Accidents: A Collection of Poetry

Cello Suite for the Mildly Depressed

I. C Mayor, lent et triste

Look, t(h)inker, clock-reaching cockroach in the works,
Be on your feet and tremble! See how hollow the night.
Miscreant, in the middle and fifth of C,
The glowworms feed on your carapaced stomach lining bleached
In a dozen colored curlicues brought on by the smoke
Of your burnt trials. Sink, make me. Border-trample the tempest
In the groomed brick of silent scale. The pavements
Cry their rhapsody, now, the wet heat expressing their sizzle
In the ear. Color me surprised. I heard you and your nightmare
Galloping across the frail shields of men afraid of laissez faire,
Savor me, now, in wick. Candle-shaped pine trees do flicker in winter
And the flame on their heads are not for you to lick.

II. F menor, andante

Please, projection, you are mere, even for the stellas in your sangre.
Your platelets may compose constellations under your skin,
Your icy bones may form planets in your tears that muster galaxies,
But in the grander scheme of things, you are a carpet of logic compressed
In a paradoxic vacuum. Leave and elevate. Leave and elevate
The skin, your toil, such eviscerations and dirt factory,
Carpal tunnels reside in your art; in your heart,
Calloused emotions breeding demons. Life, through carbon, is
A series of sensations punctuated by arousals, accented by
Chromatic cymbals of attractions. But rhythms are not self-contained,
They glean the stalk of everyone's name, the vibrations in the strings
Create echoes; may your fate be with mine, in the reverberation.

III. A menor, lent et douloureux

I am mildly a shadow, an existence in the final straw, I hung
My lips on words; I hung my ears on sound, my skin on touch,
A testimony of testimonies. Take all of me and the subtle cracks in my
Perceived legato — leave me out of your tierce de picardie.
Your expected brightness in the ending, a preconceived
Colossal composition of what petty chemicals your existence is made of;
Oh, contuse, confuse, grave sadness. The elegy is coming to a close.
Claim my core, forte, fortissimo, louder and louder and more and more,
And be solemn, and be still, I am mildly a shade. I may blur
In your hand-waves. In your clear, corrosive light, I might disappear.
Come, whisper dangers in my ear that my heart might believe them;
Come, make me feel like I am more than what I am supposed to be—

IV. C menor, largo (coda)

Softly, like a stream,
Carry me to my dreaming, softly
Like a stream, carry
Me to my dreaming, mildly
Like the wind, carry me
My arrest, mildly,
Like the wind, carry me
To my rest.

— A. P.