Tag Archives: sound

Tristadem

It enters each day, guttural;
a weeded stone facade surfacing,
the bog still clinging to the parapets,
and a hollow rusted trumpets lament:
                  “Tristadem, tristadem,” it sings,
      haunting the space between.
Rising from those shadowed depths
        to soar out the crenel lacerations
          and lumber over the landscape
        collapse bluntly at my feet:
              “Tristadem, tristadem,” it moans.

My eyes furrow, bent in prayer
      that the earth swallow this foul place,
        the empty halls and echoes
              the intermittent plummet of longing wetness
dripping drops of “tristadem, tristadem,”
        on the dry parchment of any ears
            hermitted away in that stale space.
        Waiting for a days worth of dirt,
      long wood planks nailed in darkness,
    a place to lay one’s head,
and a thread to pull restless lips closed,
  so the morose melody of “tristadem, tristadem,”
            may never pierce them again.

Metronome

If thunder could only speak through a trumpet,
                  that is the sound.

It is everywhere,
                        abruptly,
                                          then slowly not- a passing flood.
    A confidence of noise that terrifies the insides,
sends them scattering in all directions,
      but bound to you.
              the fruitless effort makes them-

                                               resentful.

Desperately,
                  I wish I could capture that sound;
                              pin it to this page
                              and share it with you,
                  if only to prove to myself its existence.

When it rises again,
                                    I am still broken.
  A school bus made of rubber
                out of control
                        too fast to stop
                forcing itself through too small a gap;
            the agony of that sound.

All life inside me fades as it does
          replaced by uneasy stillness.

               I can see no reason for it but-

                                           something is wrong.

The scurrying of my insides
incites the space I find myself in to salivation.

           It could be-
                  the way it feels,
                          the stillness;
                I am already within the monster’s mouth.

There are no signs for or against this
                            just the absurd quiet between;
                  a caesura in the fear.

The hills outside could be rolling off
                              into a horizon unseen,
or the listless valleys of an ancient tongue overgrown;
                        the eater of worlds.

I feel it deeper now, its third report.
                    Like I should know its purpose
      and it is violently disappointed.

The birth of a maladie underdeveloped.
    Only trachea and lungs and noise,
no head or mouth to shape the air;
    fumbling out this inelegant discord.

                                           That’s the sound.

                                  I imagine the world is silent,
    lest whatever ill fate it portents take it too.

Mantra

The sound of time
is a quiet note
               vibrating
the lips held tight
      pressured to parting
but nothing comes out
except that rhythm
               unending.

It fades into the background
a distant pillar of smoke
stark against a cloudless sky
only noticed in sober moments
when the world can afford its ending,
and we, as observers
can reflect on that broken line;
the gap always growing.

That rhythm calling out
enveloping the horizon
to remind us
               everyday
                              will find itself setting.

Music

Waiting outside the record store
the music trapped inside escapes
               Something metal
               and unsettled
Hard music expressed as strange shapes
sound bent in ways not heard before

               I rest my head on the wall
               against the vibration
                              gentle quake
                              of heartache
               life in time dilation
               will make room for it all

                              That which I’ve lost
                              is still here now
                                             Pretense
                                             suspense
                              should time allow
                              the hidden cost

                                             Collapse
                                             Renounced
                                                            drowned
                                                            sound
                                             denounced
                                         perhaps

                                                            Sound
                                                            drowned