Satie

N.N. not no-one never naïve notes.

Somebody not just anybody please.

Poor Tom-like his mantelpiece of keys.

Whatever floats your boat your overcoat

Toy soldier marching down up down upstairs

Engineer of origins, tradesman of space

Once upon once upon once upon thrice

Hammering hardware, his waltz on a chair.

Was it ever gods treading ivory paths

Golden age pieces from the Attic attic

Where sunlight unloosed long staccato laughs,

Or only just Monsieur with one umbrella

Cool boulevardier, flaneur of static,

Paris where rain taps and fingers turn yeller?

Shostakovich

Russian jazz flourished a time then vanished,

Memory of what could have been, that now

Too soon keeps beat to how the state allows

Tightrope sonatas, acclaimed or banished.

Fluttering phantoms of the silent screen

Pay the impoverished improvisor

With minutes of trills, hours the wiser:

Entrance hat-trick steam-train exit has-been.

Songs exiled in the middle of the night

Never to return, return on the keyboard –

Listen to them, paralysed once with fright.

Preludes a survivor has-been has

And slams against a wall (for the record)

Momentous threnodies, some Russian jazz.

Tristano

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xwcSwyAKSs

I needed analysis. I saw the man.

I had the C-Minor Complex big time.

I was stuck in the groove all through my prime.

I walked scores of miles just to understand.

My name was sad, with sundry embellishments.

I stuck it to everyone my kind of groove.

A-Major Emotions, just hear this move

Miles unscored in downtown establishments.

I was Jonah inside a Bechstein Grand,

Isolation’s many small ironies.

I let the right hand overwrite the left hand

Until I was spewed here to make others spark.

No more I me mine on the ivories,

I walk miles of your vibrant light and dark.

Jarrett

Future his head dips into every chance,

Standards oiled with touchstone and devil cares.

One-time two-time uptown and micro-scares

Wears goodtime sneakers his on-the-spot dance.

Present his hands reach half-yes half-okay

Notion becomes entanglement city

Industry and wish and something pretty

Or just a window to throw a bouquet.

Like now when traffic has gone to sleeptime

Freeways waltz-time scarcely a flourish

Now too gold old avenues of deep time.

Stay at home order plays favourite subjects

Inescapable whatever finish

Record company ‘Likes’ into objects.

Window Series. The single window of the cottage. This tribute to European photography repeats the trope of having a wall or window or ceiling that has been infiltrated by nature from the outside. The cottage in question is our inherited two car garage, never used as a garage but converted into an artist workshop and library. The brown vertical object is the fallboard of a WERTHEIM MELBOURNE piano inherited from I know not where. The poem is the start of a tribute series to pianist-composers. Our house has been full of piano music for weeks.