A Song Played ‘Til the End
I am not a pop-up poet or a vintage typewriter guy, but I respect the skill of those who are. Last night I won a flash typewriter poetry competition on an old Royal typewriter from the 1920’s. The F stuck and the hard return hated me, but I managed alright enough. Here is the poem, written on site with the 25 minutes given and incorporating my randomly assigned phrase “Stand-up Bass.”
G clef love
a sin left between verse
with the redletter shout of lust
and absolutes etched like granite carvings
into yesterdays’ mountains
made from molehills
In these day to day dance routines
written in urgent blood;
pumped syncopation of our flagrant loss
and the ripening of hurt
with eacn note played by this trio of longing
where grief is the stand-up bass
and your disaffection spills
like fallen notes from a toy piano
discordant as sour orange
bitter in its incessant ringing.
But oh how his blowhard ways
set the air afire,
a brassy inferno
of troubled bliss,
torching melody at every touch.
Never forget those low moans of fevered yearning
They were the bellwether of this end
The chord pulled
Robbing our song of every electric drop
that once gave us power,
that once promised us tomorrow
that once played together
in faithful harm(ony).
