Interlude in Static

[poetry_zealot]

There is a small room

beneath my basement:
dim light filters through dust;
insects chant on dried petals.


Beside the sealed door
sits an antique screen—
pixels chatter and snap
at nothing but air.


There is a small slit
for my old cassette tape,
lying half-broken
in the forgotten rubble.


Once a month,
I visit:
the aged door groans;
the light flees;
the insects scatter;
the tape, unmoving.


I have to shove us
into the slit
(enticing it to work);
the world is static,
interluded by flashes,
gifting us life
in a sea of pixels.

[rowens]

The first few stanzas struggle through materiality, trying to demonstrate.

The more abstract and philosophical lines in the second half of the poem feel free and controlled by free expression.

The faults of the opening stanzas work. But are they conscious art?


Consider that.  And then don't

[The_system_screams]

There are lines here that I like:

insects chant on dried pedals
and
gifting us life/in a sea of pixels.

Both evoke beautiful imagery in my head and not only that a voice that chants it like a chorus/sermon/a longing. They feel like a voice breaking into the conversation, a mind of its own not asked but forcing itself into the conversation full of nostalgia? And the more I read the poem the more I realize it feels like that throughout the whole like a call-response. Except the "Once a month...." part. That feels like a moment edged in time.

Overall, I like it. It speaks even though unspoken. Nice work.