03.13 – slow,

like a Hammond starts,

like a Hammond starts rising out of a pit

in a dreadful hall in a seaside town that was last alive in ’52.

Wooden and flat, like a hammer striking an organ chord,

a chord in the throat that’s wooden and flat.

As the pipes constrict the voice shoots up on a geyser of air,

like a geyser of air sticks the voice to the roof where it can’t get down.

Like the roof is a vault. The cauliflower lungs start to paddle and heave

like the cross-thread gears of a mountain bike. The larynx strings out

like the notes of a harp, like the notes of the harp that someone’s plugged,

like someone’s plugged the notes of a harp with a glottlestop.

Like the neck is a tumbling fight of cats on a 3-D screen in a movie town.

Like a 3-D town screens a fight of cats. Like we all join in,

the belly squeezes and flaps to catch up, the torso becoming

a one-man band, like the um-pah-pom, like the cymbals’ slam,

like the um-pah-pom of the 1812. Like the body explodes the 1812

in Glastonbury mud. Like Glastonbury mud is a fight of cats.

Subsides, like a rope unknots, like a rope unknots like an Indian snake,

like an Indian snake falls back to rope.