88. Pain [100 poems challenge]

88.          Pain

You can’t believe the agony
When ears first notice that
The note that should have been a G
Is barely a G flat.

25 July 2013 (well, technically the 26th)

Comments: I had a variety of possible ideas for this one, but some of them were too serious, and I was “serioused out” after 82. Can You Hear Me, 83. Heal, and 86. Seeing Red, and I wasn’t happy with the direction any of the ideas were taking me anyway. On this particular night — after I’d been trying other ideas for a couple of days and when my buffer of poems was shorter than it had ever been — I went out for dinner with my Loose Canon singing friends, and this just came to me … well, the idea, at least; I still had to turn it into verse. I know I very occasionally go a little flat when I sing (which makes me nervous when I am around people with more accurate pitch), but I don’t think I am ever quite this bad. Moreover, I would certainly notice this degree of flatness from other people (unless it was the whole choir, at the end of an accumulating downward trend). In me, such off-key singing induces a shudder or a wince; I imagine the pain is far, far worse — excruciating, even — for those with perfect pitch.

Themes to come: 89. Through the Fire; 90. Triangle; 91. Drowning; 92. All That I Have; 93. Give Up

Explanation about the 100 poems challenge here.