Breathborn(e)

Musicians are accustomed to rejection but

The fear is new

When did my brother’s trumpet become

A loaded gun

And I, the songstress, a dire wyrm, disgorging

Miasma in place of melody

Our air is laced with blight

But our art is sewn of breath

Thus, the audience shies and shrivels

The fields we tended fleeing from the scythe

Lest we reap them with our strain

No rain of applause floods these empty concert halls

And the drought in our coffers compels the desert swell

Where might have bloomed

The flower of delight

We mill about our crystal labyrinth of screens

Between us webs of windows plucking

Voices from the air

And air from the voices

Till they are naught but dry, windless static

Music, spun unfiltered, billows damp and fertile

Balmy clouds to burgeon and condense

Where lips and hands should kiss and glide

As body, heart, and mind in sacred union sing

Now, somehow, what we touch we taint

With the waters of our bellows

No device may aptly translate the timbre of those streams

Thus, the screens must dam and damn us

To desiccation in solitude

Caged birds wear clothespins on their beaks

And muffled cries pass softly through the bars

Perhaps these once were songs before

The cover descended and remained

Too long shrouded in their dreary cotton cloisters

Some birds believe the world has ended

Yet, the sun crawls quietly onwards

Holding its breath

And my meadowlark mother hums

Guten morgen sonnenschein

So she may believe

The morning is good

Dawn breaks and musicians die

As they have always died

Brittle bones rotting like the heartwood

Of some aged or afflicted oak

We fall, though none perceive the cadence

For the forest is deaf

And the hills, asleep

Those solemn final chords resound

Though heedless earth offers no echo

Its gaping streets are stalked by wary strangers

In the faded footprints

Of marching saints

A pianist who swung from cradle to casket

Will not receive his jazz funeral

Only emails to drown the lacrimal chorus

Today’s gospel is from Phobos, 20:20

Fear thy neighbor

And breathe not as ye pass them

For the air of the tomb shall rise from their throat

And doom your heart to stillness

Word of god, word of life

Death may be breathborne but so are words

And silence is another grave

We are entombed within ourselves

The air beneath our ribs left to stagnante and peutrify

There is a scent of despair and it lingers

In the voiceless draft behind my mask

I stare at other singers from the safety of my aviary

To wonder what unsung corpses

Decompose on their lips

Still, a grain of verve persists

Though clandestinely pursued

I’ve been told my evening rendezvous appear arcane

And reek of creeping devilry

Gathered witches in the wood

She and I traversing mire and bramble

Where young copperheads might coil

That our voices, paired, may waft across the marsh

In misty incantation

Conjuring visions born of breath and joy

Pur ti miro, pur ti godo, pur ti stringo

Our vapors intertwine as amorous serpents

Their counterpoint to shift aside coagulate debris Tepid spirits, now aflow

To serve this tenderest of bacchanals

At last, we drink and, in her verse

I taste felicity

Both overture and requiem

We sing, unmasked, undamed, uncaged

Unafraid, partaking in the pleasures

Of forbidden harmony

Should one follow this lilting line

To find us in the springing rite

Would they see our duet bound and burned

For daring to disturb the sleeping hills

And in an ariose stream

Flush ash from the sealed ear of the forest

Her witchcraft resurrected me

Took hold of my clay vessel

To banish tarnish and decay

And o’er its open lip she poured her own berceuse

Più non peno, più non moro

There is a scent of hope and it lingers

In the breath between us