Conversation

watching women come
who have learned to play you,
immature in their exuberance

but oh, sweet man, sweet music,
when they press their lips
their fingertips
are they lost to your song,

tonguing open lips like Graf,
plucking tensioned strings like Menhuin,

unrehearsed, unwilling,
do they miss near-imperceptible
nuances of vibrations, tonal
clues and comprehension;
appreciate
that only the rarest
Stradivarius Gibson,
Laurent in Parisian crystal,
plays the hand of players in return?


*Laurent was a Parisian Flute-maker who made rare and expensive crystal flutes, one of which Napoleon was said to have owned.

Prelude

Maybe for a prelude
he would play neck-tingling
butterfly-kiss notes
and baby-breath vignettes
of lip-tingling anticipation.

Maybe his music would beat
time with her heart - her chest
would cry for freedom and maybe
there would be some release.

Maybe there would be a second prelude
when he would raise the temperature
(not the tempo) with pillowy,
languorous skin-to-skin swing.

Maybe he would slow to smooth,
glossy rhythms, shimmering, sighing
heartbeat notes and phrases. Maybe
the prelude is ultimately the song.

Affettuoso Tempesta

Cloudburst and your music resonates
exploding globes to my lips,
in the trickling rivulets sucking hair to cheek;

drumming delicately on exposed shoulders,
summer sweet sparkle notes,
pizzicato waterfall melody for first violin.

Pianissimo, legato, lento
the Earth slows to listen
to a natural tremolo.

Intricate compositions arrange droplets
queuing to be played, falling into each other,
glissando into hushed, warm wetness.

Earworm

I know a song thatÕll get on your nerves....... Joe Pasquale

In a dark and silent room, the family's asleep,
words are flirting with the mind, a thousand kisses deep.

This poem wants to be a sugar cube
blocked, rigid, ornamental words
constructed perfection in 3-D glitter,
crystalline text lined up row upon row.

This poem wants to roll around your mouth,

On the Eve of Mothers' Day

After dinner coffee, sugar
constellations on the table,
mad about the boy, connection, silent
realisation that it doesn't get any easier:
thirteen and thirty-five sharing a tear.