Gears

The chalkboard, either black or green

Was never really specified.

We watched a greek column

With saggy sleeves,

A dusty speakerbox machine

Who jittered and jumped around

Her circles like a catching cog.

The two plus twos lilted like

Lost children in a hospital as she

Shrilled and slashed at the board

In a filmy cloud of dither.

This poor spindle was a hybrid

Of steel wielding general

And origami horse, a torsion of

Maestroed wrists in the cadence

Of angle and chalk, of sunbeams and sweat

As we fiddled with pocket things.

To sit in a noble silence,

Stirring in suspended dust, sucking

In stagnant words to lungs

At a loss of want.

The world spins within these

Numbers and avatars of logic,

But what is the world

To footstead youths set

still in fluorescent dungeons,

When chalk was made

For sidewalks and monsters?

Reviews

[Hedra Helix]

You feel more mature, but I get the old elegance loud and clear. I'm so stoked to read this, it's like visiting the genius of you -circa 2006-7 but with deeper darker twists and turns. Like your hands on the wheel are moved by muscle memory.

This is Old school amazing:

a dusty speakerbox machine
who jittered and jumped around
her circles like a catching cog.
Her two plus twos lilted like
lost children in a hospital

Where I'm put inside this moving robot of my own making, morphed from my perception of your pictures. Something I'll recall later like a memory.

Then this:

This poor, spindly hybrid,
a steel wielding maestro or
plangent general on origami horse,
torsioned her wrists to the cadence
of angle and chalk, of sunbeams and sweat
as we fiddled with pocket things.
To sit in a noble silence

A condensed capsule, reintroducing me to the years in between, when we've been far away, and how much your mind has gathered while I've been busy with my own things.

You're still SOO elegant. That's my overall critique, first poem out.

[John]

It took a couple of readings, but I think I now know where I am with this poem. I like the way the stick of chalk, which for the young student has become a symbol of rule and order, is conceived as having another purpose - transformed into a means for self expression through art making. With its theme of repression and freedom, the poem reminds me of Wallace Stevens's Disillusionment at 10 O Clock.