I. The Drone (2009)
He dresses to go sit in the dark
for about half an hour,
listening to delicate guitars
and woozy violins,
perhaps even one of Madonna's better songs.
He perches himself completely on a rusted anchor,
against the tower that once saved his life,
and with quiet tragedy filling his eyes,
he watches his life shine, then ebb away
inside the shimmer of the liquid oily waters.
When the gleam is lost,
the moon begins to flare,
and like a dead moth calloused with dust,
he is trapped in the rubble of his heart.
He listens to several songs that fit
with the slant of the water's acid foils.
Flurrying pianos, slow shuffling organs,
drowsy drawls and crashing drums:
Endlessly, a drone.
And when the daylight breaks a pink
too premature for what he'd prefer as morning,
he remembers the one who waited for another,
while watching him come apart.
And strings flutter, harps thrum, tempo dives
like what he remembered as a heartbeat
but into a roar that was otherwise
one of those brave echoes in the dark.
He walks back home, feeling bullied by the songs.
And feeling endlessly stuck in the drone:
Even danced with a thousand passing tongues,
I have long felt like a trenchcoat in the sun.
II. The Tuning of Bones (2018)
He walks the same route—
older now,
but the wind still greets him
like an ex-lover,
curious
then gone.
The dock’s iron sigh
has rusted deeper.
Lights stutter on,
as if unsure
they want to reveal anything at all.
