Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Mozart's Cry


The music plays inside my head
a waltz, a symphony, a song,
a hymn, a chorale, an opera perhaps
I don’t yet know precisely but
all in simultaneous eruption
plays, plays, plays
rages, ravages, pounds
within the slender membrane
of my skull
demanding, screaming, migraining
to escape, to be let out, to be set free
notes, chords, instruments clamor
at synapses
the noise strictly incoherent
flows through my veins, my arteries,
my discordant capillaries until it
bursts
the ends of my fingers,
smearing the sheet music red,
a glorious violence.


This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Music Notes Background by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

21 comments:

Louise Gallagher said...

What a symphony!

What a song!

Maureen said...

This poem reminds me of a time I attended a Merce Cunningham performance to John Cage music. We had to listen through earphones. A few people, never before exposed to Cage, got up and left. The amazing thing was how it all worked.

I also imagine this poem as a metaphor for a headache, the kind of migraines I get that leave me seeing red.

herbhalstead said...

Glynn, this speaks to how I often feel during creative moments... excellent.

Maude Lynn said...

This is incredible.

katdish said...

I've felt that before in many creative processes. You've captured it so well here.

Hope said...

a perfect description of an artist at work.
loved it!

Anonymous said...

the birth of the music of mozart

Anonymous said...

Can you feel the tingle?

hedgewitch said...

I'm terribly ignorant about classical music, but Mozart is among the few composers (along with Bach and Beethoven)I can identify by ear when I hear his work, and I feel that behind the intense and intricate order, there is indeed something like this poem going on. My own creative frenzies don't reach that peak, but I have words and not sounds to deal with. A fascinating poem in subject, that could lead in many directions other than the one I just described.

Brian Miller said...

to me this speaks of one lost in their art...or maybe inspired by another...sometimes songs do that with me...so reasonate they bring me to write...

Beachanny said...

Yeah, that is it! Felt it before I could walk, begged, pleaded for my piano. Feel incomplete without it. And when I play even now (not so accomplished as once I was) it's as though I leave it there on the keys..much different than my writing. Excellent write, writing my emotions there. Gay @beachanny

Linda said...

Magnificent Glynn!

Anonymous said...

Excellent interpretation of the struggles of possessing such genius qualities Glynn. The poem flies off the page like a string section about to burst into flames.

Bubba said...

Sounds like you've got a serious earworm, Glynn! (LOL!)

Nice One Shot!

(I dig Mozart too!)

gautami tripathy said...

Wonderful song within your mind!

Here is my One Shot:
musical whirlwind

Jenne' R. Andrews said...

often so hard to convey what music does to us and for us, especially that good intense inner music-- beautiful! xxxj

~*Michelle*~ said...

WOW! just WOW! This was amazing!

Marshy said...

whatever the medium i could so understand the screaming to get it out..before losing what goes on in the mid..very well said glynn..all the best pete

Claudia said...

you have no idea how much i can relate to this...love it

Corbie said...

Glynn, I can also relate. I think we are all creative and when we hit the high moment, like your symphony, we can hardly contain it. Thank you for sharing.

Steve Isaak said...

Chatty, fun work with some great phrasing (e.g., "glorious violence").