Stravinsky Says

No Mozart menu chalkboard,
he wrote at the keyboard--
& orchestrated it as he went along.

Tea weak hots espresso strong,
for breakfast two eggs shot raw--
before he wrote music he'd learned how to draw.

"We need blotting paper, not echo chambers," he said
To illustrate the sludge-like texture of his blood,
or spend your life with rubber-daggered strangers

dragging your feet through the Mississippi mud
standing on your head in case of a flood--
rhythms just a reminder, the rhyme's the thing...THUD--

(Mondrian--"close the window. I can't bear trees!"--)
the thing itself, forked and folding in twos & threes,
hands fluttered like turtledoves above his knees

he was the calmest man I'd ever seen.
We'll make it back to Lubeck, Texas when we can--
it's the state capital of marzipan,

Bach, Buxtehude, bernstein (amber) &
Buddenbrooks, Hanseatic laughter &
wrapping each page in a colored ribbon after.