3 Original Poems .... Pianos, October, & The Spineless Book

PIANOS
A litany of violence and vendetta
Erupts from fingers. Each a
Felt covered hammer knuckled
In leather, striking strings.
Skin springing back.
Strangely rewarding,
The expression of sound.

Anguished hands part
Inarticulate valleys.
Violet palm purple.
Buried in white soil I am
Silent sunset red.

Swift plum peach blooms fall
Over our unnamed country.

---

OCTOBER
October holds its cold concrete arm
fractured
over slow mornings. Outside the bed box
Night leaves drop glass beads.

The rain is a loop.
The wind is plectrum.
The sky is a ceiling that can not be reached.

It is easy to locate the heart.
Seeking fingers find it
Under a curved chest
Heaving over a rough sea.

---

THE SPINELESS BOOK
I took on the task of understanding
the pages in my open book.

On the case cloth I marked
metaphor and allegory.
A murder erupted
from felt covered fingers.

I must have wrote it backwards
but I read it forwards.

I thought I could read between
the lines but I was a coward.

I pricked my lips and smudged
the cover its dark red title.

On the first page of the last chapter
I sewed my eyelids shut
but the leather skin sprang back
with a strange reward.

I tore out the endpapers.
I tore the flesh off the spine.