Music I find moving - listen to atleast one!

Bach - Fugue in D minor

This one is first for a reason... but I don't have much to say about it. The subject just gets me. With a total whopping 3 endings, 2 of which are deceptive, this piece just keeps you listening over and over and over... Just give it a listen.

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Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor

I was at the Camelview 5 in Scottsdale with a certain Katelyn Roberts about a year ago when I heard an orchestral transposition of this piece played over the theatre's sound system. I made note to my friend that I was familiar with the music and moved my attention elsewhere.
For those of you who have seen "The Tree of Life," you'll know that the movie's soundtrack is quite fenominal, filled with all kinds of awesome classical music. Certainly enough, toward the middle of the film, Bach's Toccata and Fugue had a brief spotlight when the father, an avid musician, sits at an organ and begins to play. While I thought it would have been more neat to hear a more unknown piece.
Laughing, I leaned over and said, "This is the same piece of music we heard earlier."
I don't think she got it.

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Vivaldi

This piece was transcribed to harpsichord by Bach, but I give Vivaldi credit for its creation. This one has all kinds of dynamic changed and different melodic ideas. If you only listen to one, listen to this one. It has the most variety.

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Bach - Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor

There's only one passacaglia credited to Bach. This is it. I wrote an essay about this piece and how it inspired my educational path. Hopefully it will get me into Barrett at ASU! In a nutshell, I compaired the concrete subject to my character, using the dissonance in the melodies to compare to rough patches in my life and the resolutions as... well, resolutions. There's more to it, but its not worth writing about because I plan on posting said essay when I get the results back. (June 15)

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O, dreary wrist!

Why stumble in Suspension stating
you've lost your way in Passing mist?
Despite the nearby Neighbor bating
Escape from unseen list?
Inside the Dominant heart of scarring foes,
Relentless Deception hides finality:
There is a Tonic for your woes.
A Contrapuntal cleansing for reality.

The Craving

A crimson drop ran down the wall of a stainless steel sink before merging into the little puddle formed at the bottom, swirling around, and disappearing down the drain. Looking at his pinpointed pupils through a bathroom mirror, Steve unclamped his right hand from the edge of the sink and rinsed it under the flowing water. A little piece of flesh, hanging off his pointing finger, danced furiously in the flowing stream. With a sharp, cringing inhalation, Steve pulled his hand near his chest, cradling it with his left hand. His eyes met with his finger and he assessed the damage. The flesh between his second and third knuckle hung onto his finger by the smallest amount of skin. Through the bleeding he could see the bone in his finger. The skin around the injury carried the markings of teeth.

With a crisp inhalation, he grabbed the piece of flesh. He exhaled as he yanked. The skin didn’t tear off until peeling past his fingernail. Steve swore as he threw the bloody piece into the hole in the counter. With a deep sigh, he finished rinsing the blood off of his hands and splashed a bit of water over his clammy face. Then he noticed the indiscreet red stains on his shirt.

Damn.

Loosening his tie and unbuttoning his polo, he noticed the stains had soaked through to his undershirt.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Steve buttoned his shirt back up and sloppily fixed his tie.  With a wad of paper towels pressed to his finger, he cracked the bathroom door open and peered around. The coast was clear. A cringe of pain shot through his hand as he pushed the bathroom door completely open and hurriedly walked past a pair of secretaries. One of them looked up to greet Steve, but stayed quiet. He didn’t make eye contact.

Relieved at covering the short distance back to his cubicle, he plopped into his chair, bumping into his desk as he did so. His computer’s ‘ribbon’ style screensaver deactivated, revealing an unproductive afternoon’s work. He took a look at the unfinished performance report, the cursor blinking mid-sentence. The last word on the page was “unsatisfactory.”

That’s just awesome.
                He pressed ‘ctrl + s’ then ‘alt + f4,’ saving and closing the document.

Steven rolled opened the top drawer in his desk, removed the white plastic organizer, and pulled out a small first aid kit.

-

Due to his firm’s reluctance to higher more employees than necessary, overflow mail often found its way into the cubicles most near the mail room. Steve’s desk just happened to be one of those lucky individuals with frequent mail duty. The mail would pile up. He’d barely have a quarter of his week’s work done by Wednesday, just to have some unattractive woman in a denim dress drop a bin of mail in his cubicle.

“Opened and sorted by 5,” she would say.

I’m a data analyst, not a mail boy.

And so Steven’s work would suffer, and the mail employees definitely didn’t owe him any favors either.

But eventually, he outgrew his hate for mail. When the stress of his usual work relentlessly piled up, the mail provided a nice distraction from tedious work. He bought an envelope opener and perfected his sorting movements. He became the mail woman’s asset. Although he felt opening mail wasn’t resume quality work, he began to take pride in the gigantic stack of empty envelopes he would produce in a short period.

Late one day, near the end of a particularly large stack of money orders, Steve had somehow managed to cut the tip of his finger off his the envelope opener.  He bled furiously, nearly ruining a stack of checks as he stood up and hurried to the bathroom. He bumped into his boss as he turned out of his cubicle, bloodying both of their shirts.

On his way home that day, Steve stopped by a convenience store and picked up a first aid kit.

-

With his finger wrapped up, Steve glanced at his desk clock. Its inner workings were exposed through a glass frame. The roman numerals and hands were gold plated. There was a diamond at the tip of the pointers.

What a dumb gift. I hate my mother.

He squinted to see the blurry numerals. 4:39. He immediately clocked out at his computer, stood up, and began to walk towards the exit hallway.

Certain enough, Steve’s boss found him as he approached the door.

“Where are you going?” he said with an aggravated tone. They were shorthanded enough. “It’s not five yet!”

Steve made an involuntary gesture towards his right hand, cradled in his left. Blood was beginning to seep through the gauze.

“Oh, I see,” Steve’s boss said, lightening up. “Lose a fight with the envelope opener again?” He let out an obnoxious laugh.

Go fuck yourself.

 “Get yourself stitched up, I expect to see you in early tomorrow,” he said with a tone of purpose. With a condescending pat on his underling’s shoulder, he took off in the direction Steve had just come from. He stopped and began attempting to flirt with an attractive young secretary.

-

As Steve approached his car, his bleeding had finally completely saturated the gauze on his finger. He lifted his arm into the air in an attempt to allow gravity to pull his sleeve down and away from the soaked pad. Instead, blood dripped into his forearm. The metallic odor wafted towards his nose, and he began to salivate.

Steve looked around, ensuring no one was around to see him. After he had triple checked, he lifted his sleeve up to his elbow and licked the blood from his skin. He could taste the iron on his tongue.

Images of blood, flesh, and organs poured into his brain as he began to fantasize about all the carnivorous possibilities. A warm, bloody steak. The hearts of freshly slain cattle. Brain straight from a four-legged kill. Intestines from the bowels of euthanized fowl.

Snapping to with drool hanging out of the corner of his mouth, Steve quickly unlocked and entered his car, which was not anything other than modest, and began to drive.

Swerving between lanes, he sped from light to light, navigating a blurred landscape in an effort to reach the nearest grocery store. His heart was set – there was only one option in his mind.

I’ve got to stop this before it’s too late.

After several near-misses and about midway to his home, Steve reached his destination. In a nearly hallucinogenic state, he entered the grocery store. He turned right, and stumbled toward the refrigerated meat.

-

Steve’s sister, who was 3 years his senior, turned twenty mid-May eight years ago. She wandered around her parent’s home mingling with aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, and friends.

“Hey birthday girl,” said an uncle as he cut open a package of cheap steaks.

“Hi,” she replied. Their brief conversation spanned through the elements of any college student’s life: school, job, love, future aspirations. In his distraction, the uncle made a minor cut to his fingertip, and a small amount of blood dripped onto a pile of waste fat he had cut from the steaks.

“Ow!” he said, and turned towards the sink to rinse his hand. When he turned off the water, Steve’s sister told the uncle he could find band aides in the hall bathroom, inside the vanity’s bottom left drawer. He thanked her and disappeared down the hall. The sister finished the uncle’s job. When she was done, she threw the fat away in the kitchen trashcan.

Steve sat alone in a secluded part of the home, trying to figure out what pleasure his sister found in cramping up and already sub-sized home with so many people. Quite frankly, he didn’t find any of the guests as important elements in his upbringing or lifestyle.

With a sign, he stood.

I’d better make an appearance, lest I be the subject of parental lore…

The moment he reminded his mother of his existence, a bombardment of chores flooded forth. Between each request, he made certain to insert a clever sarcastic remark, gesture at his overall discontent, and then make a mental note of the chore.  After a few minutes of bantering, his mother found a distraction and went on her merry way. Steve dragged his feet as he collected all of the trash from the smaller proximity trashcans that had been places throughout the house.

He picked up a few paper plates and plastic silverware that had fallen out as he tried to consolidate all of the trash into the kitchen can. He put the trash on the top of the overfilled can before compacting all of the garbage into the bag. The subsequent gush of air from the can carried a foul odor. But some element of the smell aroused Steve’s brain. Immediately, he felt an insatiable desire for something – but he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

Before he had much time to think about it, his uncle threw open the kitchen door.

“Dinner is served!” he said with a large smile on his face. His hands held a large platter, piled high with thick slabs of meat.

Soon enough, conversation had nearly ceased as all the guests began to dig into their meals. It didn’t take long, however, for the complaints to begin.

“I think you should put these steaks back on for a few minutes,” someone said.

“Yeah, they’re kind of undercooked,” someone else agreed.

Without the use of silverware or table manners, Steve ripped his meat to shreds, consuming the entire thing within a moment. He stood, flesh hanging from the corner of his mouth, and approached the giant platter. With a smile, he grabbed a steak in each hand and furiously tore in. His animal like behavior stunned his family.

A party guest grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him around. With a condescending tone, the guest asked what “on earth” he thought he was doing.

Steve dropped the steak and fell to the floor, convulsing.

He awoke in a hospital bed.

What happened?

-

Steve pulled his car in recklessly, bumping into his bike, which was parked near the back wall of the garage. He grabbed the T-bone steak from the passenger’s seat and exited his car, leaving the door wide open. He stumbled to the door and opened it, nearly falling over as he entered his home. He made it halfway down the long hallway before slamming his right shoulder into the wall and sliding to a sitting position. He looked at the bloody steak and opened the package.

-

The thing tore into the steak in a blood-fed frenzy, biting into the Styrofoam packaging before finally grabbing the cold meat in his hand and digging in. It squeezed the steak so hard it shred in its hands, the T-bone puncturing skin. Warm blood oozed down and drenched the already saturated gauze pad. Licking the blood running down its arm, the thing took a deep, satisfied breath. It dropped the steak and pulled the bone out from its hand. In an aroused state, the thing nibbled on the pad, pulling it into its mouth. It sucked the blood out of the material. The thing’s eyes rolled back into its head, and its back began to arch. It could feel a state of sedation beginning to take over.

But then it heard a bark.

-

Steve’s dog had a sense of confusion about it. He saw his master, but there something wasn’t right about him. He smelled putrid and his movements were clumsy and primitive. He barked, and the thing looked up at him with fiery eyes. The dog’s tail shot between its legs. With a whine, it turned around with a startle and looked back to see what the thing was doing.

It stood with a hunched back, its bloodshot eyes dead set on the animal.

It leapt forward, and after a short chase, caught the Chihuahua in a corner in the kitchen. It picked the whelping dog up and held it over his head.

-

 The thing brought the dog’s head down hard onto Steve’s kitchen counter, killing it immediately. Blood leaked from underneath the fur, the thing licked it up as fast as it could. The gush was too fast to keep up, and blood poured out onto the floor. It bit into the dog’s soft, warm underbelly. More crimson fluid dumped out, the metallic smell and taste deepening the already established frenzy. The thing swallowed the liver in one go, it slurped on the intestines like spaghetti.

Face, teeth, and tongue red with blood it chewed and chewed mindlessly. Even when there was little but bone left on the naked carcass, it continued to chew into fresh meat. When it paused to breathe, it looked at its right forearm hanging by a few ligaments at its elbow. Hemoglobin pumped from his arteries onto the table and floor. It tried to cup a pump of blood in its left hand, but failed. It wasn’t more than minced meat and bone.

Frustrated by its failure, the thing let out an aggravated grunt and stepped back, slipping in the pool of blood on the tile floor.

It tried to catch itself as it fell, but with no right arm or left hand to support its weight, the thing fell hard. Its head struck the tile floor and died.

It's Monday

If e'er I find myself alone with hate,
I'll plant a seed among the dankest soils.
The ones inside my morbid garden's gate
Will soak the ground's sadistic oils.

If e'er I walk a dismal fray but twice,
And fight my violent shadows with a swollen heart,
There's nothing for me, not anything nice.
I'm left afraid, alone, and ready to dart.

If e'er I find myself along side love,
I'll harvest the best and tend the rest.
The seed will feed my thoughtful, caring dove -
Although I'm stuck with feigning best.

The dove, unempathetic creature, flees;
Now it has left for me an empty cage:
A memory with myself on humbled knees,
A memory with not but unbottled rage.

If e'er I walk a saddened way but once,
And fend my sullen shadows with a heart a-bend,
There's nothing for me, not anything nice.
I'm left afraid, alone, and ready to end.

-

A yard with browning leaves has plagued this street.
Afar, the owner's just a bag of scum;
An evil person no one wants to meet,
An alcoholic stuck upon his rum.

An evergreen nearby, both bare and grey,
Stands out to those who make to frequent here.
Yet none can peer to past's unbridled day
So warm and bright they'd be worth holding dear.

But long ago, a life in black and white
Held that which he would take a bullet for.
And now a yard, once green, is stuck in blight:
The loss of what he cared to adore.

With well-known friends a plenty, rakes in hand,
A house in need becomes a loving home.
Despite the work, this group's a cordial band,
And soon enough: a shine that's never shown.

-

My heart is lost, the lights are out.
With fingers numb, a mind in doubt,
I'm left with nausea: thought of theft;
It seems that I will never find whats left.

Forgetting

For fun

From the greenest field I picked an ugly flower.
For who but me would show it love has power?
It spends a week inside,
In a vase for which it vied,
And now it wonders why it hadn't tried
to it's beauty more abide.
For this it would have cried,
If my ugly flower hadn't died.

Rhyme and Meter

My poetry, written in late 2010, 2011, and early 2012. These are in no particular order, and many of my early works reflect my at the time developing skill.

Goodbye my friend, it’s tough to go.

3 Months go by, the seasons flow,
And as the hours pass, I know
You’ll count each second patiently…
I already miss your grip on me.

-

It’s as if the sky were a screen
The sun a perfect hole which light shines through,
The ambient dust piercing the thinning veil,
And the clods a temporary shield as night approaches…

-

You can share a pair of shoes
You can share a white old hen
You can share some midnight booze
You can share your favorite pen

Oh, the joy of sharing stuff
Makes us owners one and all
Share those weights, they’ll make you buff
Share that rifle, serve the call

You can share a shining fork
You can share ideals and thoughts
You can share a plate of pork
You can share a can of Mott’s

But where’s the bliss in all this?
(Well) You have to share a kiss.

-

A seven-sixty two lies somewhere cold
Away from heated violence and war
Its lethal point sits patient, stuck on hold
The primer paces like a fiending whore
The fight begins, an ambush from the flanks
So ends the unity of bullet and brass
They rip and flay like crudely sharpened shanks
With fine finesse they pass through bloody mass
The uneasy price of life, so you are free
Although these selfless men face certain death
They hold together, their fear begins to flee
And in their valor comes a final breath
                Yet some at home have pitied themselves today
                They choose to pay the price the selfish pay

-

“December 19”

Upon a table stands a crystal vase
Inside rest stems cut freshly new
No leaves hang down, they never grew
Atop sits scarlet, thick, not few
Your eyes may see a perfect hue
But they are weeds compared to you

-

Meandering the darkened forest floor
(Despite the shining smiles of sweetened lights,
Exhausted on the luscious treetop moor)
And drowned by souls ablaze that itch to bite
An inner image passes word in mime
And through the fog it manages to say:
“To catch a somber ride with patient time
Will take the shadowed to a place away.”

-

Let’s take a tranquil walk around the block
And crunch through rosy golden leaves
As chipmunks run to put their nuts on lock
We’ll laugh, they think us to be acorn thieves!
Our stepping journey winds without a care
The amber treeline dances with the frigid breeze
So near we draw, until our warmth we share
Together, it’s just not possible to freeze
But when it’s time to head toward home tonight,
When dancing stars dilute the blackened sky
And this day’s acorns buried into blight…
When dissolved is our clean euphoric high…
                Let’s venture on and test an unknown myth:
                “The sidewalk ends,” so who will you be with?

-

Made blind by love’s full execution hood…
To lift the darkened veil and peer around,
Or let true love guide always, as it should?
…And sternly asked to leap a fateful bound.
An avid eye reveals a blackened pit
The ground gives way, and so begins the plunge
And too does fall a lover’s amulet
From whom it came, a rearward lunge
But blind a willing jump into the gap
Now falling in delightful ignorance
Not much unlike a posted watch on nap
Yet so remains the lover’s sustenance
                Preemptive thought and problem’s solved
                It’s better not to get involved.

-

I stand and freeze alone tonight in dark
Outside my foggy breath (the cold opaque
Obstructer of my view) is winter’s mark
Yet the stars to me do tell (what they speak)
“Find warmth in thy true lover’s eye’s this eve”
But how could stars fore see my hopeful fate?
Their logic seemed plain to much to upheave
Without relent does blow what I’m to hate
But here she comes (oh how I may rejoice)
Bright eyes of spring (they burn sweet love as fuel)
Now so close, what joy emits her voice
And so the night has brought a wondrous jewel
                In her eyes I warm myself so happily
                I could not stand to see her far from me.

-

Perched in the tree
Bird sings to me
Its life free of disdain
At the cost of a brain

Scurry, the insect scatters
With a step it’d be in tatters
Simple minded, free of worry
Its quest nothing but to bury

And the tree,
It gives shelter free
To all willing
To inhabit its filling

And how indifferent
Is the sun, inherent
Of its task to light
Else we face blight

If only these things
Knew of human flings
Oh how they’d pray
Their animation stay

-

Below the pile of the tide of time
Where pressure builds and relentlessly lies
Am I who bears the burden of the grime
And beg the pack’d earth to minimize
Although reward reaps from such slavery
The toil day to day I cannot bear
Event of failure comes sure mockery
No apathy, I could not fail to care
Despite the pressures daily have applied
A savior have I found among the mass
The music for which I once strongly vied
Now lifts the spirit, turns the hourglass
                I view the pressures of the world afar
                For all is fie and well at home on the guitar

-

“Written on the back of some physics homework”

Last night I went for a run
Short distance of twice a mile
Though others might pray to be done
I could still go for a while
Simply cause running is fun

-

A forest never lights itself ablaze
Just drop a match and watch the golden flame
Engulf the barren wasteland, twisted maze
Of death. And watch the flame destroy and maim
The country side. And watch it clear the old
For new. Before the golden flame is through
Alas, here forms the clouds, though not so bold
Small time, the colder and darker they’ll start to brew
And now it rains, so gone’s the golden flame
The last remains are only smold’ring  embers
But so returns a long gone group, no shame
For they will wait for green, not ashen chambers
                Returned has life to this once barren land
                It seems this place was dealt a mixed hand

-

“Gold” (My personal favorite… glad I found this one stuffed away in my closet.)

When all the youth is drained from withered souls
Reflect upon days old, antique and cold
Remorse for all the deeds still left with holes
But satisfied with tasks done up so bold
The issues of the day left in the dark
To recollect regrets of all days past
And fail to live without a question mark
But somewhere lies support, a sturdy mast
For all the time you breathe this concrete air
There must be reason, perhaps conscious not
To push on time again, it feels not fair
For all these cursed holes fill thought with fraught
                But look to past with optimism’s eyes
                And light will fill the room before goodbyes

-

Relentless guts from nature's chilly bowel
Leaves all in wake with frozen ears and nose
So cold today, too cold for local fowl
That dew lies where the desert flora grows
And in the barren void of bird's sweet trill
The wispers of the wind have filled the hold
But at the price of even colder still
And wake of wind does kill the last of coal.
No desert shed of colored leaves about
No snow to shove, nor freezeing ice to melt
And what's to cause one selfish pout?
Just ask for life where ancestors once dwelt!
              So in the break of winter's daily dawn
              Rejoice in glory of happy, joyous fawn

-

Thanks for reading. Comments welcome.