Poem: At the Keyboard

 

At the Keyboard

 

fingertips.  bishops and rooks.  

diagonal.  orthogonal.

hostage to a rash hopscotch,

obsessed yet servile

over sleek prim tiles.

troublesome tiles, 

tiles which somehow 

invoke the odor of Darth Vader’s chest.

 

my eyes track mumbo jumbo.

ears dog a ridicule of clicks.

hours of this.  hands twin crabs, 

doing a mountebank shuffle.

fingertips--later--

fade through a falter of clog dance,

 heart yanked

as if in an Id-space-time machine ... 

Z's to ampersands,

drowsy then aroused.

gleeful with hate and fear and sex ...

commas become chores 

then look like semen.

hyphens become hymens

wasting their innocence ...

'how long 

can so many period marks last?' ... 

fingerprints erode drip by drip.

'how much sense of touch 

can i lose

on this topo-dramatical-logico psyche trip?'

shall i retreat,

exhausted yet stimulated?

should i flee 

this multi-emotional mission

into the far more simple math  

3D game of chess?

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1/12/26 mods ... very difficult poem

10/3/24 eds.