"catgut" poems
"It's just one cut,"
said the sharp lady doctor before language
melted off her clipboard and the operating lamps
grew huge and spilled their bright innards into my eyes.
I lay on the cold tiled floor of the museum.
One monstrous cut -- the white shark suspended
above in a last hungry lunge yawns, belly open.
Around me what a wide-eyed fisherman pulled out:
old tires, whale-oil lamps, Damien Hirst, bones upon bones.
Damien sits on a tire, bored as hell. See the jagged edges,
he says, they pulled him into our cold afterlife
and cut while he suffocated, explosive oxygen flooding
his lungs from the wrong direction.
Later, the doctors showed me
what had for so long kicked and screamed to be out.
Liver-colored, swollen, wrapped in catgut, it was not
as expected. Others had promised ground seaglass,
poppyseed freckles, huge lungs like fibrous balloons
for flying or spouting poetry nonstop in day-long stretches.
Where were my eyes?
It was supposed to have my eyes.
May 12, 2010
May 12, 2010 at 7:34 PM UTC
Sing my song of forgetting,
Of lips never wrong, never upsetting,
Sing the wine-infused air along,
From the violin’s grapevine song,
Purely gifted as the altar wine and alms
Of the Santa Maria della Visitazione,
A cadenza from the catgut of stringed waves,
The vibrato in polyphonic staves across the lagoon,
Amid the psaltery sway of submerged algae plumes,
Like the strident tails of the horses of Neptune,
Or the teardrop-surge of the glass chandeliers of Murano,
The same powdered hue of Venetian sky,
As bluebirds fallen into their own drowned tune,
As absence awash over the sun-scattered tombs of Olympus.
Sing with a felt-tipped tongue,
So my song of forgetting is never undone.
May 31, 2024
May 31, 2024 at 9:57 PM UTC
A day in the life of an alley cat, struck dead on the least busy street in the smallest town in Nebraska.
1 am: Druggy, *** you money, ****** don't deserve love, not easy to tell mom. I think of you. Your lungs are begging for my scold. Control is the word you use when no other fits the sentence. You occupy my mind when I am restless, testing the limits of kindness and low voices.
4 am: Your smile, the warmest hot chocolate of your eyes, your knuckles, the baby fat that melted from you, it haunts me. It's like I caught of a glimpse of the wrong angel, the half rotten, beyond gone, but still glowing angel. I killed you with a .45 and a gallon of mouthwash. You dripped into the Earth as a puddle beneath my toes. Gracious Lord, do not forgive me. I know I don't.
8 am: Insomnia without poetry. Tired without body. Maggots without mouths. Catholic priest, without sympathy. God without mercy. Drug abuse, without the realization of undignified addiction. Suicide without the comfort of killing, certainty.
3 pm: Sentiment, true and real, above annoyance and protectiveness. I am now a ghost above a body, finally weightless, finally free of His hands.
6 pm: Joy breaks open like a candy, soft center.
10 pm: Life tears my fingers open, unwraps the flesh from bone like Christmas. I feel my tongue fall out. Dusty antique radios are cleaned, losing authenticity. Their songs scream, sounding a lot like Billy Joel, after the catgut snaps. I feel my mind crawl out of the china cabinet.
11 pm: Nothing. There's really nothing to say at all.
Aug 18, 2016
Aug 18, 2016 at 11:44 PM UTC
Won't care,
Can't care,
Whatever you say.
Rebel to the rotten core.
Bad apple.
Fell from the tree.
Pick up your guitar.
Beat it and play.
You,you kick her down.
Up, she jumps.
Stubborn mule.
Shirt thrusts and punchy.
Making a crust.
Rock beats and rivals.
Eternal survivor.
Battle weary.
Wearing storms.
Iron chains.
Stilettos.
Tattoos and diamonds.
She's just earning a lunch.
Living and loving.
Love ever after.
Beaten eggs and memories.
Rotten heart over done.
From the gutter up she leaps.
Darkest secrets always kept.
She's the rebel
Who hasn't got a clue.
Motor mouths and morons.
Knows just what to do.
Long way down the list.
Onwards and upwards with flick of her hips.
Hair long and fluffy curled over her *******
She'll party forever.
Unstoppable.
Heart strings and catgut.
Eternity's rock chick in the purplest haze.
(c)LIVVI
Dec 29, 2015
Dec 29, 2015 at 12:04 PM UTC
My sister's friend broke his back
when he wrecked his car.
The night of, I met her, coming in from work late,
she was fumbling across the gravel to her car in the dark,
murmured a few words,
when I asked her where she was going.
Mum told me someone had called.
I remembered
Dad meeting me in the kitchen
murmuring a few words,
Making a few phone calls, late.
The next day
I went with her.
Walking along all to familiar hospital halls.
I remembered playing Amazing Grace
as a woman died,
her friend's eyes, glass.
And the man who told me my
Catgut and horsehair
sounded like angel's singing.
I thought it sounded hollow,
empty, cold,
like the corridors.
The ICU hummed quietly with beeps and whispers.
His mother thanked us for coming
she embraced us, pressing her soft body against our ribs.
He lay there honest, disheveled.
The morphine loosened his tongue.
He told my sister he loved her,
over and over again.
"Your sister is great. Don't you just love her? I love her."
he told me.
She held his hand, blushing.
I remembered your voice
on the other end of the phone line,
scattered, your tongue loose and
saying anything that fell into your mouth
half-formed thoughts
mis-pronounced words,
and a thousand impotent
"Don't worry"s.
He healed.
Left hospital after a few weeks.
My sister had to tell him
she didn't love him like that.
and he hated her for it.
You left a few weeks after,
said you loved to easily.
I couldn't hate you.
But I also couldn't love you
like that.
Aug 31, 2014
Aug 31, 2014 at 3:11 AM UTC
It always starts with a Woman;
a woman with skin like sweet milk chocolate.
A woman with a voice like warm honey on a cold dark night
And brown eyes in which a man might comfortably lose his soul.
The club was cold; not much of a club really;
A drafty old barn of a building somewhere in Arkansas
A big barrel half filled with Kerosene was lit to heat the hall.
The Young black folk of the town were gathered around
Young B.B. King was playing the blues, on a guitar with no name.
That was when the fight broke out on the dance floor.
two strong men doing battle over a woman who worked at the club.
It always starts with a woman.
Punches were exchanged; in the melee someone kicked over that barrel
And fire, like a river, roared across the floor.
Everybody started to run for the only open exit.
B.B. King ran too, until he recalled he had forgotten his guitar.
She was nothing special except for the man who played her
The man who coaxed sweet sad sounds from every catgut string.
King wasn’t a rich man and that guitar was his meal ticket
So he raced back through the flames.
Just as he retrieved his guitar, the building began
Its slow sad collapse into ash and embers
He barely escaped with his life and his guitar.
Standing outside in the cold night
Looking on the ruins of what had been a good paying gig.
That was when he met Lucille;
She was the barmaid with the sweet milk chocolate skin
And a voice like warm honey on a cold dark night;
Those two men had just fought and died over
a pleasure that neither would ever possess.
That was when B.B. King christened that old beat up guitar
“Lucille”:
To remind him of this night he almost died.
to remind him never to do something that stupid again.
Like I was saying, it always starts with a woman.
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 6:13 PM UTC
There is something wrong with my viola
for every time I tune it up
the bridge does start to creak
Oh the sweet sound of horse hair on catgut
the resin rising with every stroke of my bow
but I still hear that creaking bridge
My sweetheart is snug against my neck and chin
the music that I make comes from deep within
yet my only vex is my creaky bridge
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Jan 2, 2015
Jan 2, 2015 at 1:19 AM UTC
I've allowed these sounds space
To find a home in between my ears
Metal Machine
Music of the Spheres
Bass digging deep, rattling intestines
Unfamiliar sounds to boggle the mind
Calm the beast and soothe the breast
No catgut drawn across string
Or human muscle powering the beat
Electricity, electronic alchemy
Like lightning streaking across the night sky
Left to right, blink and you'll miss it
Sonic ice, freezing sheen, dripping into sharp daggers
They fall and impale
This is the sound they make
When cold first hits the brain
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 12:01 AM UTC
He played his air on a g-string, mine.
I rapidly moved away.
His teeth remained attached.
hereby to aforementioned string.
I played mine on an e-string...
Two of us together made our heir, on missing teeth and broken strings.
Just doing our string things.
EGBDF
Slaves to staves.
Cleft palettes.
Catgut and nylons,
No, not stockings.
(c)Livvi
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 3:38 PM UTC
In order to feel that,
one must eschew dog
in favour of cat food,
install a ski lift,
give short change and
shorter shrift,
paint palindromes
torch light garden gnomes
take out pay day loans
and skip town.
It surely follows on that
when the day has gone
the night appears,
and owls eyes scan the
fields for mice.
I have nine lives
used up one
and twice I've nearly split
from number two,
it's the catgut or rotgut
or the garden hut for me
where no one sees the
madness in my eyes,
there's only reflected light
in these cats eyes
Jul 30, 2017
Jul 30, 2017 at 10:51 AM UTC
List to the green light, little boat
Always toward my Starboard Home
Home in my fevered brain
Away from tomorrow's surgery
In this blue liquid dream of escape
Where the end of the story is many shiny days
And not possible death on a table
A table serving open hearts
And scalpels in gleaming chrome
Sponges and stitches of blackened catgut
That may or may not promise tomorrows
Float me to survival . . . my tiny green light of hope
Help me arrive at my Starboard Home
Aug 9, 2022
Aug 9, 2022 at 12:20 PM UTC