Experimental

On a train with an electric eel

I saw a man with sheet music on a laptop screen, croaking

A monosyllabic chant into a phone,

A man with a voice like a copper cymbal,

His intrusive, metallic  YES cutting into my bubble,

A man whose yes played on repeat a thousand times over,

Soaking me in warm custardy air, a yes without a question,

A persistent drip of water from the ceiling of a prison cell,

A percussion automat suffering from fibromyalgia,

A man with a thousand answers to the plagues of mankind,

A man who could be as wise as a prophet if he chose not to be an asshole,

A man whose droning drained me of thoughts other than death and murder,

A man whom I saw on the screen of my eyelids with an axe put through his chest,

A man with a silver tongue, giving insanity a new dimension and definition,

A man with a face and body of a big grey fish,

His sheet music a code to his yes, yes, yes and more yes,

A man who probably speaks like this when he’s climaxing in front of his laptop,

A man whose every YES killed a braincell,

A man whose ghostly yes will haunt me on every train journey.

A man who I’d want to see trapped in a tin full of electric eels,

And switch the power on.

YES

YES

YES

Maria Kardel

Maria Kardel is a continental transplant and a theatre archaeologist. She's a regular on the local spoken word scene and occasionally performs as her rock persona, Orlando Shakespeare.