Wednesday, August 28, 2013

kung-fu magic.

Kung-fu magic

fighting for, at least, something
to hold on to
That's what I know.
I'm about as alive as I can remember,
and for now, I can't seem to remember very much.

It's not that I feel, what, without life
It's more like
The barriers of memory
confine
what and how
I think of myself

For instance:
 there are times that I forget music.
Strange, because
I've been
playing music
longer than I
can remember.
I mean: really.

Some of my first memories are
playing my mother's grand piano,
bought fresh from the admiral's wife,
with higher strings
slightly rusted
from the belly
of a cargo ship,
that drifting Italian,
toward our Chesapeake.
Slammed for drama,
keys pressed like
"the day Abraham Lincoln was shot."
that's what I named it.

Quarter,
 to half,
to competition violins
crying over
a cracked bridge
in the back of a church
for old, bitter Olga.

I learned bass because
I dropped our new,
red, Mexican fender,
strangely bigger
and heavier
to my uncertain
8 year old hands.

my life can be told with music,
yet sometimes I forget.
Not just sometimes.
We're not being fair, though.
It's not really the same thing as forgetting
it's that sometimes, like earlier,
the thoughts we have are
just not including...
and...
it's not included.

Who am I?
What have I done?
Oh, god, what have I done?!
I'm fighting for myself,
against the boundaries of
our totally context sensitive lives
kung-fu magic.