a poem is a sermon
Just throw me an emoji, mister, if you like my song.
It only took me years to learn and drove my parents nuts,
because it didn’t start so sweet – that happened after long
and tiresome exercise until, somewhere deep in my guts,
I figured out just how to train my blistered fingers right.
It only took me years to learn and drove my parents nuts.
The world seems so out of balance.
Perhaps it’s only me and mine.
Sometimes the music for the dance
makes every step a dotted line
with the next motion left to chance.
The world keeps spinning, just the same.
It doesn’t matter if the tune
is out of rhythm. Who’s to blame
when one foot shifts its weight too soon?
It’s just a dance. It’s just a game.
Please tell me: just who pulls your strings?
I’d really like to know.
I see you making pirouettes
and flitting to and fro,
much like a butterfly, who lights
on flowers here and there,
and samples each one with delight
not getting anywhere.
Myself? I am a puppet too,
I dance a merry jig,
although I found out years ago
my role is not that big.
Maybe it’s because I’m a musician, or due to having been read to a lot before I started to read for myself at age 4, or because my family seems to be filled with generations of marvelous storytellers. Maybe it’s because I’ve studied for many years the bardic traditions of the Druids. But if seeing is believing, then hearing is belonging.
One of the things that I fear people asking, that I imagine to be the greatest torture in the world to which I can attest with personal experience in the matter, is “What kind of music do you play?” Ok, so maybe that’s a first world problem. Could be that most people even in the […]
When people talk about all the celebrity deaths at age 28, it’s always to ask, “Why did they die so young?”. But as these folks occur among your own peer group, your perspective changes. In my own case, I find myself asking, whenever reflecting back on it, “What did I do to live so much […]
Not hearing not listening ignoring sensing noticing hearing listening responding writing practicing playingmemorizing performing recording remembering18 APR 2025 © 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.