I have been experimenting with words, music, art. This is another post that almost got deleted or delayed. I wrote it with a different choice of music, but I kept coming back to the one I am posting. Is this a poem? Yes. My poem, my rules~
I would love it if one of you used this outline or parts of the outline but inserted a different song and art. This post is a continuation of last Sunday’s post about my struggle to write a poem with a musical theme.
The first poem I wrote I cannot share with you because I submitted it for consideration in an anthology of poems about music and it was accepted;-) It turned into a meaningful exercise for me.
Imagine attempting to write a poem about music and nothing happens. It was my first experience with writer’s block in quite a while. I remember looking around in the room where I had been writing (without success) and then a lightbulb when off in my head!
The room where I composed the poem has a theme. The poem I wrote is titled Surround Sound Elements and it’s about… well, you will be able to read it in an anthology book called The Poet’s Symphony, but for now you will have to settle for the one below;-) One more thing. I wanted to put spaces between the instruction words and the rest of the line, but my app keeps deleting the spaces so I put the words in italics.
Vinyl Rituals
stop playing those tapes that manifest fear in your brain
begin the rituals
breathe deep breath inhale exhale repeat
browse through iconic album covers of timeless art and faces of old friends
reminisce about the legacies of maestros, rock stars, concertos, concerts
return to scenes that make you feel something again
select the music
place record on the turntable and
bring it to life
watch it spin slowly
lift the needle and gently place it on the groove
…the first spark of connection between machine and vinyl reignites the journey…
resurrect the vocalist Chester Bennington singing the song One More Night
remember the first time you heard him sing the song live in honor of his friend Chris Cornell’s death
reflect about the first time you heard him sing this song again two months later after his death
understand both of them struggled in different bodies with similar demons
relax listen to this gift
bequeathed from a soul
that yearned for peace
too fragile to continue
learn from the words of this song
let go of pains from ghosts of the past
linger longer in this life
choose to live
reach out to someone because someone is waiting to hear your song