Burning Piano Poem

[Somewhere around 2011, members of Tin Can Buddha an artistic-musical collective based out of Lexington, Kentucky, in the manner of Annea Lockwood’s performance art from 1968, burned an old piano in a field as promotion for an event. They asked me to score something for the video that was produced of the burning. I got a few friends together to read through the score, and we recorded it and sent it off. Years later, for a performance with the Tin Can Buddha, I wrote a poem to recite while the video was displayed in the background, with live improvisational accompaniment.]

Our idea of memory is something like a piano, a thing to be played and enjoyed, annoy us in our sleep, frighten us into understanding, making us dance to forget. Burning a big hunk of wood feels good, and all the music ever plucked, must come together, particles striving toward the sun. And so, my history can come together in unadulterated ways – like fire, most democratic destruction. But as a fire burns, it is human empathy with which we see only destruction– truly it is a creator, an amalgamator, forging a new mixture of chemicals. So randomness, generated by our early generation artificial intelligence, has forged the below.  

interplanetary chaos 
and my tears – like Keat’s Isabella – 
now soot-gray waves of stone electric Blue & White, seeping 
the Fantasy of American promises 
looking for the green secret of existence – 
And all this talk of nationalism 
all the beauties of living 
“I want to be buried in between a Starbucks and a Five Guys 
thinking himself an artist 
and clicked open our skulls 
through a series of backward mirrors 
wrapped in ideal plastic 
Hey, maybe if every one likeswhat every one else does We can achieve:That so,
great,MonoCulture 
a lovely morning sir, she said 
to rip them off and speak a new language – 
the metal cages of my brain 
the bell of bells no longer tolls 
Introducing: the Great American Tragedy or Comedy 
omniscient Mother of love. 
the children of Pornography and Monotony 
wearing the pages of their books 
I Ameri'can and I Ameri'won't 
I buckled on my religion 
and that is the Frosty Robert 
I am just an ape packing up my things 
staring glaring blaring 
the non-monkey 3’s. 
I don’t remember the kiss we just had 
friends and dreamers and wonderers and lovelovelovers 
all the beautiful people I knew, stayed in high school 
she’s a mare of a woman 
well scrape me like a fucking lemon 
“Bring me my gun.” 
The meadow sits there. I walk toward it. 
grown from strong and delusional bonobo fertilizer. 
and it’s in that corner of sentimentality 
staring into the new flower of Narcissus 
a Comedy in scenes 
love is always here 
and bring the hummingbirds in spring 
frolicking away the darkness 
lucky lucky lucky to enjoy a bourbon 
RedflashingWhiteflashingBlue 
there’s a baseball field at the end of town. 
a big laugh iNside everything 
They were all wrong when they said what they thought they knew 
toxic moondeath, inquisitive 
coming out in a smile from your divinity 
“I cannot speak, the light is too bright, the light too beautiful 
lucky to have your eyes 
Are your clothes on dear homo sapiens? 
a monologue, janusfaced and smiling 
and “how was the food Mr. Miller?" 
and Jesus says: 
into the bright coral mornings of Amsterdam 
O multicolored soul 
bomb warfare high fructose corn syrup 
when your soul and body were still swimming together 
Bunch of Men, just standing around 
lichens tortoising their way up trees 
not knowing what to do, whether to puke or shit 
at wishing me the best of Irish Smiles 

a manifesto (?) of commitment amidst the city of splendor

My life can be defined 
as I suppose all lives can –  
in their own uniquely common ways –  
as a continual awakening.  
From grand darkness, into immediate brilliance 
and then the slow and steady awakening –  
some dulling toward the end… (if one is ‘lucky’) 
and then to a place unknown… 
most likely the grand darkness, yet again.  

as it is right now, 
a Wednesday morning  
approaching nine in the morning, 
the excited bells of Venice 
sing their historicity every half hour; 
with a few soft lullabies in between, 
the sun is bright, the breeze cool 
and the city, strange in its splendor 
awakens for the 582,540th day 
(give or take a few)