Long Decrescendo Poems

(Apropos of Black Poetic Griots)

We may not be deemed apostolic recorders
But we poets, guided with divine wisdom, are
The lay scribes thereof in the chronicling of
Our life’s sojourn in the shadowing times
we spend here on this...

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Behind your earlobe there was a birthmark that had the shape of palestine 
But they taught you in there that it was called israel 
In the hearth of your chest lied a heart full of...

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“When I am silent, I fall into the place where everything is music.”
Rumi

If life was a song,
what would be your refrain?

When instruments of fate performed
in a ballad of somber sorrows,
I floated like a ballet dancer
in...

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The last strains of decrescendo were still in my ears
Dancing at the masque party time flew leisurely on downy feathers
The night was still youthful, the breath enjoying every fragrant inhale
The last strains of the decrescendo...

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Persona

She lived her life’ wayward ways as she trusted the cover
all in one jagged place dangerously designed from mascara
made up dressed down frozen from illegitimate shadows

Did not foresee what stretched behind sagging veiled wails
mirrored complexed...

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Pondering the side view of a woman off in the distance
I couldn't help but hear the beat of the drum decrescendo 
As it got softer, the conductor called for accelerando 
But I was still pondering...

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Listening to a piece of great music
One delights
The flow
From Major to minor    and
As one goes from ecstasy to tears
             ...

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Vivaldi man of “Four Seasons”
Played his violin for a reason
While singing the strings
Excellent music he brings
Great melody it rings

“La Primavera” sole concerto
Uplifting the spirits without alto
Amsterdam, Prague, Venice and Vienna
Spectacular operas making souls remember 
Strings...

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Now, they sit still, both perched above the world.
The fleeting chance for rest, the setting sun,
Had vitalized the pair with calls of old.
They cooed into the dusk; full lungs had sung
Their memories with chirps of...

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If the sun shines
Vicious that the hands could hold its heat
If the wind whirls and wails
Turbulent, with fierceness of rushing water
If it becomes icy cold
That it could freeze the mind
If the sky, sullen and sly
Suddenly...

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It started on D - flat, 
succulent & succinct 
soft & rhythmic
loaning hearts pats. 
the wail of the piano
caressing the voices' glissando

riffs tampered with the tune, 
notes trailing tracks of crest, 
demisemiquaver pruned
by the demigod...

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In the hot A-Ga-Ming night
My wife and I skip the July 4th fireworks
At the sandbar down south on long Torch Lake

Start our own shoreline fire

Count the red electrified dorsal fins
Of the motorboat salmon swimming upstream
Migrating...

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like a miserable cockroach he wriggled
through wreckage in the sump of his life
bottle in hand and at delirious mouth
in a macabre rehearsal of final strides

what had once been a passionate waltz
had become a legless inebriated...

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Black tile summons his tears,
A note slightly in between,
As he play by ears,
The cries of his heart’s pristine.

With the dancing of his fingers,
Stepping on black and white floors,
Leaping away, but his soul lingers,
Leaving with each...

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Music, music, it’s in the air,
Here is a list of what I hear:

A B C D E F G
(1 e & a) (1 2 3)

Rhythm, beat, timing, and tempo,
Fermata, rest, and accelerando,

Forte, piano, half, and...

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THE EURIDITE MONK
   (Apropos Thelonious)

The misunderstood rhapsody
of the ebony-ivory union
reflects a oneness of time
and space fathomed
but to the freed ears
picking up the syncopation 
of mind body and soul
of the sellers and the sold;

...

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The Orchestra

Best heard alone in the silence
of blackness pre-dawn.

The hall, redolent of memories,
lighted by a single bulb-
log walls fashioned from old larch;
a metal roof above.

The orchestra of rain, wind.
Initially a hesitant patter;
Almost individual drops, far...

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Up and down my fingers fly,
connecting and leaving in the blink of an eye,
sparkling silver keys pumping up and down,
at shcool my fingers are treated with renown,
My silver rings flash in the brightly harsh light,
and...

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Musical thoughts consume my brain
 Beautiful melodies keeping me sane
 Half notes and whole notes play in my head
 Harmonious playing keeps me from seeing red
 Blood pressure goes up as if in crescendo
 Sweet...

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Hunting for treasure poems;
Midst summer morn~
I am adrift in the wilderness.


All of a sudden~
a European euphony soars
like a midnight sonata
in pianissimo and decrescendo.

I run to chase the symphony~
and to my delight,
a lilac light leads 
a...

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