Love Song

Harpsichords know what I’m talking about,

With their lovely red shell of wood, pretty

Gold leafs floating across the green lacquer,

With pulled strings that sound of bones

 

And chattering teeth at heavens’ door,

Their songs meant to be about romance

But sounding of burst ventricles and death.

If I could write a song to you, I would do so

 

On a harpsichord, something in a minor key,

With lots of accidentals, a few trills, andante.

Something a phonograph would dread playing.

With pale hands I would grace the femoral keys

 

And pound a song for you, shriek something

About rejection, perhaps a song about a stone

Kicked into a spring in the dead of the forest,

The water eroding it back to sparkle and dust.

Author's Note

I mixed a bit of heartbreak and some Tori Amos and this is what I got.

My engine was this:



Image from http://megglles.deviantart.com/art/Harpsichord-93790443

Reviews

[Jeannie Wilder]

So far I have read your pieces from the first on the list, and each one has left me with an eery silence, something I was just unable to respond to. As if my cheesy little words would tamper with your haunting ones. However, something about this piece just urged me to respond, so here I go.
First -- your line "with pulled strings that sound of bones" made me hold my breath a little, needless to say it is my favorite line.
Second -- you are the first person in this little cyber cafe that I feel can effectively use the last line of a stanza to finish one part and lead straight into another. This is something I've noticed as a style technique/quirk of yours, and I think it's what sets you from other writers with similar ideas and word usage.
Third -- I can pretty much see this entire piece in my mind, and then in the third stanza I can hear it. Thanks to a music literature class I know what the heck you're talking about, (otherwise I would have just pretended) even though its not very complicated theory.
Fourth-- you have a knack of using beautiful words and then suddenly throwing in a line with sharper words, which is some how fitting to your pieces.
And now... I’m done. Basically all I could do is praise because, especially in this piece, I found nothing “wrong” –- if there even is such a thing in poetry.