By: Jim Piatt

Do you hear it, the hushed misshapen rhythms
inside the songster’s poetic head? The chords
he pens now only a cryptic cacophonous array
of black and whites plummeting downward
from saddened eyes: His muse, dead now,
lying without a yawn, in a pine box, a body of
muted chords, sinews and bones. The two
used to sit and contemplate for melodious
hours, and conjure words that rhymed in
beautiful iambic tones. He can no longer sing,
he is now just a twisted wisp of silenced wind,
a jumble of words without meaning, a set of
hushed chords of strident notes signifying
nothing. Outside his silenced room, it is cold,
like his lover’s tomb… like his soul.