Instrumental

Rock should not be petrified, but pulsing through each vein;
Amplified, electrified, and pumping up the gain.
Strumming to a major key, counterpoint in fifth,
Tickling out the melody, teasing out the riff.
Echowashes linger, rippling out and out to heaven,
Tapped out through each fingertip, and cranked up to eleven.
Talent is a rare event, from who knows where or what;
Blessèd or genetic sent – you got it, like or not.

Play for me,
Play until your fingers bleed
And stain your strings in red.
Won’t you play for me,
Play my each awoken need, on oscillating thread:
Quivering through coils magnetic, shimmering with new aesthetic,
From a shining mind eidetic, visions sparkle round your head.
So play for me,
Play because your splendours feed my ev’ry living shred.

And yet your great ability will only stretch so far,
And no adept virility on wuthering guitar
Can fill the sucking cavity of your poetic hash,
Can give your couplets gravity, or potency, or flash.
And no electric symphony can make your rhyming king,
And no angelic harmony can make your lyrics sing
Talent, I can but surmise, is fickle what she brings
When genius in beauty lies on six vibrating strings

Play for me,
Play until your fingers span
My senses and my lot.
Won’t you play for me,
Play to make me greater than the sum of parts forgot.
Do not cling to rhymes pathetic, senseless oral anaesthetic
When you’re playing such poetic, why use choking words to clot ?
So play for me,
Play because you simply can, and we poor scribes cannot.

None Shall Speak

In Op’er’a, where the voices chirp and soar,
Where fat or old or plain remain the greatest draw;
In Op’er’a, be anyone we dream –
Quadoctave star, we vocally supreme –
And the orchestra will make us shine the more.

In Op’er’a, where the voice is ev’rything;
Where we can ne’er be wrong, so long as we can sing.
But some dumb brutes, they wretchedly just croak –
Deformèd mutes, unvocalising folk –
Crippled destitutes, just speech from their throats wring –
They can talk and hoot, but Op’er’a ain’t lis’en’ing.

To be read (but not sung) to the tune of Nessun Dorma.