understood but not spoken in poetry

I’m burdened with knowing a language
that I cannot myself speak
the language of music

oh, I can re-write the lyrics of others
pretty well and can carry a half-a-tune
I can stay in key in a two-octave range
but I can’t play any instrument
to save my goddamned life
and I know why

it’s not… just that I’m not
dextrous of hand, even though
I am not or that I am left
handed and everything’s made
for right handed people
even though I am
and it all is

I can type out words just fine
a little bit faster than average
but that is the thing about words
they can come haltingly
they can come with great contemplation
you can measure them out in
afternoons and coffeespoons
music has to just happen
has to just fluidly happen
even if it isn’t spontaneous
if has to bear the illusion of that
five or ten minutes of all just
happening one verse or movement
after the other after the other
as if it was all just destined
to be that way
I am not that way

I know the language of music intimately
about as anyone who cannot speak it
reasonably ever could and yet
I cannot speak it
it kills me
my father was a fine bluesrock pianist
my brother a wonderful guitar player
even my mother can sit down and
plink out sheet music before her
but I haven’t that
flow
I haven’t that
unhalting rhythm
I cannot just be
I can never just
be

music is to be spoken by people
who can sit in a moment and live it
from beat to beat in tune and in time
I cannot

I can do wonderful things
I can think wonderful things
but they always come herky-jerk
they come in waves and in bursts
it never seems natural
it never even looks like improv
let alone feeling like it
I haven’t the trust in the world
I haven’t the trust in myself
to feel like that

I cannot speak in music’s majesty
I instead cobble and muddle
labouriously find the right thing
painstakingly bang rocks into their shapes
blister my hands welding pieces to pieces
until I have something
and Christ I’ll give myself credit
sometimes it’s even quite good
but it never just
happens

music never just happens either
but Christ it can look like it
it can feel like a body
breathing in and out
like the sea rising
where we know that’s
the moon’s gravity doing it
but that gravity’s invisible
so it still looks like a miracle
I want to look like a miracle
I want to play a song with my hands
that seems like it was always
destined to be

all my best works
always bear that
low-born mark of
heavy manufacture
that I cannot shake
no matter how much
I can tell you
about song

I’m burdened with knowing
there’s a sensor I’m missing
like a blind man trying to grasp
what the hell you’re talking about
when you wizards mention orange
whatever the hell
orange could be

so I write and I write
and I always feel less for it
but it’s all that I can do
so I try like hell to do the best
I can with these gutteral
barks clicks and grunts
unable to ever really
make you a song