Silence Of The Iambs

Trap Music

Blank verse is a trap.
-- Peter Davison

There was a trap, he said,
which had all the trappings of a trap --
cheese, spring, jaw.
So I chewed off my own two feet, he said.
Left three for the trapshoot.
When he shot himself in the foot, he said
Left two left feet.
There was a trap set, he said. Castanet,
snare. Up he flew, flimflam, paradi-
saical,
then down to sleep, ear to the floorboards,
exhausted, footloose, and pining for
the telltale heart’s pingPONG pingPONG pingPONG.

8.11.98