The craft is a challenge, but those who severed her tongue left her hands intact; in time her fingers self-cripple with bow, brush, needle, nib.
“Talk why don’t you just talk!” they scream with impatient tongues that pummel like fists. Silent, she turns away. A conversation is not a competition. and she is battle sick.
Dexterous and nimble, this is how she speaks: stitched ciphers and threaded testimony type, tone, texture, tension. There are many ways to whisper- this happened and I exist.
Soul weary. She feels it all. beneath her worn sneakers and too high arches, a quickening. The earth’s arrhythmic pulse. They who follow her shallow footprints gouge their own eyes and plead congenital blindness. Along the cobbled path, she becomes reluctant mother to adult children.
Soul weary. No annual or compassionate leave to grieve ecological collapse, her country a crematorium for marsupials and monotremes she never knew, folding into burned scrub, while birds fall featherless into a reverse phoenix fire, each species’ death a faded footnote of Anthropocene history.
Soul weary. They call her way-shower instead Of wayfarer, But they’ve always pronounced her name wrong, those who plug their ears and cry deafness. those who follow but forget they have feet. All she ever wanted was to travel buoyant in a worldspace so dense that any light is victory.
Soul weary. Let her rest a moment, let her crawl into the undergrowth of the casuarina cathedral, a dying mammal seeking solace in a narrow space. And may the Cormorants and Great Egret, which sit atop this pine steeple wake her from deathless sleep. Otherwise, let lichen spread skin-wise, let blood turn to algae and fungi cushion her feet.
For my friend, N.
brotherfriend, she met him near the tidal river, where the jacarandas break their bloom. he sang her Presley and Sinatra and told her of the fall- skull-side, Broca-Wernicke side, brain space where words are born after the fall and his syntax silenced and morphemes meandering. he couldn’t speak but could sing Summertime, because you always remember your first song.
brotherfriend, she met him near the tidal river, where the terriers piss on her buttress root stage, and the magpies munch worms in their paperbark stalls. he watched her from his Tarago, but it wasn’t that sort of watching and it wasn’t that sort of van and he chose his words as though tasting, moving from mouth roof to tongue tip to lip so she caught the words in her eyes long before hearing sisterfriend with the fiddle, I didn’t want to disturb. brotherfriend, she said, I was born disturbed, beneath the sclerophyll sky, the air here is free take a seat, sing wordless for me.
brotherfriend she met him near the tidal river, where the mangroves swallow second-hand breath he used to have nouns, abstract, proper, collective they used to hang from him and slide slipshod into speech. clever was a mask made of words, quick as the blue tailed wrens, brotherfriend he sang to the aged, the dopamine deficient/ amyloid plaqued brain dying, -I bought him this before he passed. I can’t remember its name, three strings I’m leaving Sydney soon and I’d like you to have this-
sisterfriend novice fiddler, joy junkie (connoisseur) sisterfriend she walked from the tidal river, where the wordless gather in sound because the jacarandas break their bloom and the terriers mark their trees and the mangroves gift them air and sisterfriend she walked towards heavy heat and bitumen boiling, a dead man’s dulcimer speaking simply against her sweat coated skin.
For Jaki
Listen neighbour friend, Not our ninth symphony but a song cycle, Where the whimper becomes a roar. You bring the wind and I’ll bring the string. Come dance a jig, waltz, Charleston, move slowly, move quickly, just move. Play andante, allegro, just play in time or out Off-key or not- don’t stop don’t stop.
Come neighbour friend, You bring the wind and I’ll bring the string. Rouse the feline chorus with a disquieting whir. And we’ll play as we dance over moss coated pavers, spring planters and silent doors. And if we fall let us rise, If we can’t play, let us sing. If we can’t sing, let us shout. This is not our 9th symphony so let our whimper be a roar.
Like that, neighbour friend. You move the wind while I move the string. This is not our 9th symphony, And our whimper is a roar. Two four, three four four four- Keep playing, keep dancing. Drown their war words with soul song. Drown their shatter words, their bludgeon words. All those weapon words that fracture the air.
For more poems from The Fiddle Series, please see the Poetry tab on the left. https://word-upon-word.com/a-cry-for-help-unsolicited-poetry/
So, you want to write words that move, scrawl sound upon the stratosphere, and stop the earth from dimming in its fumes? So, dance circus human, dance. Let art be the boat that you drown in. Make art that tears muscles and breaks bones, stitch syntax into skin and graffiti your mind with stolen syllables and a masterclass of madness.
Dance so bone shoots from socket, But shatter nicely girl. Make a nice sound, a nice shape, a nice story. Break and break again. Stretch viscera from pole to pole, burst life from caged bone and teach us to cry. Break circus human, break. Break nicely. Break utterly.
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.
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.
Word upon Word 