The Music of Machines
by Kent Bruyneel

The gentle throat sore melody of birds in the sex-filled dawn. The dying embers of complicity that tower over and demean the sanctimony of this bed. The scarlet of your back. The red circles (you call them ears), that jettison all that is not within, with out.

The patient fragrance of your neck. The music of machines.

We are rapture, Doubt. Double penetrated by grief and hope. Wonder of contentment. Words to the appropriate source. Multiple scars on a scar-filled page. Memories, again doubts, longing, not forgiven.

You are asleep now, hand raised in a gesture of surrender.

You are eyes for the taking.

----

Refrigerator hums in the morning when you stand in bare feet with eyes red and caked in sleep. The sudden slap awakening of the mid-morning telephone. The ache of the birds now, from the spring barren trees.

---

The six-string drag of a hollow body guitar. The music of machines. The low-level noise of a mother's day brunch. "Yes, I just came to say goodbye."

The breath, easy and hard, of the 90 year old woman beside me. The music of machines.

Yam, Rosemary + Prosicuitto Soup-maple creme faiche. $6.50.

The machine gun rattle of the ubiquitous cell phone. The music. Machines.

---

The calculated breeze and tangles of the Dunderave Pier. The fountains whoosh and splash. The rock garden pastries. The music of machines.

A seated violinist plays Sonatta II to the rhythm of a drum machine set on slow.

---

The man in the exact same backyard as ours. Fighting with a defeated lawn mower. If it is broken. Let it be broken. If it is over. Let it be over. Let it all fall away (the music of machines).