Incoherence

Very much Charles-Simicky

Legion of teenage flesh sliding

On wheels and wooden planks

Like bars of soap sliding across

My old and dented bathtub

 

Bird shadows weaving scarves

And grandmothers warping them

Around their skinned turkey necks

As they enter a Salvation Army shop

 

A cloud fizzing on my tongue,

A black cat named Becker

Kneading my frontal lobe

And a plastic bag flies by

 

In an empty building I practice

The Bösendorfer as a Victorian

Gentlemen keeps the beat

With his ebony cane; he forgot

 

His metronome, and really,

He doesn't need a cane;

He's twenty-one; it only gives

Him airs of age and wisdom.

 

What was I playing?  Siren,

A Tempered Clavichord, G flat,

Über den Wellen, or the ditty

from Charlie Brown?  A scale,

A serpent, or slaughtered chicken?

 

Stationary bikes ring their bells

And black birds dance around

A disk of snow in July as the sun

Shows us its dark side and you weep.

 

 

Reviews

[shel]

i am the slowest reviewer on earth. sigh.

i read this when you first posted it, and didn't know what to make of it. i guess the title speaks to that. :) reading it again...ok, i still don't get all of it, but the more i read it, the more i liked it. the opening...skateboards? well, then you mention the salvation army shop which (to me) ties into that demographic...and a plastic bag (american beauty? or am i just too obsessed w/that film? because i am, you know, lol.) and the twenty-one-year-old with the cane...i don't know what to make of all this, it starts to sound like a statement about youth and identity, but not quite. then the music, and the bells...it's like a crazy dream, the cat kneading your frontal lobe...this is like one of those poems i read in journals that i don't get but am overwhelmed by somehow, and have to go back to, trying to unravel. you're going to have to fill me in. (and maybe send it out!)