The gramophone screams like a banshee
Discontented and hungry it wails
Like wind bursting in the bubbled windows
That grows pregnant under the pressure, pushing outward
Until the smash and clatter of glass raining down
Disturbs the cold stark night air
Like the nightingale’s melancholy melody for a blind poet
Which rings like the rattle used to quiet
The piercing shriek of a baby’s newborn whimper
Which sounds like a siren
Rattling in the ear drum like a stormy sea
That tried to fit into a seashell too small
And not strong enough to hold the raging waters
Of the ocean on a twisted cloudy day
Swirled with the salty wind of an ocean breeze
Until the grey casts over all things
Leaving only a faint line to distinguish
The two worlds of above and below
A gull’s cry shatters the horizon
With the force of a jarring catastrophe
That leaves the world jolted and trembling
Waiting in that horrible suspense
Of a world untrusted and unstable
Tremble trifling tower
You will fall inevitably
Is the whispered wind’s prayer
That plays with the hair of widows
Sitting in attics looking out small windows
Into a small empty world
Crying silent tears that hit the ground like sledgehammers
Signaling defeat on the dark day
We cling together in the deafening storm
Hugging tight and promising to never let go
Even though time is loosening our grips even as we speak
We cannot weather this storm
Not this time
This cacophony of chaos will tear us apart
There you are sitting across this dark precipice
And I here nursing the sickly wail
Of a cracked gramophone
Trying to screech out the song of you and I
That was never meant to be