Twitterlieder
My best friend, the composer Eric Whitacre, dared me one day to use the Twitter format of 140 characters to write little prose poems which we eventually came to call “Twitterlieder”. My quirk was that these poems had to be exactly 140 characters, no more or less. Eric promised to set some to music, but I am still waiting...
TWITTERLIEDER, vol. 1
©2009 Charles Anthony Silvestri
Sidewalks buckle as the tree roots press their shoulders upwards--
great slabs of concrete appear to float on a sea of earth and wood sinews.
On my $100 bill Ben Franklin's pursed lips admonish me to spend wisely;
yet his eyes remember fondly all he spent in wine and French whores.
We may not share the same blood, my friend, but we are brothers of heart.
Best friends are the family you choose for yourself. I love you.
The cicadas in my trees scream their summer mating song...
wheee-heewww... wheee-heewww... wheee-heewww...
Makes me want to take a long nap.
There is a squirrel on the tree outside my office.
Some might say, "Oh how cute! Look at his bushy tail."
I say, "A potential paintbrush."
The campus bells toll the quarter hour, as scholars read of Achilles and Hector.
Bronze strikes on bronze, but no longer as an act of war.
Roasted inkyblack as night, bitter nutty deep;
ritualistically I brew and, still halfway in dreamtime, sip a little bit of jungles far away.
Sit and talk with me a while.
Let's both step off of the merry-go-round long enough to catch our breath
and remember why we love each other.
School starts Wednesday. My son is hosting a sleepover with eight sixth-grade boys.
They're in the basement watching WipeOut. Pray for me.
Non capisco niente, non nulla. Ma comincio a conoscere il valore della famiglia, degli amici gentile, e dell'amore... oh, e della fibra.;-)
I don't understand anything, nothing at all. But I'm beginning to know the value of family, of good friends, and of love... oh, and fiber :)
Blond baby boy, hair like cornsilk, first walked a week ago.
Ambling like a ballet zombie stuck in second position, he sees the world anew.
The sunset colors fade; shadows blend with shadows as night descends, drifting across the prairie, enveloping houses under its inky blanket.
What lessons can he teach, this man who painted his handprints on the cave wall so may thousands of years ago? More than just "I was here."
The 1st day of Second Grade is here! I wear my backpack full of fresh supplies
eager for that familiar smell of scrubbed multi-purpose room.
The Lord Jupiter sauntered his way across last night's ecliptic, in resplendent orange, shimmering, laughing at us who once believed in him.
Noble Lucretia, ravaged by Tarquin's blade, couldn't have known the long and glittering destiny that would unfold from her self-spilt blood.
A Lion has died. True, his body bore the scars of many battles,
but there was still some pride left in that noble mane, a still sharp bite.
What is Man? Is he bone and flesh and sinew? O, much more than that.
A man is a warrior of light, fighting darkness from within and without.
Today is my birthday.
44 times around the sun, and you'd think things would start to look more familiar to me.
Oh well. Maybe next orbit.
