"soundboard" poems
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
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 1:12 PM UTC
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.
Feb 1, 2022
Feb 1, 2022 at 5:23 AM UTC
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
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
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
Nov 12, 2013
Nov 12, 2013 at 10:58 AM UTC
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.
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 5:30 PM UTC
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
Mar 30, 2019
Mar 30, 2019 at 9:27 AM UTC
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.
Dec 5, 2017
Dec 5, 2017 at 1:27 PM UTC
You are to me as I am to myself
Reflected distortions
I look to you
When unraveling complications
I wonder into
A comforting soundboard
Feb 28, 2025
Feb 28, 2025 at 8:40 AM UTC
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
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 3:19 PM UTC
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.
Sep 8, 2015
Sep 8, 2015 at 1:06 PM UTC
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
Aug 13, 2015
Aug 13, 2015 at 12:05 AM UTC
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…
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017 at 1:41 PM UTC