Can a keyboard be as graceful an instrument as the piano? Is it possible to pull out melodies from the keys, to close your eyes and hear the beauty you create as something new comes into existence, something lovely and delicate? But the metaphor extends farther. Pound the keys with your anger, string them together into minor chords and foul words to create the impression that you know what you're doing and you're not afraid to bring something to the world that won't garner praise for being majestic, for being a light, but for being black. Pluck out a single lined melody. Simple tunes have too often been overlooked and have too often been ignored. Maybe it's out of your reach to craft the flowing and extended symphonies with multiple meanings; the sentences that push to run on status but maybe they don't because the run on never meant anything to anyone anyway until the monster of third grade English hour forced the falsehood into our minds and pressed the ever prominent reality of the five sentence paragraph, the five paragraph essay, into our impressionable minds and our personal style crept carefully into our heads to stay and to hide from our teachers who vocally beat it out of the open and into the endless crevasses in our minds, filled with things we'll never guiltlessly be able to use. Contemporary composers would have something to say to their professors as well, I'd imagine, though I stay a good distance away from the keys of ebony ivory that to me are a mystery and my instrument of choice is language. The keyboard, my keyboard. The word my note. The phrase my chord. The piece, well, my piece. The metaphor extended isn't quite as distant as you had thought.