Preludium — (n.) a prelude, an opening, an introduction (in music and literature); a preparation, a sign of things to come.
Download Sheet Music for Preludium Here
– M.M.
Pisa
Pisa
The village people knew
it was not a matter of if,
but a matter of when,
the tower would fall,
its wind-bleached columns
buckling at the knees
under the crushing weight of
its lofty belfry, which looked
out over the Piazza dei Miracoli
—the square of miracles.
Having stood in sturdy silence
for centuries, the spiral staircase
stretched its spine
enjoying the pop
of each stony vertebra until
the seventh story struck the ground
in a glorious, groaning backbend.
The nearby Cathedral of Pisa
didn’t approve of the acrobatics.
No self-respecting campanile
dreams of calisthenics.
What would the village people think?
But it didn’t matter what
the they would think.
With grating blocks in shifting stacks,
and stairs and capitals
and fissuring cracks,
the dust flew up,
then settled down, there
in pieces all around,
the parts of Pisa
on the ground.
Peace and Pisa on the ground.
-M.M.
Ore & Ink
Ore & Ink
The polished wooden pen
writes because its roots
are ink and its leaves
silver.
Its scope, as the
canopy umbrella of
the baobab tree, that
stretches wide the Sahara
bronze.
Its thought, the redwood
strength of twisting gnarls
and knotted rings
lodged in Sierra soil
gold.
-M.M.
Painting With
Painting With
I don’t like the yellow wind—
all hot and rough, brittle,
fond of sawdust and spinning.
I much prefer the blue wind
that caresses and smooths,
sweeping away the sweat
and the afternoon.
The white wind keeps me up
at night, echoing in my
teeth and unsettling my bones
like salt from the north.
But, the black wind has my respect.
It moves methodically
the wheel of the seasons,
steering a massive rumble reckless
as the other winds bow in silence.
Then it gathers fragments,
scoops them into piles, and
draws closed the bag of time
spun out, till it all but disappears.
-M.M.
Melting Point
Melting Point
It’s raining on the fallen snow
and I’m happy—don’t know why.
The street is muddy sludge,
the grass is flat and pale,
the sky is woolen grey, so why?
Why is it I’m happy?
The world’s a mess and it’s the best.
I’m happy—don’t know why.
-M.M.
Speak
Speak
They say the walls can feel
the hands that built them,
hewed them out of stone,
that the stones remember the songs
they sang when they thought
they were alone, and
nobody was listening.
They remember the way they
cursed when they accidentally
chipped off too much, or
hammered a thumb red.
The stones even remember the
sun and the moon,
the way it felt to be
illuminated from above.
The walls don’t speak much,
but when they do they
carry prayers.
When a hymn floats up
from the assembled below
they pass it on,
and pass it on.
The stones know that
when you’re praying in the forest
when nobody’s around
the trees may not notice,
but heaven hears the sound.
The walls say the hands can feel
the hands that built them.
Hands and walls
Like echoes in a cathedral.
-M.M.
Aux
Aux
First, cords like brambles
crammed in the crevasse
between the wall and the
entertainment center.
Second, the wire brigade
with their plug diagnostics
and electrical metering,
mapping the genome of the
audio-visual interface.
Then, the ground crew techies
with their bundles and rolls
of electrical tape and
outlet covers, bristling
with manuals and warnings
for parents about children
—batteries not included.
All for the finale flip
of the switch, the
glorious gentle glow
of the stirring screen
alive.
Oh, the auxhilaration!
-M.M.
Triangle
Triangle
He
built it
triangled:
three He
sides and said it
three corners. ought to work.
So my and
I pieced own 3 dubbed it
Together vertices Try-angle.
-M.M.
Blue
Blue
Old Levi neglected to say,
In hopes of increasing his pay,
That once they get wet,
You bet you can bet,
Your jeans will be soaking all day.
-M.M.
Carillon Improv
A carillon is a large musical instrument that is kept in a bell tower. The carillon has bells of various sizes that can be played with a manual [keyboard] of batons arranged like a piano keyboard or an organ manual. A friend took me on a tour of the Centennial Tower carillon at Brigham Young University and I had the opportunity to play it. Below is a video of my improv, which should help you understand how the instrument works. I decided to improv in a minor key because the top of each bell is tuned to a different pitch than the bottom. This causes notes to ‘sour’ (explaining why so much of carillon music sounds dissonant and spooky). I decided it would be lean into the bells’ natural creepiness and have fun in a minor key.
-M.M.
