Sunday’s Villanelle: February 9, 2014

Bittersweet Off-key

But sunshine on a rainy day is the most beautiful thing
A quiet to cut the Dischord with
a toneless sigh in the sirens’ cry that chokes their chance to sing

For songs are ever marred red as Apples by mewling and drooling
and being blue as tekhelet in the tzitzit
but sunshine on a rainy day is the most beautiful thing

it’s a breath, a breeze, a glowing gasp more buoyant than a wing
a feathered pen that’s bent and suckled dry for it’s inky pith
a toneless sigh in the sirens’ cry that chokes their chance to sing

no more sailors lost, no more church bells on Clam Bake night going ding-a-ling-a-ling
no more wary widows sighing “He’s at the bar. I hate that myth.”
But sunshine on a rainy day is the most beautiful thing

there’s nothing like that misty swollen scrotum of light dangling
above us in a gray sky like an upside down batholith
a toneless sigh in the sirens’ cry that chokes their chance to sing

stuffing our throats, causing us to gag in the spectrum so shining
as we swallow those rainbow columns down to the gold pots at the plinth.
But sunshine on a rainy day is the most beautiful thing
a toneless sigh in the sirens’ cry that chokes their chance to sing.