Written by Bijou

Transistor

My man is a wraith,
I think I know his face but then it’s different-
I think my mind is playing tricks
and he won’t let me get a picture
I can live with.

Inside it’s all space with burning gas combustion lit like roman candles
on the mantle piece-
I watch it burn down from my glass case
locked up like a coffin
and everyone is laughing.

They’re eating a menagerie of food
that I’ve prepared,
spread legs on chaise lounges
I’ve kept clean, I mean pristine.

They drop the laundry in the chute,
yeah, I’m a coin operated dream bimbo
with no pole to dance on,
no handsome phantom to take a chance on.

&This song, this song is my only song,
I’ve sung it so long my voice whistles
and dies off on the words
which mean nothing on my tongue.

This is my anthem.

&I don’t want to be saved,
not really, not today.
This is my sacred space,
I don’t want to be replaced
and go to waste on the winds of change.

Think I’ll stay inside my aviary-

And maybe you’ll come visit me
and listen to my song,
remark that it’s okay.

Melancholy in the beautiful sense,
don’t you agree?
You will confirm it’s lovely, yeah
It’s quaint, but goes a little too long,
before the click of the lock
bangs loud as a gong,

just for me.

11 thoughts on “Transistor”

    1. I’m really struggling to like anything I write! It’s really hindered my progress and I’m trying to just get something out even still. Thank you so much for encouraging me. 💜

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. If I ever wrote anything I didn’t absolutely hate I’d probably run around the driveway like a rat zapped by one of those electric rat traps that never completely does the trick. And then I’d drop dead.

        Liked by 2 people

  3. Okay, this is what I’m talking about. This is what I’d call New American. “Bled” is not in that style. Now, which is the better poem? Call me shallow, but I like this one better, even though you hate the fucking thing. Show me a poet that does not hate most of his/her work and I’ll show you a very bad poet. Poetry is like an incurable disease, it only gets worse in the eyes of the patient until it kills the patient. Poems are never finished, they only get old and if they wear thin, then there was something wrong in the birthing. The good ones go on and on and seem untouched by time and the fall of empire. Consider these: “the truth comes to me, the truth loves me”, “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold”, “red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead”, “Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, before we too into the dust descend”, “I sing the body electric”, “finding is losing something else, I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this”, “this life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds”, “my dog has died, I buried him in the garden next to a rusted old machine”, “I taste a liquor never brewed”, and “nobody wanted anybody to be strong and beautiful like that, that others would never allow it, and that many people would have to die”.

    Most of these lines were written by people with mental health issues, or political problems, or drug/drink addictions…most of them ended poorly…assassinated, suicide, jailed, killed, lonely etc. And nearly all of them thought poorly of their own work, particularly when they first wrote it. Yet, here I am offering these lines up to you as great poetry. Oh well, you will do what you have to do and there is little someone like me can do about it, talent or not, and that is the end to it. Thanks. Duke

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. I’m so late to replying to this! Sorry! As ever, thank you for nudging me along. Your impeccable taste makes your opinion golden, to me.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.