Kaleidoscopic Chords

KALEIDOSCOPIC CHORDS 

By Shannon Brooks

Surrounded by our favorite strangers –  

the other peculiar ones of spirit 

waiting for the track to begin,

and the break 

of anticipation. 

An arousal of chords swell

and sound like the color blue.

Our collective trunks amassed

in our temple of timbre, 

where notes weave like a needle

with thread, 

in, through, and out of my skin. 

We are saplings among the redwoods, 

a stitch on a quilt,

like patchwork, I’m held together 

by unseen lines, 

connected to the great Earth.

I’m barely there, where the auras

are gyring, 

and the visceral pounding resounds,

so fully, so purely, so brash.

As prismatic screens reflect the scene,

and healing tears release, 

light, like a swath, covers my crown, 

draping over me like a robe,

wrapping like a sheath 

to guard, and conduct the lines

reverberating verses along our common 

latitude, on this no-mooned night. 

Unions are healed after a set 

of kaleidoscopic chords are whispered 

into the expanse of pitch blackness, 

with familiar strangers. 

This poem was inspired by a concert I attended where the song “Nirvana” was performed, followed by “Mania,” by the artist, Madeon.