Philosophical treatises over music
through and around it: harmonic
epiphany.
Sound as the soft-tongued
server. Hard-edged. Corrupt.
What is a corrupt sound?
What is a breakbeat?
A sample?
Mixed media.
White noise.
Strength in repetition.
Omission. O mission!
The glory of vision.
Mirrors. Reflectors.
Translucent transparency.
The Pharaoh’s
inner Pharisee.
Discordant fallacy:
You can’t dance to this.
Only kill. And dissolve.
Violent Disharmony.
What is silence?
Answer me.
What is it with you poets
and free thinkers?
Why do you keep
trying to baffle me?
What is this twisted tongue?
What can it speak of
that I have not already heard?
He stood in paint
splattered boots
uncrossed his arms
and looked at me.
“I can tell you
what silence is.”
“It is the answer
of the wind
in response
to the question
wings ask.”
“Every letter
of your alphabet
is an instrument.”
the mouths of horns
obviously.”
He laughed
before intensifying
his stare.
“Booom. Booom.”
This NGH’s crazy,
I thought. Leave
it to me to get stuck
with the weird NGH
in the room. Rooooom.
I searched around
quickly for someone
I recognized.
He stood still,
dimmed his
smiling eyes,
and said to me,
“Your thoughts
are the loudest
thing in the room.”
“Your heart
has ‘om’ within
its boom.”
“Your breath
like rivers flow
“Yet, every thought
will share one tongue.”
“Do you determine
which thoughts
you voice or do they
determine you?”
Your head
like a fish tank
that fish
swim through.
Each fish
is an “I”
you let speak
for you.
When will you
become an observer?
When will you
garden your ability
to discern between
what is taught and
what one could teach?
What is the freedom
you exercise through
speech?