First published in P.O.V (Passing Out Victorious) Magazine, Issue 8: Modern Life (Nov/Dec 2013)
I loved being part of this project. The editors were always very enthusiastic about my submissions. They published more than my fair share including the little vignette (below) that I only felt brave enough to share due to the aforementioned enthusiasm.
Sheriff Pimiento and his box. Anyway, I digress, this post is about a partially ekphrastic poem using some theremin music. I submitted a suggested playlist alongside. It consisted of:
Mode 199: Spellbound! | Percy Grainger; The Day The Earth Stood Still 1951 - Theremin studio session; Scene d'Amour from Vertigo live--Theremin and Orchestra; The Flaming Lips - Race For The Prize (live on Later), and Clair de Lune - Randy George.
heterodyne
theremin scales indicating never nigh is the end
of obtuse pleasures, gnarled projections of
expectations, amid games of make-believe:
playing house supreme, always the last word in.
coiling musts into should'ves or levying disparate dos
shaping into circular membranes of what may have been.
a moment of elation (every now and then)
amid pulses of insight, prehension of filtered codes,
erasing chapter and verse crushed in by parrot rote.
unchartered spacetime; the purple silk of dreams
part-had, half-strung, mostly superfluid thrusts,
swirls delicately, creasing into trenches, fortifying
frangible formations into indestructible designs. Themes and inspiration for this poem include, but aren’t limited to: theremin (no surprise here); modern life (nor here); Hitchcock; Möbius strip; synchronicities holding the final clue; traditional gender roles: soft tissue, and unwanted reiterations.