James K. Zimmerman

Autobiography of the Boy Who Channels The Prometheus Chord

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2024: VOL. 39.

the chord of the pleroma, designed to afford instant revelation 
of what is in essence beyond the mind to conceptualize – Alexander Scriabin

synesthesia: as when musical tones elicit the visual experience of colors – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Birth: 

I appeared in this body 
as a single note, a 440 A, soon 
arpeggiating into a mockingbird’s 
verdant melody, the buzzchirp 
polyphony of nightfall 

it was unremarkable, this event, 
without clamoring chimes 
or heralding trumpets, only 
the companionship of spring 
leaves and cricket wings 

Four Years Old (G major): 

a Bach minuet, a tangerine 
morning enveloped me, a flight 
of finches dipping and gliding 
in the sweet simplicity 
of a cloudless sky 

nothing gray, nothing 
to weigh me down, no 
sound of moonless dark, 
only a dance of early sun

Nine Years (C# minor):

I savored a Chopin nocturne, 
its voluptuous melancholy, 
silk brocade in heliotrope and gold 
on a sculpted rosewood chair

a sunset ballet of breeze-blown 
leaves, calligraphic shadows 
on a sepia wall, a palimpsest 
of grace notes and longing

Thirteen (F# major):     

I saw/heard/felt F# resonate 
in the piercing brilliance 
of a December moonrise 

white ice diamonds glistening 
on ebony branches, a helix 
of pearls searing into my eyes, 
a choir chanting my name 
in coral, plum, indigo

F#, the transcendent mystery 
haunting the heart farthest 
from safety, the triumphant 
crimson of middle C

Seventeen (C/F#/A#/E/A/D):

I became Promethean, 
augmented, diminished,
inbreath, outbreath,
augmented, diminished

the Prometheus chord, 
chromatic tone cluster 
that cannot be understood, 
cannot exist in only one 
place/eye/ear, cannot be 
held in one mind, one body, 
one color, one breath 

can only be felt 
in ineffable fire 

Now:

if I listen closely to the susurring 
in my ears, I live in the key 
of apparitions, tinnitus bells calling 
from a world I once knew, 
a body I left for this one, a song 

separated, arpeggiated 
a gong ringing in a lilac blue 
empty sky 

A neurodivergent writer, frequently a Pushcart Prize nominee, James K. Zimmerman’s work appears in Chautauqua, december, Lumina, Nimrod, Pleiades, Rattle, Reed, Vallum, and elsewhere. He is author of Little Miracles (Passager Books), Family Cookout (Comstock) – winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Prize – and The Further Adventures of Zen Patriarch Dōgen (Poetry Box).