Red strings form themselves into braids, firebent & erratic,
until they fall into the notes they have invented for the sake
of a puzzle, fingers dripping poetry as though from tiny pinpricks,
falling acidic into the mouth, words as flat as a pickguard as they
spill from the instrument's tongue.

The hands are something irregular, vintage,
as black & distorted as a warped vinyl. Pills
of rainwater flood the vocal cavities as they try to explain
from the phonograph, not a creator but a projector, a
conformist. An octave as low as a jazz musician
in some dark New York City club; the eyes are closed to the sounds,
exotic and warm. The following is not something uncomfortable,
but a painting, as the strings stretch from the neck into the
the gold skylight of sand melting in the receptive gaze.

The broken pieces of a record, taped to gray plaster
walls to simulate the shuddering wings of blackbirds
on dry mornings. A compact disc collection, mutilated
to such an extent that there is no equation one could
possibly employ to decipher the metaphors, the reflective
strands of a cassette tape, shimmering in musical paths
towards a collapse of silence.

I wrap your copper strings around my inkribbon,
to translate the music of my muttering to you
in the only medium I've ever understood.