Millions of Metaphors for the Mountain Powerlines

by Jerard Fagerberg

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This track is incomplete without video accompaniment, found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzmYks0jCcY&feature=youtu.be. Filmed in Laos, DPR.

lyrics

Watch.
Watch as the sheet music breaks apart
and the staff unwinds at the ribbonpoint
playing the time signature of the forest.
Mountains in 4/4,
Palm trees flutter in 6/8,
set to the rhythm
of the drums beneath the train –
same ones that led that waking cadence.

Watch.
Watch the way the sunbeams get tangled
in a cat’s cradle meant for the Moon,
the way the licorice twists off
into the dark wax of the night
losing its anise to the great pastoral loom
weaving the air into a tapestry of unnatural pink and blue,
picked over repeatedly
by the fingers of the invisible seamstress.
Clothes lines for rainy season clouds.
Sinews from the spider – these lines
which lasso the valley
And then the spindle resets.

Watch.
Watch the way the fingerboard vibrates uneven
and the strings jerk and bend
from scroll to saddle
like the violinist’s got a heavy hand.
Such music, though.

Some, they hear engines and traffic
Some see ropes of barbed wire curling into a noose
Others think it a harp and see pearls
But most don’t notice
the way the proteins spiral
the way the sugars seek each other
and link
And how on purpose it is.

credits

released March 12, 2012
Jerard Fagerberg (Footage, Piano, Words)
Philip Norton (Photo)
Laos (Beauty)

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about

Jerard Fagerberg Minneapolis, Minnesota

Jerard Fagerberg is a poet and writer currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been known to make mountains of even the slightest molehills. Yes, he would love to perform for you.

@JGFagerberg
JGFagerberg@gmail.com ... more

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