Muto's Mini Manuscript

*For the beginning of the new year, I will post one artwork every week. The text will alternate between stories from Hanes Art Center and poems I wrote this fall.*

At the end of my fall semester, I completed a short collection of poems for my creative writing class. The assignment was to publish our own book. I only made one copy, but I intend to post most of the work here. I titled the book "Synonym for Thought" as a joke to myself, because I looked up the word in the thesaurus several times while writing. It also fit nicely on the cover artwork. Here is an image of the book and the opening poem:




Risk: Jungle Gym Symphony No. 5

Sitting on the bar for a whole-note rest.

Caution sings chaotic chords:

The dissonance of injury,
Or the cadence of reward.

Tensions build up to crescendo;
Lean back for release—

Gravity flicks his baton:
Cue octave increase.
Spinning through chromatic scales
Speed: prestissimo
Landing on a leading tone,
Then tonic, balance shows;
Heartbeats bounce through major scales
As tempo, starts, to slow,

Double bar lines end the piece.

It’s now yours to transpose.


© 2010 Gregory Halloran