twenty-one

If you want to understand Drastus
you have to listen to old classical albums,
though not for formal reasons.
A lot of black metal guys
like to imagine connections
between their scene and the Vienna Conservatory.
Good luck.

What you want to watch for
is the low hum of the tape
that they couldn't erase in the digital transfer.
It's the evidence, as it were:
the cigarette butt left carelessly at the crime scene,
the undeleted emails on the lover's laptop.

Andre Watts, The Chopin Recital,
Etude in F Minor, Op. 10.
The roar is there throughout, though busy hands
keep trying to hold it back.

Bon Voyage, best wishes.
The silence which does not even resemble silence
rises to a fixed point and then waits patiently
for an opening.
What happens when the opening never comes

is the echo that Drastus kites
in response:
powerless and therefore dangerous,
surrendered and therefore omnipotent -

air escaping from one of the heart's valves
or all of them,
squealing
from the pressure.