(needlept)

Needlepoint pillow
in a leather chair.
A man reads
from a red-covered
hard-back.
I hear two different
pieces of music,
which almost
blend into a kind
of Baroque salsa:
a gay party on the
castle roof,
peasants in vibrant,
hand-woven clothes,
a menace ascending
the stairs.
The audience can see
both scenes,
hear the organ
overtaking
the flute.
My movie ends
& I’m relieved
when one of the musical
pieces briefly stops.
I’ve always felt
I could most easily
be driven mad
through my auditory
sense.
He doesn’t get my
sensitivity to his
tone of voice.
Someone said
when her husband
had an irritate tone
when she called
him to eat,
she simply left it
to him to figure
it out by the
clank of the pans
that dinner was served.
I thought language
was for occasions
like this.
I thought it was
why we had words.

(no stanza break) To make our lives
more efficient,
so we didn’t
have to grunt
& point.
So we didn’t have
to keep enduring
the same old
hurts.

3/24/00