Twisted
Some don’t like poetry that’s hard, dense like a Roman wall.
Others had to learn ways through that wall, so here I am
needing strange poetry to explain how I taste sound.
My way of hearing the world was always derided
by people who trampled the music that fed me,
the soft leaves and singing of the woods
that wrapped around me when all was lost.
Noisier, hotter engines invade the waters
in inner ears now; but some don’t care.
Any quiet places left for a Thorough saunterer?
Arctic glaciers are melting for brute gluttons.
My compacted wisdom narwhal tooth, does it bite?
For non-synesthetes, you will have to just imagine.
As you tell yourself to reach for the synaptic rope,
it’s already a mere sign, a broken link to what’s real,
because you had to run it past the left hemisphere.
I let the strings travel in crooked paths as needed.
Designs appear, scents-tastes-textures blend.
If uninterrupted a while, a sweet fullness grows
and I stop starving; breathing isn’t labored.
Some would prefer Eco’s Labyrinth with
clearer signs to make it easy to find the exit,
or the interlaced Beowulf to be straightened out.
Don’t they know nature? The oldest tree is twisted.
The narwhal’s tooth is twisted to break through the ice.
Some never had to clench their fists on a rope
to climb up to avoid a fall, to not drown.
The rope fibers held, always held
because they were twisted.
—
Lloyd Milburn teaches creative writing, literature, and composition in colleges in upstate New York where he earned a creative writing MA. His poetry has been published in Permafrost, Talking River, Willow Review, Ithaca Lit, and Sandy River Review. His poem “Unschooled” won a poetry award from Willow Review in 2012. A lifelong interest in synesthesia influences his poetry and his music recordings. His first CD released in 2013 includes two of his original poems and lyrics.
