One-Way Ratchet
May 7 2014


The one-way ratchet
turns, and catches
screwing down,
click, click, click
it crushes, grips.

Until it slips, in quick release
thread strips clean,
a hammer throw
linchpin cleaved.
As if the universe
no longer holds,
orbiting bodies flying off, scattershot
like shrapnel.

All my life
preconceived,
burning bridges, blinkered gaze.

Then whip-sawed free;
too elated
to be afraid.

In an article about crime and punishment, the author used this terrific analogy, comparing the prison system to a one-way ratchet. I immediately recalled the feeling of going one click too far, and being unable to back-track; when the more I fiddle about trying to disengage, the tighter it ends up.

But really, the poem began simply with the wonderful mouth feel of those words: "one-way ratchet". There are many ways to describe and dissect poetry. There are rhyme and rhythm and meaning and form and big ideas. There is musicality, shock, neologism, agit-prop. But I've never heard anyone except food scientists talk about "mouth feel". And yet this is the way I navigate my way through writing: reciting and responding with not only my ear, but my lips and tongue. Perhaps this is a poor man's version of synaesthesia: a pleasing conflation of sound and touch.

So it began as a playful word-play poem; and then ended up saying something about the power of choice and the paradox of freedom.