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Listening to Cicadas

Listening to Cicadas

Listening To Cicadas

Thousands of soda chargers detonating simultaneously 
at the one party
*
The aural equivalent of the smell of cheese fermented
in the stomach of a slaughtered goat 
*
The aural equivalent of downing eight glasses 
of caffeinated alcohol
*
Temperature: the cicada’s sound-editing software
*
At noon, treefuls of noise: jarring, blurred, magnified—
sound being pixelated
*
The audio equivalent of flash photography and strobe lighting
hitting disco balls and mirror walls
*
The audio equivalent of lightning hitting your face
*
The sound of cellophane being crumpled in the hands
of sixteen thousand four-year-olds
*
The aural equivalent of platform shoes
*
The aural equivalent of skinny jeans 
*
All the accumulated cases of tinnitus suffered
by fans of Motörhead and Pearl Jam
*
Microphone feedback overlaid with the robotic fluctuations
of acid trance music
*
The stultifying equivalent of listening to the full chemical name 
for the human protein titin which consists of 189,819 letters 
and takes three-and-a-half hours to pronounce
*
The aural equivalent of garish chain jewellery 
*
A feeling as if your ear drums had expanded into the percussing surfaces
of fifty-nine metallic wobbleboards
*
The aural equivalent of ant juice 
*
Days of summer: a sonic treadwheel 
A Bird Came Down the Walk

A Bird Came Down the Walk

A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.

And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,--
They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
He stirred his velvet head

Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.

Emily Dickinson. "A Bird Came Down The Walk." 

A Minor Bird by Robert Frost

A Minor Bird Poem by Robert Frost

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.

Robert Frost. "A Minor Bird." 

The Tyger by William Blake

The Tyger by William Blake

The Tyger By William Blake

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears 
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Autumn Crows by Kimiko Hahn

Autumn Crows by Kimiko Hahn

Autumn Crows by Kimiko Hahn

My favorite months reside in autumn
when the sunset is riddled with crows—
and my wishes swerve to fly
into the purples and pinks to
spot then devour
the heart of that ex-lover, hardly human.

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