Minor seconds (2015)

Listening to my own listless heart beating & you

beside me I discover we are minor seconds apart

tragic-chromatic   but if subtle harmony does exist

it’s a three-year-old playing fists   palms & elbows

we manage to stay out of each other’s way mostly

save for collateral clashes/catastrophes: collisions

& rhythms? look at this ventricular wall I put up

meaning: I stay regularly irregular   (always on time)

not jazz or syncopation   but syncope   synecdoche:

tickling the ivories   “you are the music until the music

stops” & with the train approaching the boom-gates’

chiasmus suggests crossed purposes        my piano

teacher’s arm reaching across me       she played the

C# and I the C   our fingers almost touching when

she said    “that’s it there, you’ll never forget it now”