stammering deadbolt playing at penitent piston
a train whistle smudges the air, the mood-
sewn, sinus-swoln bowels of a spit valve
cleared, all angst and grog, all the
errant applause of but
backs cracked
having been
double-booked maybe for
what was the same small job in dream
or sleep stuck groping to tune or attune to the
trembling tune of some slurring machine; a
cobweb throbbed to a silvery string of un-
sightly smoke struck stiff, bent tracing but
butterfly peas in the petering darkness, lark-
spur sawing the sky into cross-eyed sunrise
sighing, as all of our double-exposures,
wheezing egos, seize in the self-
same stream of seamless life, the
oboe’s bloated A blown into a glass-
jawed murmuration of cays and train
cars, just for a moment, a dew-
dinged breath bent echoing
schillers and pearls and ormer’s
bones all swoln to the quivering
ribs of an endless marimba relenting—
5 thoughts on "stammering deadbolt playing at penitent piston"
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I always learn so much about sound when I read one of your poems. Love “a train whistle smudges the air” and “echoing/
schillers and pearls and ormer’s/bones all swoln…”
Thank you!
Love the poem and the comment!
Love “double-booked”
“double-exposures”
and especially
“Lark spur sawing the sky into cross eyed sunrise sighing…” as well as the repetition on the train cars…gives it such a discombobulated feeling, like when the cars go rushing by and blur together as dreams blur into life maybe?
Thank you! I was really groggy writing it, and I was trying to capture the feeling of a train whistle cutting through that—which it did; it snipped off all of this comet-tail angst I happened to be feeling upon waking that morning, clarifying hum of a bell or a singing bowl or some muttering godling scrubbing my brain back into an uncarved clot of meandering driftwood. So it was discombobulating, and I’m glad that came through clearly.