Poems inspired by Bach

Dark Age Soul

Frothy, bitter,
Snowcap spumes
Cloak the rich beer
Brewed in the cellar
Beneath pews
Glowing blue
As a glass Christ
Stains the sun,
And on Sunday
Organ pipes
Rain notes
Like emerald eyes
Peering through
A diaphanous veil.


Counterpoint

Notes spill out
Like sonic butterflies,
Ephemeral, gold, gossamer wings
With inlaid rubies reflecting
Like stained glass
For an unmeasured moment
Before they vanish.

In the halls
Of breadcrumb, vermin, and strychnine,
Someone carves
The elegy
Of a night without stars
Out of the strings of a cello.

Music rattles
In the Gothic bell tower,
And bats flee
On leather wing
From transubstantiated ecstasy.

And in the claustrophobic hollow,
With a mattress like a giant bag
Of stale marshmallows
Sagging under him,
An unkempt man
Makes the cello weep
For his fellow inmates.


Fanfare

Sand,
Arabian sand,
Like a desiccated beach
Began to rust,
Then to coagulate
In stones of blood
Undulating in craggy hills,
And as I rose
Toward a blinding white Cyclops
In an almost white sky
And peered over the summit,
Thousands of cactus
Raised a green, spiny arm or two
In silent salutations,
Like clay soldiers
Entombed with an ancient emperor.