i want to write music

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I want to write music

 

but I don’t know how

so I write poetry

 

      or I try…

 

 

it bores even me.

little black words on a page.

 

 

I’ve tried using rhyme

Syllables keeping time

 

Personification so the paper

Breathes puffs of air back to the reader

 

Metaphor doesn’t quite make the cut

As-

            oh

                        that’s simile.

 

 

Even if I knew what little sticks with circles

            should be drawn

                        a note here

                                    four there

           

I still wouldn’t be writing music

 

Black marks on paper

will never be music

 

first of all

 

music has COLOR

 

music is BRIGHT

music is BOLD

music comes in SHAPES

music comes in SIZES

         music ebbs and flows

and dances

and twirls

 and spins

and leaps

and sometimes it is soft rain on silken petals and sometimes

it is a heavy avalanche swelling over everything and always

always

always

                                                            music

fills

you

up.

 

 

 

 

I just want to capture it

I want to put it into something tangible

I want to rip the music from my chest and clasp it in my hands against my face and whisper

 

            “I am holding music

 

            whisper it right into my cupped fingers and know

 

 

I want to know that music is

 real.

 

 

 

Because somehow if I could put it on a piece of paper and carry it folded in my pocket and know that the warm little wad against my thigh holds all the thoughts and feelings and secrets of the world and take that sheet out and smooth the creases to read it when I’m lonely and if I could keep music like a caged bird

 

 

 

well

 

I suppose it wouldn’t be music anymore

 

            would it

                        ?

 

 

 

Now I know where poetry started.

 

And it was not between cupped hands

 

But out from open palms

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