FATTENING

[Due to time crunch, here, yes HERE, Ladies and Gentlemen, I offer you THREE, count 'em, Three (3) genuine Dean Blehert poemlets for the price of one, your poems for Friday, Sat. AND (last, but not least) SUNDAY!!]


The tiny screen says this and that,
Flows in my eyes and turns to fat.
It's deep as a magician's hat--
How could I bulge from something flat?

[Note: Are images from a flat screen fattening? I think it's the bowl games, by which I mean the games of nibbing stuff from bowls as I watch TV.]
______________________

The elevator fills up
with cheery music
and dull backgound
people.
_______________________

I like Bach's music,
but the best part
is the background universe.

[Note: These last two offer twists on the notion "background music"--what makes it "background" and something else "foreground"? The elevator poem is pretty obvious, I think. Perhaps "cheery" should be "cheesy," since it's often mediocre, limp instrumental versions of lively songs rendered by someone's 10,000 slack strings, superficially cheerful, but basically music designed not to jar anyone's hangover.

(Which reminds me that Handel, a German composer, Bach's contemporary, wrote music for the court in England, a dynasty from Hanover, in Germany. No doubt he didn't want his music to upset the Georges or jar anyone's Hanover.)

(That's correct, the English royalty--which, during 20th century wars with German cousins, changed it's name from Hanover and it's longer 1901-1917 name, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (a larger section of Germany), to "Windsor"--that dynasty is from Germany. For a couple generations of Georges the kings spoke German, not English, and until they ran out of male heirs to the throne, they remained the rulers of Hanover. The laws in Hanover required a male ruler. The laws of England did not, and England's most distinguished and long-lived monarchs have been women--the two Elizabeths and Victoria. It's the males of the dynasty who've been more likely to die nasty.) (Yes, I know, the first Elizabeth was a Tudor, an earlier dynasty, not of German extraction, but that's not germane to my point about England's great ladies.)

The Bach poem is trickier: It's not just that Bach (and some other composers) are so powerful that they demand "foreground" billing. It's also two other factors: The first is that Bach is kind of annoying if you don't pay attention. Usually I'd prefer silence to background Bach, especially one of his complex fugues, musical devices of torture if you don't engage with them. The trick is to pick out a theme and align other themes and developments to that theme and then KEEP UP, and if you do that (and it's a bit like keeping up with varied and syncopated movements of tall grass in a breeze), it does something to your preception of time and motion, so that the universe starts to dance. The trees are moving to the music, and even star-twinkle seems to dig it.

Lots of music has this capability--maybe ANY music, since it's really OUR capability, music being a facilitator. But some music seems to demand it, like Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Beethoven's Late String Quartets, Bartok's String Quartet's 3 thru 6...and if you can do this yourself with no music (and no drug), but just your own intention, if you can make the universe dance (and you CAN), Bach won't object, and Time will have no dominion. You'll be the "different drummer" to which your universe moves.

If you depend on someone else's music for your time, that's Bachwards, and may lead to thirst when the pump don't work cause the vandals stole the Handel. (There's a bit of Bob Dylan Haydn in that last sentence.)]

Dean Blehert
Blogs:
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