It's hard for me to write while music is playing.

It's not that I don't love music, it's maybe that I love it too much.

It takes over. It's all there is. One minute I'm finding a song and the next

minute I'm singing full-throated in the kitchen so loudly even the neighbors

can hear me. Music and poetry are inextricably linked. What we do in a poem is

make room for all the music on the page, the harmony, the melody, the bridge and

so on, but we have language and form to make that happen, not a full orchestra.

Today's poem honors one of the greatest composers of all time and it also

honors the relationship between music and poetry. A case study of Beethoven's

nine symphonies by Keisha Castle. One, what if I told you not a single war

happens dramatically, not the wars in your home, nor the wars on your body,

were all capable of violence, of destroying everyone in our path for pure

pleasure, of dismantling our bodies limb by limb until they're less shameful,

a vessel someone would be willing to hold. Brutality ravages slowly, it is

aided by proximity, not a single war happens dramatically. Two, tongues are heavy

and mine keeps tripping over the language of being alive. This is the part

where I na on my tongue until it falls from my mouth. Three, Aroika, the state

sang her war songs and lying dormant in her belly was an aria that rang out

like a tech through the air, leaving the town square, bathed in the blood of

her enemies. What did you expect? Don't speak ill of the dead. There were no

eyed ideologies to reject no memories to repress always the sun and never the

moon only hurt people hurt people don't speak ill of the dead. Five, transfigurative

...