Question for Van Gogh
1/
At three a.m. the sonic wash
of manufactured ocean sounds
do not impede the the dendritic hallucination
of a sotto voce note of a castrato
in the halls of a dark monastery--
tinnitus, my neural artesian
of everlasting sonar,
doppelganger of sound.
I want to cauterize the axons
and eviscerate the synapses,
but what I can hear
I hear. I have come to think of it
as a homing signal, but to what flock
of emancipated pigeons escaped
from my thoughts I cannot say.
2/
A chisel Michelangelo could not imagine
enters my ear to chip the calcium nodes
hanging like stalagmites to relieve
the sea-cavern roar that 24/7 rushes,
as if I live underwater, tossed in the kelp
like an otter, stirrups and anvils perpetually
hushed in their striking, coated with cold.
I hear the chisel like a mini-jackhammer
and the surgeon is a blue-collar worker
repairing a clogged artery on the street.
In recovery, I cannot tell if I imagine
the violin but the pounding timpani
in my chest tells the truth--
still the siren wails.
3/
At twenty-six, Beethoven heard
a single violin note held
that would not diminish, decrescendo,
persevered through punishment,
wrote his third symphony though the note
had become a chord in his fourth
when it drifted from high C to middle.
It is the opening clash of the fifth
when we hear what he could not,
the low rumble that he knew by resonance
and not by pitch, and by the Hallelujah ninth,
his hearing gone, his conversations
recorded in cursive between visitors
and friends, only then did he transcribe
the holy strain through all the scales.
4/
Constant as a desert wind the sound.
I imagine colorless tents
rolling like Pacific waves
that are anything but pacific,
Sufi mystics selling sheaves
of hilarity and laughing magi
taking shekels from ears
at the corner of the bazaar,
men devoured by unruly beards
and women with only showing their eyes
whistled to by every standing pole
that withers in the wind.
Come, I call, take the shekel
from my ear, perhaps the whistle
I have will go with the coin.
Come, I call, chant a mystical poem
full of puns and humor and love
and perhaps the tone will realize
it is from God and go back to God
and leave me in peace.
For a second, it merges with the wind
and all I hear is the wind
and the flea market, yard sale, bazaar
become one with waving sine.
O God, I am free, free!
I laugh, I pull unimaginable scarves
from my sleeve, make cards
jump back into their deck,
make a camel fit through the eye of a needle.
5/
If I carve out my ear to still
the whistle of the eternal teapot,
if I have the aural nerves burned,
will I still remember
the whispering love from my wife
as we lay huddled after passion
or the soft encouragement,
the almost silent prayers?
Will I remember the claxon of the crow
or the democracy of rain,
the wild grains in the wind
like a shushing librarian?
Will I remember my daughters’ breathing
as I carried them from the beach
asleep on both shoulders,
or my son’s wheezing as asthma
tried to stifle his lungs,
or the quivering tremolo of my mother
as she withered toward death?
6/
When I go crazy, Vincent,
when I see the stars flame
will I still hear the colors shift?
1/
At three a.m. the sonic wash
of manufactured ocean sounds
do not impede the the dendritic hallucination
of a sotto voce note of a castrato
in the halls of a dark monastery--
tinnitus, my neural artesian
of everlasting sonar,
doppelganger of sound.
I want to cauterize the axons
and eviscerate the synapses,
but what I can hear
I hear. I have come to think of it
as a homing signal, but to what flock
of emancipated pigeons escaped
from my thoughts I cannot say.
2/
A chisel Michelangelo could not imagine
enters my ear to chip the calcium nodes
hanging like stalagmites to relieve
the sea-cavern roar that 24/7 rushes,
as if I live underwater, tossed in the kelp
like an otter, stirrups and anvils perpetually
hushed in their striking, coated with cold.
I hear the chisel like a mini-jackhammer
and the surgeon is a blue-collar worker
repairing a clogged artery on the street.
In recovery, I cannot tell if I imagine
the violin but the pounding timpani
in my chest tells the truth--
still the siren wails.
3/
At twenty-six, Beethoven heard
a single violin note held
that would not diminish, decrescendo,
persevered through punishment,
wrote his third symphony though the note
had become a chord in his fourth
when it drifted from high C to middle.
It is the opening clash of the fifth
when we hear what he could not,
the low rumble that he knew by resonance
and not by pitch, and by the Hallelujah ninth,
his hearing gone, his conversations
recorded in cursive between visitors
and friends, only then did he transcribe
the holy strain through all the scales.
4/
Constant as a desert wind the sound.
I imagine colorless tents
rolling like Pacific waves
that are anything but pacific,
Sufi mystics selling sheaves
of hilarity and laughing magi
taking shekels from ears
at the corner of the bazaar,
men devoured by unruly beards
and women with only showing their eyes
whistled to by every standing pole
that withers in the wind.
Come, I call, take the shekel
from my ear, perhaps the whistle
I have will go with the coin.
Come, I call, chant a mystical poem
full of puns and humor and love
and perhaps the tone will realize
it is from God and go back to God
and leave me in peace.
For a second, it merges with the wind
and all I hear is the wind
and the flea market, yard sale, bazaar
become one with waving sine.
O God, I am free, free!
I laugh, I pull unimaginable scarves
from my sleeve, make cards
jump back into their deck,
make a camel fit through the eye of a needle.
5/
If I carve out my ear to still
the whistle of the eternal teapot,
if I have the aural nerves burned,
will I still remember
the whispering love from my wife
as we lay huddled after passion
or the soft encouragement,
the almost silent prayers?
Will I remember the claxon of the crow
or the democracy of rain,
the wild grains in the wind
like a shushing librarian?
Will I remember my daughters’ breathing
as I carried them from the beach
asleep on both shoulders,
or my son’s wheezing as asthma
tried to stifle his lungs,
or the quivering tremolo of my mother
as she withered toward death?
6/
When I go crazy, Vincent,
when I see the stars flame
will I still hear the colors shift?
Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife and a July abundance of plums. He works in mental health. His poems have appeared in Rabid Oak, Eclectica, Heart, Williwaw Journal, and Kestrel Journal. He won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review poetry prize.