Poem: Performancer

 

Performancer

 

hands

 

like wolf spiders over the keys.

they ravage a sonata

on the piano's coffin black.

 

the audience swilled

by the lamentful fury of the octaves,

a caterwaul of cricket notes, 

which burn to rasp and wisp away.

 

the intermezzo a fraught wrestle,

both reviled and relieved 

by the music's harsh deaths.

in the final torments of the last movement,

the chords drain more fragile, 

bits of nuance to protect torn wings,

 

hands

 

transformed from wolf spiders,

and yet their bent feathers and shreds of flight 

bear no patient descent, 

when confused they veer

through chasms of sharps and aortas,

lost in a rumble of spent bridges, 

down into silence.

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