Embedded Files
1st Movement
gentle byzantine attic lamplight,
outside streetlight alabaster snow
brushing through Seine River willows,
C minor impressionist midnight occasional breeze
Satie sips absinthe by a window
dreaming of fish,
stoically staring at the crescendoing dusk,
randomly warming his pumice-raked hands over a wood stove,
his umbrellas populating a distant room
his spectral fingers flying across apparitional minimalist keyboards,
88 keys,
thrice over
2nd Movement
Satie's moist green eyes close
beholding Sunflowers, Sutras, Wheatfields…
conceiving classical sparkling rainbows
pony-tailed Clichy girls
Honfleur moons, uncertain hues
as the curtain rises…
3rd Movement
Erik's eyes close once more:
capturing a voice in his mind’s eye...
a velvet figure accompanies his clumsy laughter
sustained by declamando chords,
their each step ambiguous
eyes avoiding any glimpse of sunshine
at all costs:
a widower’s sparse religion
4th Movement
silver teardrop raindrops
shadow a bittersweet playground,
a park of overgrown
willow reeds, rushes,
as stray pelicans hover
then flutter and drift on,
the warm cryptic lake
faintly ripples
infiltrating his heart,
Satie envisioning ballerina boats skirting about
and Bastille dancers devoid of gravity
arabesque along the shore
in blue green minor chords:
is there a parade for Erik Satie somewhere?
5th Movement
one late night while absently looking up from his bench:
“Oh, didn’t hear you enter…care for some brandy? Still snowing out there?”
“Paris can be so unforgiving when we have one of these daunting April blizzards, no?”
“well, never mind- here, let me take your coat…yes? oui, you are shivering! there, there, good! a bit of Cognac would do you fine.”
“I do so love practicing your new concerto even though this piano sometimes flattens those minor chords", she commented.
“which is precisely why I have prepared another piano above this one! simplicity may now be expressed in octaves!”
6th Movement
Suzanne left no farewell note,
just a portrait
when the intensity became too much to bear,
and Satie’s room
would welcome no other,
again a mourner devoid of companionship,
a single repeated chord
expressing the dissonance of unrequited love,
a waxen effigy reburned to a wax drip,
with only his masterpiece Gymnopédies surviving:
French dada wheatfields frozen,
Van Gogh’s sunflowers fossilized,
Satie's epic sutra forever unrealized
Delray Beach, FL
Summer, 2014
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