Portrait of a Man Playing a Broken Guitar

shoulders heave to vomit the sound, a roar
beat out by a calloused hand picking
at the scabby string until something bleeds.
the buzz screams, O Father
in the beginning was not the Word, but the electricity
coarse in wires, hot with friction, pressed into the paralyzed neck.
sacrifice every note for beauty.
the strings decay, stripped more with each beating.
until, naked thin, they are snapped by silencing passion—
love created only at the edge of breaking.