Long Scales Poems
Long Scales Poems. Below are the most popular long Scales by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Scales poems by poem length and keyword.
Musicianship
(3 May 2014; For my son Steven, an ACCOMPLISHED guitarist)
Real musicianship can truly drive you nuts—
There really are no “ifs”, “ands”, or “buts”.
Practice, study, memorize, then more practice--
Is this just an obsession or complete madness?
Learning chord inversions, arpeggios, and scales
Is like reaching Heaven by crossing through seven Hells.
It wouldn’t be bad if there were only a dozen majors,
But there’s also those other dozen minors.
What’s worse, it seems we’re never finished
Because there’s also augmented and diminished,
The major/minor/augmented/dominant sevenths.
And symmetrical double-flatted diminished sevenths,
And if this harmonic mess is not enough,
All those dissonant Jazz chords get really tough…
Such as the sustained seconds and fourths,
The sevenths add nines, sixths, blah-blah-blah, elevenths.
And if learning all this isn’t already extraordinary,
There’s music theory and music vocabulary.
Instead of just saying “get louder”, you have to “crescendo”,
Or for “fast” or “slow” you say “allegro” or “lento”.
Then there are names like Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian,
Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian.
(All being modes derived from scale C-major,
Plus each major scale also has a relative minor)
Multiple pattern exercises on guitar fretboards
Are even worse than finger drills on piano keyboards.
Worse, the string tuning on a six-string acoustic guitar
Is not quite the same as on a 4/5/6/7-string bass guitar.
It’s hard to get up on stage and routinely play
That same song, for the umpteenth time, in an inspiring way.
No wonder musicians seem to all suffer manic-depression,
From trying to play a full sets with unique expression.
All the advances in music equipment and technology
Bless and curse musicians like two-edged swords, you see,
Because all this work they do to sound like a maestro or genius
Can be counterfeited on a computer by a musical ignoramus.
But computer geeks won’t ever find that special place,
That fugue-like subtle sacred state of grace,
Which for brief moments is like deep meditation.
No, that’s the forbidden domain of the real musician.
To suggest that musicians all are just “gifted” naturally,
Is the absolute superlative worst insulting irony.
Truly, real musicianship can drive you nuts—
No, there really are no “ifs”, “ands”, or “buts”.
THE NEBULA IN THE MIRROR OF SLEEP
From the blue nebula I fell through bells of haze,
a stranger to the world's hour, through the river that dreams its own face.
Blind planets drifted in the milk of a living silence,
and the blood of light was growing inside ash-gray trees.
I dissolved into shadows with the scent of a shattered moon,
like liquid stained glass on a cathedral never begun.
Through the boundless void swam fish made of memory,
with scales from melted recollections and pollen of no category.
Your soul, a comet with eyelids of green velvet,
stirred its own echo through gardens no one ever loses.
And then I heard time blooming underneath the snow,
like a transparent lily teaching darkness how to see.
I undressed my being of its chimera bones,
and my heart drifted like a white and severe jellyfish.
In temples of melancholy, inverted springs were singing,
and clouds were sewing wings from abandoned glances.
Beneath the mantle of sadness, embroidered with salt galaxies,
our destiny was carrying a bell filled with distance.
I searched for you through the mineral sleep of blue stars,
where forests of angels grow on the skeletons of hermits.
But your face kept becoming smoke in mirrors without contour,
a god of black glass inside an uncertain empire.
Then forgetting — a flower with roots in the infinite —
slowly closed my gaze over everything I had crucified.
And I wandered through centuries like a flute without a song,
with the universe pressed against my chest, like an incantation.
The stars kept deep silence, in funereal levitations,
and shadows were giving birth to ships from sliding light.
I still carry in my blood that perfume of beginning,
when I lost myself in you and made myself lost inside myself.
And the nebula keeps growing in every thought that dies,
like a psychedelic garden of bells and distances.
Empty of life yet full of dream, I flow through cosmic echoes,
toward your unfathomable abyss, from one dusk into another.
Safe, at long last,
behind closed, locked doors and windows,
behind heavy, hanging, purple drapery:
plush, pellucid, subterranean refuge.
Far from the proverbial maddening crowd,
out of sight: a dimly lit room, bathed in
soft, golden reflections. In the centre of
the room: a single, solitary candle burning,
its flame rising, dancing, serpentine;
all around, panoramic, rustic mosaics
quiver and leap across the walls:
towering stags, drunken centaurs, gladiators, spiteful, leering gods;
the ghost of sound echoes,
bouncing through ceramic, glass, and stone hills:
Motion in Rest,
the eye of the hurricane,
the calm before the storm.
At the end of the day,
people still holy,
w/ rites still sacred,
secret, hidden eyes.
Ones "deep-dark", to be sure,
but decidedly not "dreamless".
All around: reassuring, but oddly unending smiles,
ones perpetual, fixed, but only seemingly uninhabited,
ones laid among polished scales and in tough, gleaming skin.
In a room filled with playful, reeling, ecstatic confusion and revelation
reigning supreme, the supplicants' legs fail on what seems to be a
swaying, rocking floor. Mesmerizingly bright sedan chairs invitingly blaze by the walls. Draped in luxurious purple, the divans are infinite, are more desirable, more coveted than any treasure trove, any silver gold.
A bottomless, almost overwhelming calm descends.
Outside itself, and if only for "a brief shining moment",
the Mind, in all Its glory, seems infinitely deeper, farther
reaching, more focused, but free.
The axe can no longer fall.
Thelonious Monk
piano keyboard prophet
harmonizing scales
Melody from flat to sharp
rhythm soothing to the soul
Comments: Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982) is recognized as one of the
most influential figures in the history of Jazz. He was one of the architects of
bebop and his impact as a composer and pianist has had a profound influence
on every genre of music. Thelonious Monk Institutes of Jazz are located at the
following locations: Washington Office: 5225 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite 605,
Washington, DC and Los Angeles Office: University of Southern California, 3443
Watt Way, Lower Level, Los Angeles, CA. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, a
nonprofit education organization, was founded in 1986 by the Monk family along
with the late Maria Fisher, an opera singer and lifelong devotee of music.
The devil came amongst them,
As they rang the midnight bell,
Said that one of their number,
Must taste the fires of Hell.
“Which of you is good enough,
To stand forth and not quail?
To have your sin and virtue,
Measured on my scale?”
The crowd they grovelled in the dirt,
Each guarding his own sin.
Only one man raised his chin up high,
And walked right up to him.
The devil sneered in that man’s face,
And announced, loud and cocksure,
“Pride itself is sin enough,
I doubt you’ll prove that pure.”
“What feat of ego drives you,
To think you can pass this test?
What indulgence lends you to believe,
You’re better than the rest?”
“You have me wrong, O Satan,”
The man calmly declared,
“I am a sinner bound for hell,
But I’m now fully prepared.”
“You’ll come for me eventually,
Would it be such a blow?
If I gave up the ghost right here,
And with you chose to go?”
The devil reared and flexed his claws,
Gave out a mighty hiss,
“What game of words is this you play?
I make no sense of this.”
“Oh devil, it occurred to me,
The truth of the choice I face,
If I did not come with you,
Another would take my place.”
And that man he said to Satan,
“I have no other goal,
Than to go, knowing at least,
I saved one other soul.”
The devil gnashed his teeth and then
He cut that man apart.
Plunged those claws into his chest,
Ripped out his beating heart.
But the heart still pumped and throbbed,
With life and vibrancy,
And the devil clasped it with both hands,
To stop it breaking free.
But the heart began to dissipate,
Into a ball of light,
The devil roared as it rose up,
Gently defied his might.
For evil can be thwarted,
With each small act of grace,
And souls can move on from older selves,
To find a better place.
In tattered remnants of life's final breath,
As the soul seeks the universe out,
And leaves the body from its dark soiled death,
To find the answers of its Earthly doubt.
It carries its deeds in a shadowed form,
Revealed to the souls who have gone before.
Duly weighed and measured they inform,
And judged by its creator forevermore.
It is there eternity can be found
Whether the scales gave you blessings of light,
Or casts your soul to burn with demons crowned,
To separate and to never reunite
Justice is weighed by your own measure
You are your own curse or your own treasure
contest..Where do you think you'll spend eternity
9/9/15
IN AND OF DEMOCRACY AND EQUANIMITY
Indeed, “...we are a society in deep crisis:-”
Once more and again, we continue sitting
And daily standing by, in abject nemesis:
Seemingly unconcerned about the daily
Trials and tribulations of political injustice:-
Aren’t we supposed to be a nation of deemed democracy?!
If so, how can we sit and stand by and allow this political mockery
Of freedom, justice, and constitutional-granted equanimity?!
Now is the time, and the time is now,
For those of us in caring awareness,
To be about the peaceful labors of love,
Bringing back equity and its fairness:-
Let’s get to being able to truly sing again,
About a sweet land of freedom and liberty;
A land where true democracy is sustained,
And is reflected in its glorious equality.
We can and must become a nation of peace and love;
And a land that is truly the home of the brave and free:-
A nation with balanced scales of justice hanging high above,
And one that is molded in the practice of equity for all of humanity:-
CONQUERING THE BLIND SCALES OF PATRIARCHY
Crystal cold are the pupils of some men
staring red to jailed porcelain dolls skin
dowered for the title of chastity,
your curves, your swell, they treated like machines.
You can be the light midst darkness, woman
yet why they see your body as gold mines,
your face displays no favor from their sight.
Fruits of labor you bring harvest nothing
your virginal flesh dead ere blossoming
suspended by sharp claws of ignorance?
Aged with grief but rising from conquered fears,
woman today shake white-walled home of kings
to trumpet-loud the darkness in her feet...
Wounded is her heart but still she will stand,
her message free flying high without wings
She will fight even with the threats of death
balancing blind scales of patriarchy,
Fears foregone, her bravery stifling pain,
peace and justice, equality to all
the rights for women her ever after toil!
______________________________________________________
Patriarchy - Poetry Contest
Sponsor Name - Thomas Martin
~~Placed 1st~~~
Olive Eloisa Guillermo
10:41 pm, July 16, 2015
Hey Sis,
listen to me.
I am not talking to the illness,
I am talking to you.
And I need you to hear me louder than the lies in your head.
That voice?
The one that claws at you,
that shrinks your world down to scales and numbers?
It is a liar.
It is a thief.
It is a cage.
And cages break.
Cages break.
Cages break.
You are not a problem to be fixed.
You are not a bed in a ward.
You are not a fragile body under fluorescent lights.
You are a wildfire.
Say it with me,
You are a wildfire.
You are a wildfire.
And wildfires don’t bow.
Wildfires don’t bend.
Wildfires burn through.
Do you remember who you are?
The girl who ran faster than anyone said she could.
The one who laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe.
The one who fought for me when I was too tired to fight for myself.
That’s still you.
Still you. Still you. Still you.
This illness wants you silent.
But you are not silent.
Say it
I am not silent.
This illness wants you small.
But you are not small.
Say it,
I am not small.
This illness wants you gone.
But you,
you are still here.
Still here.
Still here.
And that means you are already winning.
So hear me now:
I will not let this thing write your story.
I will not bow to it.
I will not fear it.
And neither will you.
We fight.
We rise.
We burn.
We fight.
We rise.
We burn.
Because you are my sister.
And you are so much more than this battle.
And I swear on every ounce of blood in my veins,
we will burn this sickness out of the shadows.
We will drag you back into the light.
And when you stand there,
free and furious and whole again,
the world will remember what it means
to see you rise.
After years of practice and devotion,
And playing scales until his fingers bled,
Trying musically to touch emotion,
To subtly influence both heart and head,
The Fiddler can take pride in his art form,
The music years and tears in the making,
Thoughts of future glory keeps his heart warm
While his empty belly throbs with aching.
Meanwhile, there’s a frog down by the river
Who’s singing out his song without a care.
The listening soul cannot help but shiver,
The beauty of his song much like a prayer.
The better song? Well, critics might debate…
I love them both and so I shall not rate…