“THE SLOW TYRANNY OF MOONLIGHT”

The theme from an old western wafted through the big room like the faint smell of pancakes after a long winter of old potatoes and rusted hinges creaking in a frigid gloom of dusk

the sound welcome after the relentless drone of the machine the one keeping the swollen interior at constant sensation not too much not too little the tonal rudder of the thing unchanging an autistic pianist obsessed by the striking of the one key without pause

bifurcating my viscera gelding my ungendered gonads pissing on the sheen of my serenity

I wanted to find the source of that singular discord and defenestrate it the sonic frowst

of the mezzo-soprano whatever eating at the edges of my virtue the one I never had in the first place.

I wanted to throw an old jockstrap at it, order it some bad clams and make it suck em’ down.

I wanted to buy it a lifetime subscription to Readers Digest.

Oh, oh wait! That’s my punishment, that’s my beat-down, my Chinese water torture, it doesn’t have a brain, no awareness, no self-consciousness, no brain cells to rub together, it’s just a motor, a noise box, moving parts repeating its task, a sonic meditation I found irksome, yeah

that was it, I was irked, it should be the other way round, silent, quiet, still, but it isn’t. Shit.

Inside myself I tried bonding with it, breathing, accepting, caressing, crocheting.

My feet hurt. Suddenly I got that fat feeling like I just downed a gallon of ice cream and couldn’t move. A harbinger of doubt tickled my innards, and suddenly I was in the cut, surfing, robot seagulls moaning dizzily above, the twilight singing, sea creatures without eyes calling my name, I knew I was dead, and yet quite alive, kissing a sonic boom box of pure love, a popsicle of purity, an envelope mailed by a mime holding a seamless message inside.

© 2013