LOVE IS MUSIC

Love is music,
the swollen prelude mounted
on rolling notes
thrusting into passion’s sway.
Senses playfully corrupted,
scarred artistic palette
hurried into punctuated hush,
each mezzo sopranic trill
screeching greedy accents
spilled on tone deaf appendages
the thrill scorned,
scoffed,
rejected or worse –
slovenly bemused by too many notes
merely drinking in polite applause.Ever shifting scales
liquefy the subtle arts
into a mimicking clattery
batter of each pulsated fall
metronomic tic-tic-tockings:
Andante!
Allegro!
Allegro!
Andante!
…until all strings are plucked
to noise-less distraction.
…and love is music
a blackening kiss
drawing curtained curiosity
to its bosomed close,
heartless and cruel
under taut dissatisfactions
from a conductor’s baton.“No. No! Try it again!”
…giving rise,
not to Puccini’s glissando –
but Don Giovanni
licked by flames.

@Nick Zegarac 2006 (all rights reserved).

LAST NIGHT WHEN WE WERE YOUNG

Must we always dream,
scented petal and primrose
the myriad through colored mists,
while dimpling age creeps
chasing away the specter of youth
across the shadows of our death masks?

Plain and prominent,
beyond the spiteful nose
that directs our gazes hither or to –
anywhere but in reflection
of these celebrated truths.

Last night,
the density of youth
marvelous and obtuse,
unobstructed by pragmatism
t’was an oracle before its time,
clairvoyance taut,
beyond the scope of mere logic
finding the nonsensical
- charming,
the foolhardy
- it’s challenge
proven fallible,
even as invincibility fails to shield
the approaching granules of sand.

Behold!
The glass is half empty…
more than,
each lapse, a shortness of breath,
the specter no longer shotgun,
but leering,
its generous fleeting kiss,
blown in the rear view of formative naiveté
Sixteen candles times two,
our farewell to the prom chaperones
fitting – now quaint.

I admire youth…
catapulting toward imminent disillusion,
only vague comprehensions
of an end,
engrossed in the ride,
with those perilous mid-life cliff tops
fast approaching –
full steam ahead, I suppose,
till the end of the line.
@ Nick Zegarac 2006 (all rights reserved).