –

Tosca is lost…
Tosca is lost…
Tosca dreams she is a
skinny model, impossible size
-2,
walking down the catwalks in
Milano,
but the audience is not applauding.
They want her to sing, but
Tosca –
Tosca can’t –
she can’t sing a
Goddamn
note!

BEEPBEEPBEEP!
Tosca is late!

Tosca is found,
Tosca is found in the dressing room.
Tosca to stage in 5.
Tosca slips her black wig
over her itchy hairnet,
tiara in place, red gown wrinkle
free, clip-on diamond
earrings on each
lobe;
scales run themselves automatically
in her insured throat.
“Vissi d’arte, vissi d’arte…”
she finds herself chanting,
adding “Fuck Scarpia” in between
iterations, for good measure.
Tosca to stage, Tosca to stage.

Tosca is found, Tosca is finally
found, running dramatically,
breathlessly onto stage:
Tosca sings, Tosca
Goddamn sings the
bleeding chunks
away.

Deborah Voigt's transformation.
Left: Aida, 2011 (before).
Right: Salome, 2006 (after).

74. Blandine Verlet,

When your Chromatic Fantasy and
Fugue
spun its sinewy lines around
the tickled folds of my
enamoured brain, I –
bliss tangled its webs around
my mind.

Bach never seemed so fresh, alive!
You inhabit and characterize
each prelude,
fugue,
toccata, partita, sinfonia
with such a kaleidoscope of
brilliance & beauty;
my synesthesia eye danced
to your metallic
gigue.

Never has an outmoded
instrument, a vestigial of the
past
seemed so present, so
full of “joie de vivre”.
Indeed, the clavier
smiles, “Well-Tempered”
once more:
what need have we for
pianistic ruminations
when such subtlety, illusion
of dynamic contrast,
coy rubato enchant our
modern ear?

Take us back, illusioniste,
to the time when
meadows sang
in rapt, enchanted
silence…

Blandine Verlet performs Bach's Partitas:



Buy on Amazon (Canada)

Buy on Amazon (US)

72. Early bird

Photons underwhelm me;
I am inundated
and wake silently.
It is a slow, effortful awakening,
as if it will be my last.

It is quiet in the house;
the babies are still asleep.
I did not dream last night;
my head is wrung dry of
thought.

Sounds materialize from beyond my
window –
I have risen with the birds.
I do not believe I have ever
waken early enough,
while an adolescent sun is still
starting to dawn
and the robins are courting
in the dewy
trees.

The blinds draw sleepy stripes
across my back as I
turn;
I would like to listen to these
creatures for a while.

There is such a primal
sense of nostalgia,
of melancholy,
as their songs fade away
and morning begins.

Why do the birds stop singing?
A few precious notes are caught
by the scant
daylight and left to glitter on the buttercups
as the prima donnas’
exclusive contract ends and all the little
divas shoo their divos
back into nests and become once again
ordinary little songbirds;

until the next day, and day
after,
when I will no longer hear them,
until their voices one day
shut up in their throats
and not even the early
riser
can ever hear them sing
again.

70. In a moment

From the epicentre,
a note rings, born from her
assertive hands.

Metres away, so close
to hear her breathe,
I hang from Loge 13, Seat A3;
I can only see the back,
her floral-printed black
chemise.

Enslaved by each phrase,
each mordent, trill, and
ornament,
the subtleties of the
da capo.

Why is it this one second
of rapture is forever captured by my
mind’s eye:
this one movement,
this one bar, this one
note?
Reverberating forever
like some God-sent
miracle –

artistry personified
in a micromoment of
Mozartian
bliss:

On hearing pianist Hélène Grimaud perform her Resonances programme at her 2011 Royal Conservatory début.

Buy CD here.
Download MP3 here.