Sex & Violins

Sound byte – epigram – punch-line – quip – tactics

to distract me from a necessary trip – each poem

that I've written in the past few days is full of nervous

party tricks: attempts to waylay me from listening

to one damned note that plays inside my head

relentlessly: bowed open G string – oh, the violin’s

audacity! – Pandora’s box to me: every time I touch it

something odd and terrifying wriggles up and out

of my unconscious sea: jolts of memory compete,

contrast – shame and ego – summon up my past.

No accounting for the reasons – though they're surely

legion: took it up when I was nine – still developing

a spine – stumbled on vibrato onanistically at puberty –

promulgating uses of my left hand surely not expected

by a music faculty: chiefly pretext for my terror at

the opening of doors to some unfathomable realm

to which I couldn't grasp that I had access: what

‘success’ means, I don't know – in or out of playing

fiddle. My bow would like to diddle – lengthen,

stiffen – me: my violin wants sex. Music is complex.

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