Synthesis

Everyone seems to think it’s alright

to grow up and leave all our potential miracles

behind you in a box, on a shelf, in an empty room

in the shadows of a previous reality.

But I really don’t think it is.

Some have said this isn’t a poem

because it doesn’t rhyme, and hasn’t metre. But

once they said black wasn’t a colour

and woman wasn’t a voice. So what if I told you

I hear these phrases in my head the way

musicians hear melodies? I thought so.

It makes me question my identity,

ask favours of what creation that makes me; it

causes me to wonder why I ever deemed myself

part of that collective. So then I think

maybe this isn’t poetry and maybe I’m

neither a poet, nor a melodic major.

And thinking these things scares me

because if I’m neither of the two, something 

less relevant than these arts I attempt

to be.. what am I?

Or, which is more to the point,

what can I ever be?

- Rose Avalanche

Dynamic.

He had bruises inside his skull which

restricted his songs to the moonlight; the

broken words and phrases he used

represented the gaps between his

intercostal muscles. He wrote melodies

capable of putting the sunrise to shame.

Watching him, I forgot that

music used to write me letters too,

sealed inside whispered thoughts

and carried in the palms of daydreams

or falling leaves. I forgot, and it scared me.

And when he spoke in notes, when he showed me

his spontaneous melodies, it fascinated me

because I’d forgotten how to do that, too.

I wish never to forget again.

- Rose Avalanche

Thought.

I saw someone’s post today, which said “laughter is the music of the soul” and I disagree. Music is the music of the soul, no question. Laughter is the smile of the soul; it can be plastic and used only to fill a space, like a full stop. But then there’s real smiles, real laughter; then there’s the music.