Poem: Performancer

 

Performancer

 

hands

like wolf spiders over the keys.

they ravage a sonata

on the piano's coffin black.

 

the audience soon swilled

by the lamentful hunger of the octaves,

a caterwaul of cricket notes, 

burning and bursting  

to rasp and wisp away.

 

the intermezzo hits rough and yet kind: 

a fragile, fraught wrestle,

both reviled and relieved 

by the music's harsh, simpering deaths.

the final torments of the last movement

drain the last chords through a tender nuance

to protect such sad, torn wings.  and yet 

 

the hands

 

transformed from wolf spiders,

bent feathers now and shreds of flight, 

bear no patient descent.

they veer confused 

through chasms of sharps and aortas,

fed into an anti-harmony of spent bridges, 

down and further still, anguished, yes, 

but maybe at the last moment 

a vibrato of brave solace,

funneling into silence.

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12/21/25