PET PALOOZA MAY 19 SAVE THE DATE! also dairy goat show in june

The Myles Mancuso Band Motown/R&B, Blues. Rockin' Rythm & Blues Arlington Bar & Grill 770 Main Street Poughkeepsie, NY See Map Myles is a 16 yr old, multi-instrumentalist prodigy playing a unique blend of Rockin' Rhythm & Soul

Internal Rhythm

1.

His knuckles have gotten thicker
He's learned to turn his voice to silk
   to convince and to caress
He has finally learned how to kiss
and how to cook asparagus
and how to contain his rage in public

He squares himself into computer columns
by day
but at night he dreams of the ocean
He becomes dark, cool, wild
responding to an unpredictable tug
from every direction

In his dreams he swells
and recedes
but not like clockwork
never like clockwork.

2.

She wakes up at precisely 7:59 AM
having set her alarm for 8 AM
She rolls over in the early gray light
and looks at the glowing red numbers,
then smacks the clock with her palm
before it can begin to squeal.

There must be a rhythm within her
that is willing to align itself to the gears of a clock
some silent internal tick-tock
that builds upon itself
and counts her body's beats
and knows the precise hour
even as she sleeps

that same inner rhythm
heavy with its tally of time
must also know
in addition to when, precisely, to wake up
when, precisely, it will stop for good.

3.

The years keep passing
This is the only thing he can say with certainty
since every time he looks back
his stories seem to retell themselves

Is he in the right line of work?
Has he been kind enough?
Would everything be better, if, say,
he had lost his virginity
to a different woman?

Better not to think about it
These questions with no answers
But at precisely 3:28AM
he is staring at an infinitely dark ceiling
and he cannot think of anything else.

4.

The morning is sunny.
She sits on a soft leather couch
with red-gold embroidery
She is sipping green tea
from a round white cup.

She can imagine this as a memory-
impossibly clean, luxurious-

When she is looking back someday,
when the world has gone mostly
in flames
and she is huddling
in ashes, maybe
or under the black hulk of a tree

It will have come
quite abruptly
a sudden rush of hot air
the windows shaking,
her voice,
as if it were a thing separate from her
rising in a scream.

5.

He scribbles on a napkin:
There's not doom
Or hope
But a relentless working of things
and a rhythm
that has never yet been disproven
He is drunk at a bar
as if he has always been drunk at a bar
It is dimly lit
as if the world were never bright
His stomach was once soft
now hard
someday soft again
He can't ignore this.

She is glorious. More
every year
Someday
less so.
Outside,
it's cold and dark.
He dreams of her, forgets her again,
likes to dream of her when things are difficult.

He gets up from the bar.
Time begins again.

6.

She has become a connoiseur
of mid-seasons-

Late-late winter's almost invisible buds
Early-early summer's particular shade of yellow green
Mid autumn, a held breath

As a child she didn't understand the romance of seasons
the piles of poems about fall leaves
the hubbub about daffodils and robins
all the songs of summer sun

But after a few dozen sets of seasons,
she understands:
how grateful we are
and how full of sorrow
that every year,
no matter what,
autumn comes again