Musical Hell
by Billie Jean Stratton
Then when I am one again
woven with the wild, moaning wind
that drives the lashes of rain
and beats the trees to bend,
the leviathans of time,
charmers of points, lines,
taunt music from the wet road
writhing in front of my home.
Rising like a round, the basso sound
rides a haunting crescendo of shush.
This low hum holding hard tonnage
confounds me when I hear
aesthetics resurrected, rearing
from this wreckage of esthetics.
Bitter as chokecherries, memories
dry as dust, remind me what I was
when my lips were instruments
for the abdomen's wet wind and
my fingers stops for a movement
flogged from the pipes of inner organs.
Before the subtle threads stitched
in my nervous genetics
spread their web of total wheeze,
when I soared the planes of sound
my heart full of weaving flames,
unaware that feverish souls
were waiting for the seeds in my womb,
to experience the dawn of new life
like vampires wait for night, entombed.
I was one then before birth
ceded my berth in the company
great musicians quietly keep,
riding the sound of God,
so far away now
so beyond gone,
the lights so Northern now
they may never be touched
by the likes of me again.
Then when I am one again
woven with the wild, moaning wind
that drives the lashes of rain
and beats the trees to bend.
woven with the wild, moaning wind
that drives the lashes of rain
and beats the trees to bend,
the leviathans of time,
charmers of points, lines,
taunt music from the wet road
writhing in front of my home.
Rising like a round, the basso sound
rides a haunting crescendo of shush.
This low hum holding hard tonnage
confounds me when I hear
aesthetics resurrected, rearing
from this wreckage of esthetics.
Bitter as chokecherries, memories
dry as dust, remind me what I was
when my lips were instruments
for the abdomen's wet wind and
my fingers stops for a movement
flogged from the pipes of inner organs.
Before the subtle threads stitched
in my nervous genetics
spread their web of total wheeze,
when I soared the planes of sound
my heart full of weaving flames,
unaware that feverish souls
were waiting for the seeds in my womb,
to experience the dawn of new life
like vampires wait for night, entombed.
I was one then before birth
ceded my berth in the company
great musicians quietly keep,
riding the sound of God,
so far away now
so beyond gone,
the lights so Northern now
they may never be touched
by the likes of me again.
Then when I am one again
woven with the wild, moaning wind
that drives the lashes of rain
and beats the trees to bend.
Billie Jean Stratton is a 74-year-old New York farm girl who never liked the barn and spent much of her youth sidestepping hired hands by practicing the flute in an acoustically superior bathroom. She’s been published in 2002's Comstock Review, 2005's Sulfur River, and 2014's Lost Orchard-Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community. Resurfacing after many years, Billie’s poem “Brodsky” was published by Ibbetson Street Press and was nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize.