Leg off the table
you red face recruit!
put on the offensive
and break down
the bolted door!
you are the soul saver
the peddle maker
the calibrator
with colored handbills
and front line
rhetoric

join the masquerade
in ivy league style!
politicking with
cunning guile
invisalign smile
blackened vile
bleeding the funnel
with gold plate omega
and crocodile shoes

get on stage
and dance you fool!
you are the headline maker
the pantomime juggler
the compromised closer
pull out that 5 page review
(bullet points only please)
and polish those weathered lines!

did you give it your all?
the door tags
and pleasantries
the tidings
and clippings
the irrevocable claims
and postured blames
all those impressionable basics
put to the test?

you know the call
(straight from
those cold academics)
the pie chart gurus
and contract killers
(complete with bone in finger)
whipping their
frenzied crew
in an all night
charade

old yellar
and the gatekeeper
sure seem amused
(sharpening their inquest
behind closed doors)
firing up the shiit storm
with those hostile priicks
and a slew
of insatiable
cures

there’s laughter from the back room
the dripping nose
and wavering hand
the cut white lines
and checkpoint tales
the pipeline romance
and lacking form
(of a basic essential
character!)

soundboard
and narratives
for logging time
slouching on the
steel case
over moot points
ready to play
the 3 weight
butter card
(if need be)

might I remind you
it’s only an inquiry
(with a slight hint of concern!)
surely no
malfeasance
or deception intended
so step back from
the melt down
and cut to the chase!

headlines to breadlines
penthouse to outhouse
those immoral pursuits
have taken their toll
(haven’t they?)
madman or rogue
(you take your pick)
for the scores
and tabulations
are final

shame on you
for the foul play
the bold hypocrisy
and order desk games
the back stabbing blames
and spurious names
just sign on the dotted line ~
this banter
is killing me

phyllo dough considerations
veil the rigid silence
under quip, under smile-
covered cliche cud.
it is in essence meaningless,
this large party,
this braying urgency of guests

the house swims with life,
we mingle charismatic coughs
as talents strut; bouncing fruit
and swaying surface tension fizz
sparkles off the balcony of floating drinks

our tall pines are echoing beyond the yard
a sylvan soft allure of
living soundboard drape,
it needles aromatic carpet for a
*******, brink-of-dawn escape

allocate the living and the dead,
the borderline is begging to be tread.

an elastic belt extends the real,
a tool for party tricks, a tool for bending time--
i'm bounding off into the darkness
balling lightning in my dantien,
the world a trampoline;
running full i top the rail of gasps,
swinging through the arc
of thinning line to pull me back around,
stomach churning fiction-sick
with gravity inverted joltingly,
umbilically, aware.

then she has a turn as i,
as being me, and as i (as I)
careen away, the vaster leap
of single body, double mind-
it pulls beyond substantial thought

our uber-jumprope dangles
while we speed above the trees -- all is dark
excluding speckled stars
and the one, shrinking party-glow i lose below

the television orbits,
wobbles in a superstrings' embrace
all balance lost --
we're floating in a spin alone
unfocused universal locus..
stars diminishing reliquish cosmic depth
and nourish life in death

reeling eyes of weightless ******
squint to spacetime surgings
inward of the who i am--
plasticity-encasing glass of box
to offer all subverse companionship.
i tug the corded fabric
fronting interweaving screen
of futile marking where
i've riveted, lost, gazing
psychosoma scene
a modern mind-toy posted
to enframe another me we are,
even here with outside sight of world
vacuum up and lower heading
compass only gulping awe,
the breath is gone, a stinging heart
revalves its pacing flow
descending cosmogonic thread

allocate the living and the dead,
the borderline is begging to be tread.

i imagine trees again,
branches soft,
trunks my guideposts to the ground i've lost~
i'm mingling against my sense of real again,
packing leftovers, living social lies unknown.
a man compliments his speech
as "Bristling with business."
the jelly seeps beyond the pita's edge,
the pita slides out from under foil.
the party swivles on its axis,
the clowns play on, noble chefs
laughing in their pots
while i visit drooping psyche forms,
around and through glass doors,
crystal tables -- a furniture of ideal norms
to overturn. ah. i'm found again,
a bit less vast among a crowd
of nescient lives unlived. i'm
found undiscovered open all,
plainly lacking truth as well,
i'm me, this other presence,
this shifting sight,
flood experiential zoo,
this empty vessel holding two
a social fissure prying sense of self
from up a wild void..

Rising rents
Doesn’t seem to care
Who they affect
The City could care less
The mayor giving
Tax breaks
Playing high stakes
With peoples lives
The landlord
Controlling the soundboard
With rent control
Now seen as a nuisance
No one used to want to live here
But now they do
They say there is not enough housing
To fit they appetites
Well don’t be so hungry
Don’t be so greedy
Share a space
Don’t displace
Contemplate actions
Homeless shelters
Next to highrises
Single occupant
Apartments
Could fill ten beds
Instead of one head
Even Jack gets kicked out
The bar that supplies the ghost
Is a poetic footnote
To the money hungry
Seeing dollars
Instead of history
The nations remaining
Black bookstore
Painted The Color Purple
Now shut down
By monied clowns
Stating their needs for millions
Over millions who need
Books
Culture
Life
Instead of
****** glossed over history
Without a shred of the past
Marcus Books
Where Malcolm, Ali, Davis
Gathered
Now lost
To the highest bidder
People come
People go
But the erosion of history
Is a swift reality
Of the gentrification
Of The City

We decided to take a walk.
If the moon and stars still existed,
they were hidden behind clouds.

Then a fog hit us like a wave, a cloud
that had run out of gas and crashed on us,
to further shrink the perceptible world.

Ordinary, walking people became vague
phantoms that could loom, in film noir
black and white out of the fog,
suddenly sharpen and colorize,
only to disappear again in moments.

Sounds, out of sync, or garbled, came sharply
from odd angles, turning that fifth sense unreliable.
Noises, at first muted, were abruptly amplified as
if the hand of that ghostly vapor ran a soundboard.

A man, moving in stalker-like silence, clops,
like a clydesdale on cobblestone as he passes close.

I half expected a distant fog horn to announce
the passing of a ghost ship where all be welcome.

I hammered my self-loathing,
Gouged out its laughing eyes,
Ripped open its smirking mouth,
Then strangled it, stomped it,
Buried it, forgot it; moved on.

The poetry, though, hmm,
It helped me fight, win,
A soundboard of pain,
Reliable and true, so true,
Always remains, waiting patiently.

Keeping my attitude healthy,
Is it needed? Yes, it is,
Riding undulating emotion,
Self-loathing rises, unbidden,
Caressing fondly: a soft kiss.

I body-slam self-loathing,
Hurl it back to the pit,
Peer out of the abyss,
****** at any light, any hope,
Grasping words, fighting.

Love is always needed,
A powerful weapon, hmm,
Without it, well, zombies come,
Tearing within, mocking,
Urging the thin-red-line.

I will not yield, I scream,
I write, even weep, and more,
Knowing love will come, soon,
And will help me claim,
I hammered my self-loathing.

© Paul Chafer 2014

sternum (n.)
a bone extending along the middle line of the ventral portion of the body consisting of a flat, narrow bone connected with the clavicles and the true ribs.
I remember taking an anatomy class in high school, we had to memorize the bones of the body - the skeletal system. Scapula, humerus, mandible all favorable to the tongue, but I never liked the word sternum, it sounds far too angry, nothing like the supple it actually is. Years later I would still find myself walking to work and naming them off. Bones on my mind. Tibia, ulna, femur, breastbone.
Breastbone rolls around my mouth, lulls my anxiety towards its twin like a boat in calm waters. I think of your breastbone as a platform to profess my fascination. I am surprisingly amazed every time I count the steady rhythm of your heart, it's sound conducted as though your breastbone is a soundboard. I feel the slight ridges of your ribs when my head lays in the valley of your chest. There's not a day that I wouldn't love to get lost in the formations of your bones, each crevice a new place to hide - lounging in the curve of your collar bone, plucking the muscles of your fingers like guitar strings, getting lost to the soft scent of skin, and memorizing the plush roundness of your *******, each sensation leaves me with a new obsession. I look for replicas in everyday life, the hunt almost as intoxicating as smoke from campfires, or plucking wishbones from hens.

Why do we feel the need
to treat the people we meet
as if their sole role
is to be our personal
soundboards, and nothing more?
As though they are just a surface
on which we may explore
those thoughts that gnaw away inside us
becoming oblivious
to other people’s torment,
Until we all but ignore them –
even when they’re standing there before us
pretending all is normal
when all they want is to find
someone who has the self-awareness
just to be be there
and take the time
to care…

All your fears come true,
  you were just there in lieu.
A body to warm his bed,
  a soundboard to ease his head.
You always were a placeholder,
  again forced to grow colder.
Soon there will be nothing there,
  no words or love to show you care

You never existed,
we were not alive, i wasn’t
my mind froze when you asked,
I wasn't myself,
I lost it all in the drape you put over my heart,
a half-beaten down animal,
i was trained and trained myself too,
i covered up my mouth
desperately tried to please the eternally void —

emotion
that was the catch,
i had so much to say,
but the latch i made myself, took away everything,
all that made me smile —
you never made me smile,
and nothing i tried was full or right or
splendid

average,
my eyes lit up for a darkness
crept into my bones
took me aback,
i didn’t think that light could be drained
by a black hole  
you told me so, and i believed it —

what were we ever?
i, a soundboard for your misery,
you, a reflection of my own self-doubt,
i never loved you,
but you never loved.

I’ve viewed the faces of lonely owners
From the comfort of my keys
I’ve caught sweat and teardrops
In the late evening-
A glass of scotch on my soundboard
I’ve felt the caress of someone who loves a piano
In place of a woman
And with trembling hands,
You tell me what you used to tell her
With melancholy chords and irate crescendos
Your hands slowly retreat-
As hot tears fall once again

A discount soundboard,
rust chipping away the corners,
with a fresh coat of Pabst-stained rings
orbiting it's various dials,
is the solicitous reward of my uncle's will
for my third year production.

My daughter camp around me,
lining themselves on the far side
of this short room;
a phase of white walls
and even whiter light,
sagging their AM eyes
to cocoon into their sleeping bags,
shield themselves
from the permanent fixtures,
cuddle with themselves
while I slide volume controls.

Forest calls spliced to the ambiance
of last winter's ****, synchronized
to the wet thuds of my friend's face
pulping repeatedly into a tree.
We shot heavy boots in this scene;
snow crunching viciously
as his mangled body was dragged off frame.

I twist rotary knobs,
clumsily from finger grease,
as the captured rumblings of far off traffic
corrupts a month's work of sequencing.

Nature had retreated
from this Northwestern city,
had left only the rustling of pine needles
and useless silence
for the making of this movie.

there in
a cobweb corner sits
an old grand piano

not used to play
any note in four years
and probably out of tune

her strings loosening and covered
in silk, no hammer has touched
or fallen away as quick

all the soundboard does is warp
under a stress of thirty tons and four years
alone

rain's tin roof voices
Northern Flicker's Harpo horn
day's soundboard prism

cec

i bought you a cheap concert uke
so you can strum away in your dark room
anytime deluge visits

i transcribed one of your favorite songs
in tab
so you can sing along with the windchimes
when it's stormy outside

and i know you strum aggressively
so strong that you broke the top end of your old uke
i bought you a bottle of superglue
in case that happens

and i know you think you're too loud sometimes
loud enough for every neighbor to hear
still, i know it doesn't bother you much
but i still strung the thing with lighter gauge strings

and i know your fits are bad
and i know you tend to break things
and i know how anger lasts for some of us
i know how it feels to have that kind of leech

but i know you'll persevere
you always do
faced with the maddened ups and downs
though i admit, it seemed
it's getting bad as the days go by

so i'll be there
to help you out a bit

if you feel like talking
or if you want that silence
still, i'm keeping check

god knows you've had enough of people
but i know no one lasts
stuck inside their own mind

come to me
and i'll give you beer
and some jokes
or i'll visit you
and you can brew us some tea
talk about tea

i wrote a message on some masking tape
and put it inside the soundboard

i hope you never get to read it.