Channie Greenberg, One-Handed Pianist

excerpt

One-Handed Pianist

Author: Channie Greenberg
Publisher: Hekate
Date: Oct. 11, 2021
Length: 236 pages
ISBN: 1912017059; 978-1912017058

When the world’s most original thinkers get stymied, humanity suffers. Our poverty of inspired and enterprising insights ultimately frustrates civilization. Specifically, such a dearth thwarts society’s hope for reparation and growth, and, more generally, impedes its ability to move past any inherent dysfunction. Sadly, because most of our assemblages of words and most of our collections of images succumb to false beliefs about limits on the nature and kind of individuals’ pathways for communication, we artists are not necessarily helping matters.

Since it’s not through fissuring, but through association that we can improve the social order, it’s important for us producers to find ways to use our faculties in interchange. Sure, it’s useful, even essential, to have primary strengths, yet, simultaneously, it’s useful, even essential, to manifest support for our less utilized forms of expression. Namely, creative folks need to actualize their potential beyond their specialties.

Accordingly, One-Handed Pianist means to serve as a catalyst for additional imaginative efforts. People become willing to seek favorable outcomes in uncertain domains after they’ve evidenced others doing so. “See one, do one, teach one.” By exemplifying the value of crossing over into new types of dialogue, One-Handed Pianist can help artists move beyond their inventive comfort zones.

This book contains one hundred pairs of poems and digital paintings, all of which were generated by me, an individual primarily considered a “writer.” My journey into the realm of visual work is meant to encourage other artists to take risks, to avow talent’s multidimensional quality, and to exemplify ways in which all originators can grow.

* * *

His Long Since Lost Letter

His long since lost letter’s composed from qualia, of individual bursts
Of existentialism releasing his metaturnality, his diffident behaviors,
Conduct regarded as belonging to faraway lands, imagined territories,
Zones where all graphemes matter, where harried wisps want attention.
All in all, those childhood perspectives impacted racecar design, book
Inking, no matter how diminutive were the returns. His parents’ clutch
On unrelated juvenile, mixed midquels, in most cases, exploded since
Picaresque episodes can’t couple with motion pictures of vague worth.

Nonetheless, certain fads remained fairly simple to explain. Consider
Testudineous processes akin to pigeons, newspaper, masses of routine
Restrictions on grownups’ records of penumbras, not including people
Spooling itineraries around sob stories crafted into million dollar epics.
No sop ever festinated toward universals, ever saw himself sagacious,
Never escaped witling-like ways, internalized no affection for familiar
Folk despite solecisms, syntax mistakes, grossly erroneous anaphoras.
Human skin’s craquleure endures akin to veined marble, wearied cats.

Alternatively, individuals hide when friends drop by for brain storming;
Social appreciation of men’s facial hair (versus metrosexual grooming),
Fashions envisaged zoology while avoiding catachresis, both mitigated
And militated, produces usage avenues for antiphrasis, regulates smiles.
Mature harvests don’t always manifest as ineptitude, disempowerment;
Beauty’s fermata lacks the nature of, reasoning behind, quality of sleep.
Results comparable to vague hopelessness, enduring sleepovers, farts,
Watching water evaporate, enforce beliefs in quaint, old-world habits.

* * *

Potomac River

That geological player, birthed by Virginia headwaters,
Fairfax Stone along with Hightown’s local secret, runs
Intimately thru Shenandoah, Monocacy, Anacostia, Little
Catoctin, Wicomico, Piscataway, Nanjemoy, Tonoloway,
Chicamuxen, Tuscarora, Antietam, and Conococheague.

His waves descend more than four hundred miles, toward
Point Lookout, Chesapeake Bay’s ponies, Chincoteague
Island’s sister, Assateague, while sending tides over Great
Falls, North Fork South Branch, furthermore, a man-made
Reservoir whirling cherry blossoms amid capitol politicos.

The Piedmont Plateau, through which he runs, represses
No co-mingling among sister states, no skipping between
Watersheds, no seeding creeks, runnels, brooks, swales,
Floodplains, branches, confluences, kickpoints, thalwegs,
Springs, riffles, or sanctuaries hydrating countless beasts.

Featherstone’s ducks, muskrats, also local “Downies,” like
Occoquan Bay’s osprey, woodcocks, otters, Yankauer’s
Squirrels, starlings, Eidolon’s vireos, sapsuckers, waxwings,
As well as many sites’ pike, walleye, beavers, muskellunge,
Prove this two million year-old bad boy’s procreative urges.

Harper’s Ferry, Williamsport, Red Rock Crossing, Paw Paw,
Okonoko, Georgetown, Bolivar, Morgantown, Mason Neck,
Hancock, Quantico, Brunswick, Sterling, Dahlgren, Mount
Vernon, too, bear his fecund silt, his high-yielding alluvium,
Much fertile sediments churning numerous publics’ lifetimes.

* * *

Demurrage

Sometimes, we suffer from a failure to load or to release within agreed times.
On such occasions, charges payable to owners of chartered conduits get lost,
Misplaced, forgotten. Folks’ sentiments are left to die, wither, elsewise perish.

Whereas we can’t determine how or why Heaven votes a direction, we can
Garner celestial favor, gather partiality, utilize prayer, remorse, correction,
Improve personal results, inner strength (that shiny quality of humankind).

Contrariwise, if we continue on imprudent, countenancing mean, collegial
Determinations of sclerotic events, we stay reliant on maladroit exchanges,
Become forced to use systems without cultural crenulations, enlightenment.

Going forward, it’s crucial to ignore imperious pleas, unhandsome outcomes,
To stop favoring counseling obsessed with multiple versions of veracity, stop
Balancing implacable desires vs. high end banlieues, new cars, loud sighing.

* * *

Digital paintings in One-Handed Pianist that originally appeared in Bewildering Stories:

“Contingent on Altering Behaviors”
“Picky about Prey” as “Infringe”
“Table of Contents, Hybrid” as “Charm”

Poems in One-Handed Pianist that originally appeared in Bewildering Stories:

“Contingent on Altering Behaviors”
“Jejune Options”
“No More Box Spring Wibbles”
“Picky about Prey”
“Soft Words and Whispers”