Poem: Performancer

 

Performancer

 

hands

like wolf spiders over the keys.

they ravage a sonata

on the piano's coffin black.

 

the audience soon swilled

into the lamentful hunger of the octaves,

the caterwauls of cricket notes, 

which burn and burst   

to rasp and wisp away.

 

the intermezzo 

hits rough and yet kind.

a fragile, fraught wrestle,

seemingly both reviled and relieved 

by the music's mean, simpering death.

the torments of the last movement

drain chords through tender nuances,

perhaps to protect their sad, torn wings

and yet 

the hands

 

transformed now from spiders,

bent now into feathers, mere shreds of flight, 

bear no patient descent.

they veer confused 

through chasms of sharps and aortas,

over anti-harmonies of spent bridges, 

and down 

and further still, anguished, yes, 

but maybe, at the last,

there is a vibrato of brave solace,

funneling tenderly 

into nothingness.

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2/18/26 ... really hard poem to work with ... i'm tired and old 

12/21/25