A/N:For the July 2012 WCC, hosted monthly by the Review Game. The prompt was "Without music, life would be a mistake." ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. Almost gave up on it too; I know next to nothing about music.

I hope it has some company in the poetry department.

Gramophone

A spinning top skims across paper's face;
Pen stains lines of lyric blood
Like a spider's web, a bridge tottering above a chasm base,
Dancing gracefully across the ice:
Black ice…
Where the cars skid and a sledgehammer
Fells a pine tree
Weary of old age.

The spin slows;
The dancer's arms part as a leg rises off the ground
And the water breaks free and sinks
The little rock skipping across the floor
Of a ballroom, with magnificent lights,
That glare in no-one's eyes…
And the top shimmers, then slows some more –
The needle fails, blunt and worn,
As the music stops.