The same little confection you pinch like grapeshot
is depicted on the cover of the octagonal box
in your other hand, undressed of its golden foil
and bisected — its center identical to the pistachio
green of your vest — and that look on your face,
at once both blasé and pissed, betrays just how much
you resent your audience. Made for nothing more
than to tempt us with your artifice of pursed lips
inducing us to ask ourselves — How badly do I want
this for myself — to try what I’ve never tasted
as part of me — to share in the fame of the man
in my mouth — But the affront melts as we follow
the course of your smile, strained into the dimple
of your left cheek, its surface guached as though flush
with fluorescent light landing on powdered skin
pocked with eggplant and orange peel as are relics
of industrial printing. You aren’t so much Mozart
as you are the Taste of Mozart. Still, I could imagine
squeezing out of a putrid basement toilet stall
in a Ringstraße McDonalds to find you standing there
a man the same as I am, your look acknowledging
Yes, how amusing — we are as brothers in the unsavory
demands of our bodies — And then never see it again,
the face of a man who forgets mine, as well. Turning to go
would I be met with your backend, or were you simply
left blank where the pulp of your polystyrene ribbing
meets the dark of a confiserie closed on Sunday?
Or, is it you again? Another Mozart mirrored in marzipan
breeches and ruby tailcoat, foam whig and whipped
egg merengue ruffle shirt — one side determining
the outline of what’s behind it? I encounter another you
outside a gift shop in the Rotenturmstraße just when
a passing teenager slaps the candy box, causing you
to spin like a thaumatrope — sure enough, it’s you again
trapped in the outlines of him glued to your back
and as you spin the Kugel flickers both here
and here, simultaneously, the bend of your elbow
plotting the only possible place it could be
found on either side, your hand twinned to hold
these two confections in orbit, facing each other
for no one else — except your likeness on the foil
is printed looking away. So it seems not even Mozart
can be bothered by the spectacle of his singular
Mozartness — maestro of confection, Mozart of cake
and cotton candy and little chocolates that jostle
in their boxes, like the one you hold up to show us
Here — this is it — the truth of what’s inside.
A ball full of me, just for you — One of 90 million
produced at a factory on the outskirts of Salzburg
and exported to over 30 countries globally per annum
wherein a crumb of the spirit abides — a tiny Mozart
dwelling in every Kugel we will never apprehend
or conceive of the thing for which there always was
a Mozart waiting unborn in the ether for what he is
destined to be the Mozart of. As your rotation slows
and stops with the same you facing me as before
it’s like I’ve glimpsed what your vessel exists to keep
away from the world — Here in the space between
my fingers where you see the Mozart Ball, I in fact measure
the mass of your desire, the candy of your mind’s eye
in relation to all that surrounds and ultimately isn’t
this Mozart Ball right here — one might even say
that Mozart Balls precede the very demand
for Mozart Balls in that they eternally exceed it
as our souls yearn for what they’ve never tasted —
such is the misery you unseal when you bite down
that you won’t be able to stop yourself wanting more —
A few hours later and I’m annihilating a twenty-piece box
of McNuggets, watching a young woman Chaplinwalk
up and down Kärnterstraße in whig and whiteface,
her justaucorps and knickers spray-painted gold
like some porcelain fetish come to life. For dessert
I fish the Mozartkugel I’ve been saving all day
out of my tote bag, skin its finely hammered leaf
tensored squishy between index finger and thumb
that leave their prints stuck in the melted surface
muddy on my tongue, break the seal with a bite
and return my attention to the artist, now wobbling
alongside two girls in burqas who laugh as she plays
her piccolo made of air, then sneaking up behind
a teenaged couple as they go in for the kiss, tapping
the boy on the shoulder to wag her gloved finger
disapprovingly in their faces — a performance I’ve
soundtracked to Kiss my ass in B-Flat Major (KV 231)
with you part minstrel, part what we think approximates
an 18th Century fop and thus associate — whether rightly
or wrongly — with the historical man, mortal Mozart
whose placeholder you are, less you than a version of you
an actor who’s since retired played to middling acclaim
in a film based on a play where your life was recomposed
into a series of vignettes, and where the ironclad ghost
of a murdered Commendatore was mingled with the shade
of your father, his austere bicorne touched with dust.
The week following his death, you wrote a poem instead
to your dear pet starling, more recently departed —
that Lieber Narr, darling fool. It was after you’d wandered
into the pet store where you first encountered him
that you scratched in your pocketbook — 27 May 1784
Bird — Starling — 34 kreutzer — followed by notation
of the tune you taught him to sing there in his cage
maybe at the proprietor’s invitation — Ah, Herr Mozart
here’s a curiosity for you — look — this fellow without fail
will repeat any melody — go ahead, whistle something of yours
and you will find him quite the pupil — And so you did
the opening bars of the allegretto from your newest
piano concerto in G major, though he imperfectly
returned your theme, it’s true, pausing on the last beat
of the first measure and singing G sharp in the next —
or was it that he improved, improvised, gave back
your music made his own, that underneath the bars
you penciled in — How wonderful! — that Vogel Staar
(meaning both starling and stern, unyielding) knows neither
that he’s dead nor that you remained, left to mourn him
as he sings of Mozart in heaven — frees the melody
of your grace notes, embellishments — of you —
the Mozart Ball Mozart — a vibration, a ripple waning
in the wake of a man who as Mozart could not be
other than himself — so does music even exist
outside of its performance — the opera that brings
the stage to life, characters breath, their words to sing
harmonies unheard as unplayed — or do we but interfere
in your self-adequacy — perfection that knows not
how it sounds. A clamor of wings that is music played
taken off in the reading. Fingers frailly instrument the air
of halls echoing alive with voices, mimicry of birds
in true song — Only what has ceased to exist can be
abstracted — and only what is abstract shut up
to its essence — listen — you are not ball but man
brimming with gore — your ears can but hear
one note at a time after another — that’s why you fill me
with disgust — with marzipan nougat pistachio
ventriloquy — but when you unwrap this my hazelnut
body chewed to sludge and swallowed it down
I enter your blood — so trace amounts of me live
in every love handle — it’s not the music that’s mine
no — it’s your hearing, your tastebuds receiving
as if a missing piece, your mind that melts to know
completion however fleeting — finally, here I am
inside of you — The flavor goes mute, so I swallow
what’s left of the Mozart Ball, my gums coated
with buttery cud, though I can feel some of it still
lodged in the cavity between my premolars bleeding
a faint slimy twinge of sugar. Not exactly satisfying
as a dessert in itself, gone before it could barely
register on the tongue. I notice my reflection
in the dark storefront across from where I’m sitting.
Blue oxford shirt and drawstring shorts — how equally
cartoonish this costume seems, as though belonging
to some bygone era no living person would ever
dress like anymore. I watch the man there crack open
a tallboy of Gösser — close my eyes, lean back
and take a long dram of lukewarm beer just when
suddenly I feel a tapping on my shoulder.
