This Is Crying Music - Tonijean Bernbaum

[Lawrence Robinson]

This Is Crying Music

Beautiful men in their white gowned voices
singing silk and embroidery 
through the eye of the needle,
humming like indigenous grandmothers
pulling threads low and slow 
after a genocide, 
in and out, like breath 
bringing honor to the ancestors
recalling the names,  their stories and forgotten ways. 

This is crying music -
Echoing across the court yard
arched in ancient stone, the sounds of war
exploding atrocities in the school yard,
plucking the flat strings of power and greed,
shaking tears from the blood of drumming soldiers 
who haven’t cried since they were boys.

This is crying music -
the sound of purple clouds
about to thunder  a tsunami -
 a crescendo of destruction, 
a keyboard on a rolling arpeggio
flooding the land with daggers of electric light,
a city demolished in the opera of chaos, 
in one 10 minute intermission
the earth quaking oblivion. 

This is crying music -
the faint gauze of a melody
wrapping the swollen wrist of an artist
dipping her brush over a palette 
broken with promises. Her sobbing hum
falling like the song of crystal bowls as she shapes
an acappella of orphans on her canvas.

This is crying music -
the song of a beautiful woman
who was taken again and again
by the rough current of brutal desire
until she never stopped with her mantra
taking refuse into the soft green flesh of a cactus
only to bloom, once each season 
for one day only.
Her love and fear of her beauty
covering her skin with poison spines.

This is crying music -
repeating over and over
the trance of the body
dropping deeper and deeper
into its mistaken identity.

This is crying music -
the notes of insanity
allowing God’s jurisdiction 
even here,
in this discordance of raw and ragged sounds, 
tearing the world down the middle
splitting tortue and rapture
separating us all
from each other.

This is crying music -
filling God’s eyes
and ears with a catharsis
of tears, in the symphony of what
we call, ungodly love.

	- Tonijean Bernbaum
 

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