Robert Knox Verse-Virtual 2019 March

March 2019

Bionote: I'm the author of two chapbooks. "Gardeners Do It With Their Hands Dirty" has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award for best books published in 2017. "Cocktails in the Wild" was published earlier this year. I'm also the author of "Suosso's Lane," a novel of the Sacco-Vanzetti case. If you're interested in any of these, email me at rc.knox2@gmail.com. These three "Songs Without the Music" come from my practice of scribbling possible lyrics while listening to favorite songs (then massaging them later). I've supplied links to YouTube performances of these songs. Try listening to the music while you read the poems. Or just listen to them. Or just read.

Songs Without the Music

Naked Love*

It doesn't matter what you're wearing
That's not what we're talking about
We're talking about defenses down
Just the two of you
I don't know // It could be more
I'm just being conventional here
I'm just speaking for myself
I'm just taking off the masks,
the instruments of pride
the armor of personality, self-fiction,
all those stories we tell ourselves
I'm undressing them all
Words are no defense
I no longer have anything to hide
I admit and acknowledge now,
without any form of coercion
or hidden agenda, or intellectual/spiritual whatnot,
that I will die someday
And project, if at all possible,
     -- all accidental details, and particularities
     of time and place in abeyance --
that it be with you
Naked at the soul,
Undefended at the end

*after the song of this title by Fiona Joy Hawkins; music at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0V_DjG07Lg

Ruparahi*

Wordless,
you go where the soul goes,
you go wordlessly,
Another voice, though, even as it sputters,
            wordlessly,
yet takes me to a deeper place
where the refrain gathers itself,
looks at the climb ahead,
for which it has failed to wear the
            right boots,
no sandals even,
almost no clothes --
and the wind blows, like riding a rope swing,
            from the sun
to lash the deeper places
Still you ascend
this is so // this is,
is not // and yet it is
what it persists in being
your song without words,
your speechless tongue,
your naked feet
your unstrung harp
your empty purse
your sandals left beside the candle
where you burned up your heart for
            the last time
all grief, and regret,
and everything that could be said
if anything could be said
about your song,
your still persisting song,
but, as you know,
it cannot

*after the song by Parijat; music at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO5QDhzuCig


Asleep Beneath the Moon*


How sweet is that?
Where else would you wish to sleep?
In the sun? You get burned.
Beneath the stars? Sure --
     though lacking something, wouldn't you say, of the personal touch
given those astronomical distances?
But that big round face glowing with a mysterious and
perhaps even slightly creepy interest
in your petty human affairs here below? --
That could be nobody but the moon.
The moon has music.
It keeps coming, pouring,
flowing from the endless chain of mysterious
receding and persistent rebirths
(like a plant with thirteen annual springs)
defined by the astrophysical commands and
functional attentions --
explained in poems written many moons ago by Isaac Newton --
its darker moods always kept private
from our perverse, even morbid curiosity.
            But look! Its enigmatic smile!
its off-center shadowy eye,
its intense ability to feature in pretty much
every mood and emotion
we call on it to express.
            What is not lunar?
Its effect pure lunacy --
of attraction to distraction
(or the other way around)
but in its sweetest moments,
also, perhaps, the most summery,
another of its mysteries,
like first love --
            It's the siren of sleep,
this marvel of a companionable moon --
we sing of in songs of love and loss
and, who knows,
perhaps even, in dreams, murmur its secret name

Where else would I choose to
            burrow into unconsciousness, but
softly, safely, sensually,
(and quite often connubially)
beneath the moon?

*After the song by John Fluker; music at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK0lbDFAtfQ

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