Ah but if I only had a voice,
I would bring them all to shame:
my winged contestants for the spotlight,
my plumèd orchestrators of the dawn.
For I have songs in me that writhe and twist
and churn like bileous fire in the gut,
which keep me awake in rutting lust
and whose unsung echoes taint my dreams.
Songs that bleed like open wounds;
symphonies of solitude that shriek inside my head.
and seep of sorrows still and speechless.

Eulogies for the living.

Lovesongs for the dead.

But I am born an abject mute,
an unstrung harp, a tonedeaf brute.
A breathless horn, a strangled flute;
a tired and weary deadwood lute.
I look down at my clawing hands,
onto keys possessive of their treasure:
a rain of stillborn notes and chords
pattering down without a sound.

The dirge resounds in me alone.
My singing makes the flagstones shatter,
and in its cruel and taunting coda,
my words turn lifeless as my songs.