The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sun 2/22/2009)

[RetroLounge]

Dissidence

               in memoriam Thelonious Monk

You have to be able to hear past the pain, the obvious
minor-thirds and major-sevenths, the merely beautiful

ninths; you have to grow deaf to what you imagine
are the sounds of loneliness; you have to learn indifference

to static, and welcome noise like rain, acclimate
to another kind of silence; you have to be able to sleep

in the city, taxis and trucks careening through your dreams
and back again, hearing the whines and sirens and shrieks

as music; you must be a mathematician, a magician
of algebra, overtone and acoustics, mapping the splintered

intervals of time, tempo, harmony, stalking or sluicing blues
scales; you have to be unafraid of redundance, and aware

that dissonance-driven explorations of dissonance
may circle back to the crowded room of resolution;

you have to disagree with everything except the piano, black
and white keys marking the path you must climb step

by half-step with no compass but the blues, no company
but your distrust of the journey, of all that you hear, of arrival.

Anthony Walton

***********

:hi:

RL & MAP

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Retro...

Hi to MAP!

Wow...what a great mix. Jazz and poetry...a perfect combo!

Thank you!

Hope you two are having a wonderful weekend!

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

2. ...

:hi:

RL & MAP

[Justpat]

3. absolutely love the last two lines.

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

4. Hello!

:hi:

RL

[Chorophyll]

5. Love this.

:thumbsup:

:hi:

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

:hi:

RL