As over and over the same chords churn

your notes pour forth in spate –

sheets of sound erupting till harmony

 

is wrenched awry; and when you sweated

smack to cleanse your system,

you were hell-bent on an afterlife,

 

a body refreshed, believing.

You could call it Love, but sombre,

that force that drives you on.

 

Hearing you now, I feel reproved

for all the ways I lose my time –

books unread, the work I've left undone.

 

But your gift is a Fury;

it's like a disease,

the craving that makes you blow.

 

So who counts up the cost in pain –

the candy bars and cokes consumed,

your aching teeth clamped in the embouchure?