Tag Archives: arguments

Counterpoint: Domestic Strife and Miles ’64

A flurry of words assaults the ear
as she storms back in the room,
alto voice filling the space
left by the withering blast
of the horn; the false lull breaks

as the drum, relentless, kicks
forward the time, and her growl
bites off the bar viciously,
saying, listen close and learn –
you don’t know my opinion.

No, no, that’s my quick response,
block chords of the piano
trying to fix the segue,
substituting chord after chord,
as the bass beneath pushes

us ahead, red hot and mad,
working the room with anger;
the murderous notes fly wild,
burning away useless charts
as Miles and I turn our backs,

and say, “Never mind.”

The head that began it all
now lost, deliberately,
only tensions and guide tones
suggesting of melody,
her alto pauses and breathes

as the snare drum snaps, alert,
finding the primal level
in our talk, the undertow
where the nothing we share breeds
and lets loose its dark malice.

A conversation, I think,
is not about streams of words
in space from a single voice,
but interplay of accent;
subtle questions in each pause

a spur driving another line,
or emphasis, amplifying
the other’s words, pushing back
perhaps only with a breath
to change rhythm and the tune,

like saying, “So What?”

For the song is not possessed
by one alone; it weaves and moves
from alto to first, trumpet,
then to bass and to the drum,
brass bell, then ivory key,

as moistened reed gives way, back
to the brass, struck on its edge
by wire brush; each one pushing,
working off of each other,
waiting to get the last word.

Now she’s back in the kitchen,
but her solo I block out;
focusing my quiet vamp
’til she sits out a chorus
and I can speak my own phrase

as she turns her back to me,
thinking, like Miles, of control,
giving me a bit of space,
with an irritating cool
that shows she is the leader.

The band says, “We hate that.”

Revised version 10.31.2001

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With an Unarmed Foe

You call those claws? Withdraw those nubs,
and come back when your talons grow;
I have no time to make retort
against the feeble likes of you.

You say the world agrees with you?
Well, that just proves the world a fool,
that would admire a steaming mass
of horse manure, long as it’s fresh.

You say you’ve friends to state your cause
in fisticuffs and bloody games;
I’m not surprised. Who was it said
of violence, “dullard’s last resort”?

Call off your hounds, your hawks, your shrews
(they bore me beyond reason’s edge),
unless you mean to (and you don’t)
give me respect you have not learned.

05 AUG 2007

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Your Own Words

What do I care? They’re only words,
flung out in speech like careless pearls;
it’s not as if they can raise boils
or lay an endless, babbling curse.

Oh, wait; that’s not entirely true.
For in the Celtic lands, the bard
could with their words alone transform
a thing in such a way.

What do I care? Those bards are dead;
were their pale spirits gathered here,
each duly armed with sticks and stones,
I doubt they’d raise a bruise.

Well, wait; I’d like to take that back,
and years of useless, pointless talk
avoiding one small, simple truth;
that your own words can hurt you.

07 APR 2006

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Volume is no substitute

Volume is no substitute for power;
It’s not the loudest shouts that prove most true.
These sounds that shake foundations may undo
in minutes what took builders countless hours,
but mere feats of destruction can’t compete
with the small, quiet moments of creation,
wherein the world, envisioned as complete,
becomes reality. And the frustration
of those whose gift consists of only noise,
whose talents lie in laying waste, in spoil,
is that they cannot know the simple joy
of water when it is not brought to boil.

03 JUL 2005

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Recrimination

I could dredge up every wrong and each intentioned slight
to catalog the way the world has hurt me, or just might
and in that laundry list of ills imagined, or in fact,
find solace in a victim’s role to explain what I lack.
But if I fail to count as well the angry words I spoke,
the thoughtless little things I’ve done, the sarcasm and jokes,
then I have not been truthful, nor have I learned much at all;
just made excuses for myself to built a higher wall
throwing all blame for what I am beyond it, out of sight,
and with it, any hope of balance or setting things right.

Because although the world is hard and seems sometimes just pain,
there is no one at fault but me despite my sad refrain
that evil forces hold me back and do not let me grow.
Believing that is one thing, but it does not make it so.
And every time I point a finger to some separate cause,
or seek to change the world without first fixing my own flaws
there is no revolution, no epiphany or grace,
but only more confusion in my mirror’s tear-stained face.
Sure, my environment is part of who and what I am;
but unless I accept my flaws and start to give a damn
about the way that I feed into what destroys and kills
there is no way to move beyond what I perceive as ills.

They say that truth’s a pathless land, that each of us, alone
and naked, must confront our fears ere they be overthrown.
Well, honesty’s a two-edged sword with not much of a hilt;
disuse will turn its blade to rust before much blood is spilt.
Each cut made in another’s flesh will crease the wielder’s hand,
and only with much practice can the user understand
that truth, like revolution, starts with small, un-noticed nicks —
in private; and in spite of one’s brave public politics.

04 MAR 2005

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For Stephen Stills

We have become so polarized. The lines
are drawn so black and thick between each side,
the pickets filled with stark and ugly words
that only emphasize a hate that grows

when one’s own thoughts have turned to stone
fit just for use as weapons behind walls,
where in a soldier’s stance we fear what change
would come if doubt encroached upon our minds.

Our single drops of rain gather for storms
that we would have directed at our foes;
yet as the skies turn somber and morose,
we each lament, and blame the restless clouds.

Is this the force that would improve the world,
with great lambasting vitriol and spite?
Have we forgotten that the ends become
perverted by such cold and heartless means?

With scorn emblazoned on our barbed wire hearts,
we seek to prove our way the truth and light;
but bury any hope for growth or peace
and for compassion dig a shallow grave.

04 FEB 2005

What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the streets
Singing songs, and a-carrying signs
Mostly say, “Hooray for our side”
— from For What It’s Worth,
by Stephen Stills and recorded by Buffalo Springfield
during the Vietnam War

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Counterpoint: Domestic Strife and Miles ’64

A flurry of words assaults the ear
as she storms back in the room,
alto voice filling the space
left by the withering blast
of the horn; the false lull breaks

as the drum, relentless, kicks
forward the time, and her growl
bites off the bar viciously,
saying, listen close and learn –
you don’t know my opinion.

No, no, that’s my quick response,
block chords of the piano
trying to fix the segue,
substituting chord after chord,
as the bass beneath pushes

us ahead, red hot and mad,
working the room with anger;
the murderous notes fly wild,
burning away useless charts
as Miles and I turn our backs,

and say, “Never mind.”

The head that began it all
now lost, deliberately,
only tensions and guide tones
suggesting of melody,
her alto pauses and breathes

as the snare drum snaps, alert,
finding the primal level
in our talk, the undertow
where the nothing we share breeds
and lets loose its dark malice.

A conversation, I think,
is not about streams of words
in space from a single voice,
but interplay of accent;
subtle questions in each pause

a spur driving another line,
or emphasis, amplifying
the other’s words, pushing back
perhaps only with a breath
to change rhythm and the tune,

like saying, “So What?”

For the song is not possessed
by one alone; it weaves and moves
from alto to first, trumpet,
then to bass and to the drum,
brass bell, then ivory key,

as moistened reed gives way, back
to the brass, struck on its edge
by wire brush; each one pushing,
working off of each other,
waiting to get the last word.

Now she’s back in the kitchen,
but her solo I block out;
focusing my quiet vamp
’til she sits out a chorus
and I can speak my own phrase

as she turns her back to me,
thinking, like Miles, of control,
giving me a bit of space,
with an irritating cool
that shows she is the leader.

The band says, “We hate that.”

31 JUL 1994, revised 31 OCT 2001

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