Jitter Issue #2
Harpsichord Notes in the Rain
I want to go to sleep but the silhouetteOf a telephone ringing invades my very dreamsSomeone enters my slumber every nightAnd turns out the lightsUntil my untroubled and transformed storms ofmemoriesThat no sedative can calm are given injections of thestreets belowAnd then I'm no longer trapped in the universe of oldhoursThat exist in the base of my expressionless skullWhere undetected screams of pure mutationMoving slowly like reality was on tranquilizersTransports me to a warehouse choked by dark weedsWhere the sobbing of a ship's whistle moans low ofports unknownCradled in the arms of decompositionAnd anguished sobs dry and distortedSuch agony and loss as the avenging shell of all that Ionce wasScrambles up ladders and short circuiting catwalksnow all a'flameUntil blood curdling wreckage hovers in the drearymorningMotionless like a seed that needs to be plantedIn all of this human birth in reverseThat takes place in wharfs and alleywaysThat are parasitic clear down to their very fibersAnd which are growing ever more dazedIn my disbelief as I peer out through the gleamingneon
Of that not guilty afternoon when the verdict was inThe lightning and the trapdoors of the callous gallowsOf December's chambers became the metronome bywhichMy most vicious poetry was wrought in the musclesof my front roomAs it dissolved into the shuffling footstepsOf an unreasoning fear turned absolutely whiteAnd then I cross the boundaries of these tickingminutesUntil at last the very darkness which has finally foundthe fingers to doAll that it has always twitched to doIn your deepest sleep comes for youIn your deepest sleep....
Ken L. Jones