What Rustles My Bustle

Five foot three, with bad skin, and ‘artistic temperament' Beethoven, with his Graf piano His ear trumpet, his chamber pot covered with music to smother the smell This eccentric often dipped his head in cold water Before composing…creating a work To be performed with building tools The ‘Hammer-Klavier Sonata' Paganini… Did he sell his soul to the devil? Or did he have Marfan syndrome, a strange, genetic disorder? His fingers achievedmiracles; was he demonic? He was tall, thin, pale. He dressed in black Arrived at concerts in a black carriage, pulled by four black horses Berlioz, with his Grande Messe des Morts 800 singers,4 offstage brass ensembles Nothing miniscule about his Tchaikovsky, who conducted with one hand On his skull, fearing that otherwise His head would fall off. What man of genius Isn't a little peculiar? John Cage with his 3 movements in silence, with the windows open: Imaginary Landscape No.1, Forever and Sun smell, Totem Ancestor, The City Wears a Slouch Hat, And the Earth Shall Bear Again, The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, A Room, She Is Asleep, Tossed As It Is Untroubled, The Perilous Night, A Valentine Out of Season, Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, Music for Marcel Duchamp, In a Landscape for piano or harp Happenings, Sounds of Venice, Water Walk, for one performer with a variety of objects Bird Cage, Etcetera, Child of Tree Lecture on the Weather, A Dip in the Lake: Litany for the Whale, Instances of Silence, How I salivate over his titles!