The Violin Poem by Eliot Bukowski

The violin sits by the window
- breaks her strings down phone lines (now waves)
an insistent out of tune complaint
criticism, rebuke, stripping off
- - - - paint.

We’re all like pigs slapped down some lane
and I will chew on the insane root
(and) because I do not need to know
again, sinners prayed for at their death
I move away as quickly as the blood
torn from the palms of Scottish monarchs.

- - I have a fancy
foolish idea, that the world is as
(as) dull as this bright blue sky appears
this capricious monotone beats its
false notes from hair to distant hair.

- - - - and
it’s not alone, even if it were
it would soon recruit some stylish chap
with exotic looks and brown high heels
mingled with dead cotton thread bare socks.

- - - - Half dead
I get on the bus and go to hell
And go the full hundred per cent. I
Scrabble through my bag, crushed paper, like
lettuce, hides all that I need or want.
Sadness unbound, Hell bent on ignoring
this crowd. Silent, dulled, as though pulled through
cotton wool held in a lunar syn
thesis, as we breathe this stale air. The
Directors have departed, mulesing
the river, which now stripped of glamour,
carries our headaches away again.

Frozen busstops, ignored, unalighted
Left alone, left forlorn, deserted.
Directors pass in their cars, ignor-
ring the calls from violins up high.