Month: September 2021

The Devil’s Instrument

Mostly she practices for the park pigeons,
who flock to her side and sit as brooding hens.
Beneath her feet, concrete splattered with avian poop,
Ciggie butts and iridescent phlegm.
But still she practices,
Shoulders ablaze, her right arm a system of uncoiling springs
Her mind also unfurling, idle and fertile for the devil himself.

Her violin vibrates long after she has stopped playing.
Let the rumours begin, of bartered souls
and human gut strung taught as string.
What else could make the peasants dance and bring 
peace among the pigeons?
Paganini’s mother sold his soul for a virtuoso son,
And her own mother traded her for a leafy suburb 
and a Mrs before her name:
In the capitalist wheel we are all bought and sold! 

The trick is style. Personal Branding 2.0!
Suited men and winged apparitions are all the rage,
How can hoofs and horns compete with such 
multi-level marketing?
Being a woman and therefore degenerate,
being a novice fiddler, 
She makes all the deals with all the devils.

Evolution

She sleeps with an imaginary violin

tucked beneath her left chin.

In the morning her neck is redwood and

after the camphor oil rub,

 she is a eucalypt on fire.

Her hands too, are changing,

Left hand cupped, each finger extended from

The palm and not the joint.

Wire printed fingertips calloused flat, feel nothing,

In the quest to hear everything.

And there’s the way she folds into its timbre

Into the vibration where horsehair meets wire

And there’s the way her bones calcify into bow,

Her arm a branch bent slightly to catch the

Light and beat.

And there’s the way she would like to nestle into its hollow

and after a minim, emerge transformed-

beyond the captured staves, beyond the renaissance rules-

to play reels beside the slowing river,

beneath the buttress roots and shedding bark

to beckon life back from forever death.

Let her practice on a promise to the earth:

Maybe, maybe we can change-

Lift a key, raise an octave.

Let us practice at humanity.

Listen, the rhythm will come!

Intonation scratchy then smooth then scratchy

Then smooth until finally

New muscle memory will form.

Practice more.

Practice better.

Practice in the hollows where sound is born.