"horsehair" poems
This is winter, this is night, small love --
A sort of black horsehair,
A rough, dumb country stuff
Steeled with the sheen
Of what green stars can make it to our gate.
I hold you on my arm.
It is very late.
The dull bells tongue the hour.
The mirror floats us at one candle power.
This is the fluid in which we meet each other,
This haloey radiance that seems to breathe
And lets our shadows wither
Only to blow
Them huge again, violent giants on the wall.
One match scratch makes you real.
At first the candle will not bloom at all --
It snuffs its bud
To almost nothing, to a dull blue dud.
I hold my breath until you creak to life,
Balled hedgehog,
Small and cross. The yellow knife
Grows tall. You clutch your bars.
My singing makes you roar.
I rock you like a boat
Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor,
While the brass man
Kneels, back bent, as best he can
Hefting his white pillar with the light
That keeps the sky at bay,
The sack of black! It is everywhere, tight, tight!
He is yours, the little brassy Atlas --
Poor heirloom, all you have,
At his heels a pile of five brass cannonballs,
No child, no wife.
Five ***** Five bright brass *****
To juggle with, my love, when the sky falls.
9k
In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,
But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's
Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his ***** *****
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.
Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.
6.3k
in memoriam Woodrow (Woody) Rifenburgh
The soft purr of a Piper Cub
drifted over Italy's southern hills.
Soul stirred by the landscape’s song,
the young army pilot gently spoke.
“It’s mighty peaceful up here.”
Touching wheels to the tarmac,
Woody shed his flight suit
for an engineer’s desk
and placed a viola beneath his chin.
For three score years
Woody molded horsehair and wire into string song
steadying the orchestra’s midriff
with the vibrations of his spirit.
On Christmas Eve he played for the coming child,
fell stricken and flew his last flight
on instruments at Memorial.
Early New Year’s morn one could almost hear
the faint soft purr of a Piper Cub
as it banked to the right around the moon
and merged with the waiting heavens.
Apr 26, 2016
Apr 26, 2016 at 9:37 AM UTC
Like a discordant chord striking the piano deaf,
Or a saxophone that lost its swanky *** appeal,
When you breathe down the neck of my violin,
The horsehair refuses to bow,
When you huff out your limitations into my harmonica,
You disrupt my harmony,
Throwing me
offbeat.
[But I refuse to be beaten].
Aug 2, 2013
Aug 2, 2013 at 12:16 AM UTC
Spare parts
Nothing more than spare parts
Nuts and bolts and hair traps
Metal pins and elastic bands
A2 screws and P7 washer nuts
Fasten finger tight
After assembled
Repeat steps 1 & 2
Fixed too firmly
Adhere some glue
A mechanical recipe
The instructions to destroy and rebuild
3D printed
Pasted together
Real feel wood and triple stitched elastic leather
Catalog quality at half the price
Made in China mattress springs
Pantone color coordinated just right
Knock off
Imitation
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Product placement
Everything must go
20% sale
Egyptian cotton stuffed with horsehair
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Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
SELL me a violin, mister, of old mysterious wood.
Sell me a fiddle that has kissed dark nights on the forehead where men kiss sisters they love.
Sell me dried wood that has ached with passion clutching the knees and arms of a storm.
Sell me horsehair and rosin that has ****** at the ******* of the morning sun for milk.
Sell me something crushed in the heartsblood of pain readier than ever for one more song.
1.7k
I'm burning with every soft whisper down my spine, my pulse is vibrato.
Like the soft and energetic hum of horsehair melting into song.
Writhing in dance against the twisted embrace of chromium on the strings.
A clash of furious titans.
Making storms when they collide; the wind and the tide.
Wrestling for power 'til the waves crash one over another, gasping, growling.
Oxygen.
When my lips meet cotton crisp and sweet, and beg for freedom of another kind.
And there in quiet whimpers do we seek, together this enlightenment of lone and fallen ones.
Grazing sharp and silent little wounds, quieted by scar tissue.
Healing through our fingertips and moans, twisted as an ouroboran knot;
feeling mirrored heartbeats strike like savage drums.
When the guise of warpaint loses shape, cast aside for inner feral forms,
grinning cheshire, hidden thorny claws.
In the darkness of another night, heavy with the weight of misty breaths, there from underneath do they then come,
the master and his hound, the lord and fallen one.
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 2:14 AM UTC
I scrub down the entrails
cast now in wire
forcing fast horsehair to form
audible friction,
with wood, metal, keratin, and navel craft
comprehensible tension;
and I study such tension to
form a portfolio of frequencies
from which to draw
and cause
emotion on cue:
to tease my tactile habits
is to hone my habitual expression (they say);
I ask the doctor and take this aural tool
--a theory of not colors but a fifth wheel--
as directed,
and use it to forge links between acoustic flailings
to turn feelings into gears that line up
just as the label instructs.
And so I train my instincts to match the mold taught in
this cramped and unfamiliar womb;
and I teach my hand to tremble uniformly.
May 2, 2010
May 2, 2010 at 2:20 PM UTC
You think you're so charming with your six-string but I've got some news,
and that's that that six-string is old news.
When you gonna pick up that new electronic beat and let the drums pulse heat into your cold eyes,
littering the shoreline with every bit of negative commentary necessary to make the moment much less than romantic.
Jump into panic, oh alone you're so alone and though I sympathize I won't fall for those lies;
you're just a kid with a crayon trying to sell the Mona Lisa.
Dragging me down into new friction against a new addiction I never wanted,
dust litters my clean floor and I can hear you back there shit-talking the shore as if your racing heart never wanted more.
Racing blurred burnt out on lines speeding past fluttering eyelids so quick, the storm inside the flashbulb can't even stop us.
The quickness inside our pounding hearts won't slow, the blood won't thicken no matter how hard you wish it.
Crushing candy into cotton in public bathroom stalls under careful fingertips, I wish so hard you never happened to me but what would I have done otherwise?
I suppose your trying to **** me evens out owing you my life and though I sympathize, I won't fall for your lies;
you're really just a kid with a crayon trying to sell me the Mona Lisa.
Brother, I've touched paint in my lifetime, I've swirled fine horsehair brushes across an open mind,
and I can tell you your rhetoric is no masterpiece.
Alone alone empty empty
addict, addict
No matter how hard I look at you I can't see you without your lover, how hard she makes you sweat, how she makes you gasp for breath,
in, out, in out.
I can see you leaning hard against those walls,
push kid, it'll never budge an inch.
If my observations count for anything, knowing you doesn't count for anything,
seeing you suffer under ghosts and grime won't make you smile,
no matter how many times I tell you no.
I'll watch you breathe superman until you can leap buildings;
but I won't be watching when you come back down.
Jan 27, 2011
Jan 27, 2011 at 12:52 AM 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
in the middle where I start,
dark ebb, dark flow.
The Alice in Wonderland:
a washing machine on spin -
weaving this and that 'til
it's just dips between the strings, just perforations in the canvas
that tear and break night into
pounding pavement,
bringing ocean's hairline to itch and flake
and radio waves booming
to tear mesh 'til texture.
a post-sodapop hiccup.
the jump and stumble of a green button-up blouse
whose brown buttons blend slowly
until, on either side in a landslide
of springtime pollen on the sleeves and
slowing to a rinse draining dark with a single
highlight of white drizzle
left on shingles and on Monarchs' wings
to drip to soil with the dark dip of horsehair
into the ***** watercolor that’s left over
from the spin where Alice got lost and began.
Nov 5, 2014
Nov 5, 2014 at 5:15 PM UTC
I wrote you a folk song, sister.
Think I’ll call it “Caroline,”
after your mama’s mama
and the way she’d
slow smoke a brisket
for fifteen hours,
slapping away at the jaw harp
and kicking chickens.
Man, she had heart.
Nate and I still swing down by Early’s mill
on these summer days away from work,
and hack our way through the rushes
with that Congolese machete
Daddy gave me for my tenth birthday
(the fringes remain intact).
Nate ran into trouble,
and is back in town
for a while.
I’d say it’s about time
we rosin up the horsehair
and saw away at some old gospel staples,
the same way we did
at the fiddle contests
two lifetimes ago,
when the mountain tunes lingered
in the morning mist
far beyond breakfast.
Back when the AT through hikers
crashed at our place and brought stories of the Great Trail.
Back when my daddy wore bellbottomed jeans
and could scale a rock like some sort of deity.
Back when Nate smashed Grammie’s mason jar
of flour all over the road
and got a good whoopin’.
Back when we’d dam up the creek
and dream up images for the trees.
Back when your mama’s mama
prayed to Jesus on our behalf,
and the stars still came out most nights.
Her redwood rosary still dangles
on the mirror by my Hank Williams shrine.
Yes, I wrote you a tune from the heart, sister,
where the memory wells
flow with water from a living rock.
I hope you like it.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 7:41 PM UTC
A violinist
lightly strokes the sheep gut with --
tightly stretched horsehair.
Nov 4, 2024
Nov 4, 2024 at 2:54 AM UTC
My feelings contradict the words that spill from my mouth
Like melted daggers falling like stars, shining..
And my actions contradict themselves, fists white knuckled and raw, an outstretched palm reaching towards your body
Begging to stay
Asking to leave
Demanding
Sew my mouth shut and
Tie my limbs down
Just rest your head against my chest so you can
Listen to the erratic heartbeat that plucks harp strings and horsehair
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 2:16 AM UTC
I wish I could escape my own charred mind
Create an escape, curl up and hide
The thoughts that come taunt me, both night and day
Stay lodged in the back, and drive people away
But when I pick up my soft, horsehair bow
A melodious sound where heartache will show
Gliding across each string with a sound
Limitless, free, and completely unbound
All sorrows unleashed and tears cascade
Enveloped in the music your own hand has made
And drawing out that last soft hum
Enjoying happiness that so rarely comes
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 10:26 AM UTC
I used to picture you
with a voice oscillating like ocean water, casting words
as nets on a surface shimmering effervescent green.
And even the handful of stars outside dawdled just
a while longer to see the fish rise up and wink
out in the morning sun, scales slipping together
the way clay lips slot against coral white heart-cages
and curved, ivory xylophones patterned like shadows
and gold strips of sun. Everything quivers; we are only a
cosmic moment singing aubades, horsehair and rosin falling
like shooting stars against mahogany and warm steel, origami
folded bed, redefined by sharp angles and all the ways I am not afraid.
When we rise to sleep, pressed sable will drip down
and the air will be rimmed with the sea salt tang of dried coffee.
Nov 27, 2017
Nov 27, 2017 at 1:29 PM UTC
I never could play the violin very well,
Unlike banjo, bass or guitar,
Violins require that delicate touch
And precise bow.
It is easy to pluck a banjo
And make it talk.
It is easy to slap a bass
And make it walk.
It is easy to hit and strike a guitar
And make it weep.
And it inconceivably simple
To make a violin stretch,
Just drag the bow,
Be it horsehair or the wood
Across four unbroken sliver strings,
Like a knife.
Making sounds that birth cringe and shiver,
Sickly shaking notes that winge and quiver.
-Jamie F. Nugent
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 7:17 PM UTC
with my fairy tales exhausted. i had my wits about me.
like huffing glue on real problems.
the sticky-wickets and whatnot.... that gather through me.
like a trojan-horsehair medallion -
at the end of a rope. Or a ray
of " No ".
A Spot of Bother that May Be Scotch -
Or Maybe Not... but the rot boggles.
the way decay and Seasons agree on everything.
how you can't stop writing letters
to imaginary patrons
and lost mice.
' awake ' is a maze
in a deeper sleep
and i wonder...
then i wonder
some more.
Mar 1, 2018
Mar 1, 2018 at 12:18 AM UTC
The movie actress
sits on horsehair, you see it --
because she feels it.
Jun 14, 2025
Jun 14, 2025 at 4:26 AM UTC