Types of Pianos

Daniel Alexander Apátiga

A poem with repetition and in list form

Types of Pianos

Steinways cost so much I can’t afford one.

They sound so perfect I have to play on one.

They sing the music as we’re supposed to hear it.

I can’t imagine any pianist who doesn’t want one.

Electric—if they can incorporate electronics into one,

An electric grand piano would be a new invention.

How come there aren’t any electronic Steinways?

Uprights—they cost less and you can afford one.

But still I can’t.

My pockets are deepening without money though with lots of debt.

Uprights sound worse than baby grands,

Which to you they sound melodic and they sit there desirably,

Waiting for you to play on it.

They range in size from small to medium.

Grands—they’re the large baby grands.

Grand pianos cost more and can be up to nine feet.

But I have to wait ‘til I’m rich.

My pockets are deepening without money though with lots of debt.

Yamahas are good but as good as the Steinways?

Organs were the precursors and were the first keyboard instrument.

But Organs are too big to have in the house.

Boston pianos—they’re made from the same dudes who make the Steinway,

Only they’re made in an assembly line and are cheap.

Of course, I can’t afford one, ever.

My pockets are deepening without money though with lots of debt.

Boston pianos also don’t sound as good.

Some grands have more than the normal amount of keys or less.

Some have more than one register I bet.

Some may even be polka dotted with pink, white, and blue.

Some ancient pianos have unique patterns painted unto their frames.

Your piano is the best I’ve heard and I want to know how much you sell it for.

My pockets are deepening without money though with lots of debt.

A new ending to a story by Poe

Daniel Alexander Apátiga

Revised Version 2

A new ending to the end of a story by Poe

               M. Valdemar, being on the brink of death, was still in a state of deep hypnosis when suddenly a woman from the future briskly entered the room without revealing her true purpose.  At this point he was beyond death in either world—heaven or hell.  Just as the hypnosis experiment had entered the phase in which he was “reanimated,” she and I had a chance to talk.  Chasity told me she’s a doctor who has a cure.  There was no cure besides the one I had theorized, in my expert opinion, though she convinced me hers was different.  I did not believe in her because I had no idea who she was.  Despite wanting to see my experiment be drawn to its inevitable ending, which was as I theorized, a death without a death… also better known as the state of reanimation, I allowed her to carry out her plan.  I decided to allow her to follow through because she was stunning.  The corpse of M. Valdemar would have some remnant of life left of who he was had I been allowed to follow through with my experiment.  Perhaps his memory, speech, and cognition, would all be there still intact indefinitely, though not truly, because he would be in a state of hypnosis.  And my solution to mortality would not spell the impending apocalypse as promised in the bible—as every sick, old, decrepit human being scrambles to plead for my aid—hypnosis on their death beds as a means of escaping judgment.

She might have been a fallen Angel, but I began to know her as the days grew brighter as Miss Chasity.  The way she lightly moved around the cabin made me rethink her purpose.  She made some intelligent movements with her hands over M. Valdemar that weren’t sexual in nature, but rather of unearthly methods beyond my grasp.   She pulled out a shiny device that emitted a beam that most closely resembled light, though it was a state of matter that wasn’t energy, as I instantly knew as a baby would immediately know solid from a liquid for the first time.  Nor was it solid, liquid, gaseous, or plasma; it was something never before seen.  To have this ulterior scientific knowledge could make me famous if I had decided to steal it from her.  My conscious helped me see that it wasn’t a knowledge we were ready for, it was for some grander purpose that she is here.  Not only that, my obsession with the promise of hypnosis as a way to extend life had evaporated, which would mean I’d have to pursue some other art.  My desire though for fame was greatly outshined by my desire for her intricate personality, which wasn’t limiting me from fantasizing her beside me in bed.

               As she finished her strange movements, I felt greatly inferior to her knowhow with a device that produced strange results.  It was for some purpose that I could not explain, but M. Valdemar began to speak, telling me of how he felt better and that what I had done had cured him.  It was most surprising.  I thought that he was suspended from death indefinitely, that it was her action that had saved him.

He began to speak as if it was the most important thing in the world, “I hear melodies and harmonies!” 

The lady, Miss Chasity, muttered something in his ear, her device long hidden from view.  She left rather matter-of-factly, unhurriedly, because I had wanted to see her. 

“When I get home I will write down this divine melody, because the complicated music is up in my mind.” He told me. 

This piece, which was very moving and later affected many people in society, was one of his many soon-to-be-famous compositions.  I knew he was a musician beforehand, but imagine if he had died and no one became acquainted with this musical genius!  He was a composer before I had met him and he sought my aid in the techniques of hypnosis when he became infected with Tuberculosis.  But I did not save him, she did.

Months later, after he transcribed it onto some parchment, I told him, “I’m glad that you are alive.”   

In short, if he had not been resurrected by her I wouldn’t hear people sing his songs.  I wouldn’t see them cry at the moving music, their souls touched as she touched his.  This future would be different and society both high and low would have been robbed.   Only God could guess what affect good music has on a generation, society, and the future of a race. 

She disappeared from view and society later that week.  M. Valdemar and I tried to find her and even called the police, but there was no one by that name who matched her appearance.  Later, the government police contacted me and questioned me just the same as I had questioned the police.  One thing remained unclear, however, and that was how she did it.  There are no words to describe it.  She did it to save or avert us from the fate of the future.

Unrequited Love

Unrequited Love

Every time I look to the water,

I see a fossil.

They are stuck there lazily

Amidst the sand.

And when I pick one up to say, “look!”

She has to respond, "you're not sanitary.”

Deep in the sand

A crab crawls without a sense of being sanitary.

She asks me to look,

But all I see are fossils.

I begin to swim in the water

And I float on my back lazily.

She examines the crab as it lazily

Digs a hole pushing away the sand.

A big wave of water

Slaps across the shore giving the crab my sanitary

Sense while the fossils

Jolt around as I look.

She sits down on a hammock to look,

But I feel too lazy

To walk past the fossils.

And tread on the sand

To her smelly feet that’s un-sanitary.

I hear the water

Recede as she sips a coconut shell full of water.

I see the crab peering out of the hole to look

While the lady becomes more sanitary

Absorbing the sun and making vitamin D lazily.

I make my way back across the white sand.

I step on a fossil

By accident and I bleed without any sanitary

Sense.  She bends her head down to look lazily—

And all I see is the ocean of water.