Best Tympani Poems

FIRST MOVEMENT (Minor Key)

Times such as these test body soul and mind
So should our thoughts be pain and dark confined
Or loosed to concentrate on brighter...

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~ This poem is written in the 8686 syllable count style of one of my favorite Emily Dickenson poems, 'I Felt a Funeral in My...

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Enchanted was I with a cloying scent...
whiffs of wild magnolia
mingled with the woodsy tang
of her lemon verbena perfuming the air
Like Samson's strength, the sun's threads...

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All music is relational
Even if the instrument itself is unconscious: 
Like tree leaves in a breeze
Telegraph their praise in God's presence,
Dot and dash an earthy...

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pitch black ...
like ink ... or drowning in oil
only she could breathe
barely ...
heart thrumming in her ears like tympani
it was all she could hear
thankfully ...
she...

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...inspired by 'Portrait Of A Lady' by T.S. Eliot


On winter days the view outside is nebulous at best,
within, the furniture is as it always was,...

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THE NUTCKRACKER

Did you see it
Hear it?
Balanchine’s choreography
Tschaikowsky’s music
The New York City Ballet

Speak of dancing?
Speak of music?
Neither can describe art
It must be inwardly felt – 
...

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Salubrious antipasto
Trimmed to be vociferous
Left without the tympani
Holding up a symphony
Greased well guaranteed articulate
Inundated synchrony
Molded into ebony
Gone on before the starting gate
Innate
Careening toward a screening
Where...

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There are concerts in the sky
playing cosmically on high—

be they grouping in formation 
or harmonious creation,

fashioned synesthetically,
astro-energetically,

with conclusion or collusion,
stellar scenes in grand profusion,

gravitationally steady,...

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I slip in unobtrusively 
and take a seat in back, 
the orchestra is tuning up, 
I open up my pack 
and take a rolled up...

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AT THE CONCERT

the magic moment
in that silence just before
the maestro’s down beat

when the tympani 
begins a soft roll
and the trumpets rise

just before contact
his bow about...

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I slip in unobtrusively 
and take a seat in back,
the orchestra is tuning up, 
I open up my pack
and take a rolled up magazine 
with...

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...inspired by 'Portrait Of A Lady' by T.S. Eliot


On winter days the view outside is nebulous at best,
within, the furniture is as it always was,...

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On winter days the view outside is nebulous at best,
within, the furniture is as it alway was, and I am waiting,
waiting for a glimpse of...

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Ask Nothing of this World

What is this?
What sleek retribution is held within the
Slightest movement on the soil?
What slim issues stance is almost broken
In cadence and...

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