My music belongs to me and it is awesome.
My music is way better than your music,
your music is trash, garbage stench
of a hot summer night behind the dumpsters at Taco Bell,
rancid, but I’m there, too, drinking beers
in the parking lot with the windows down
and the radio tuned to a baseball game
we are following as casually
as the stars’ erratic flight plan—that music
is my music, all of it, ball game, laughter of friends
and the crack of frosty six-packs,
asphalt returning the day’s heat to the sky.
My music is so much better than your music
I pity you—almost I would pity you
if I were not disgusted by your chump-change music.
My music will beat your music to a pulp.
My music will turn your music into a car wash
run by infants—their tiny hands
can’t even hold the sponges!
They will never, ever degrease those tire rims!
Get out of my business with that nightmare
you call music, with your tears
and pleading, the whining of excuses—oh, sorry,
that is your music,
that crybaby boohoo-ery,
that blurt, that diminuendo, that waaah,
that large-ass mess,
that chicken potpie all pocked with freezer burn,
that coyote hung from a fence post as a trophy and a caution.
My music cannot be muted or dimmed,
it cannot be labeled, disciplined, contained
by manicured hedges, my music
is the untamed wilderness of the soul,
the rebar that holds up the skyscrapers of your city is my music,
watch out, your city will crumble to rubble without it,
but don’t worry, it wasn’t much to begin with,
that place you called home
with its measling river, its rusty bridges,
there’s a carnival in the meadow of the old floodplain,
cotton candy and whirligig lights and the racket
rising up from the carousel
is my music,
old guys fishing along the breakwater,
coffee can half-full of fat, wriggling night crawlers—
that worm-thrum,
that earth-mouth-echo is my music.
The trinket in the bottom of the Cracker Jack box is mine,
the Employee of the Month parking space is mine,
I am the little golden man on your bowling trophy,
I am the nickels collected in your old pickle jars,
I am the U-Haul pulling out of the driveway, leaving
your town forever—goodbye, Loserville,
hello, New Hampshire, Alabama, Montana, Texas,
I am all those places, everywhere
you ever dreamed of going
I have been there and pissed on the phone poles already,
I am the names of all fifty states on your tongue,
their Olde English nostalgia and Amerindian prolixity
and majuscule Latinate transliterations rolled together,
I own the alphabet and the stars in the sky,
I own the pigeons sleeping beneath the overpasses
and the shadows of pine trees
and the corn husks in a paper bag on the porch
and the ants on the bottle of barbecue sauce,
ants all over the cupcakes and watermelon wedges,
huge black carpenter ants and raspberry crazy ants
and the almost invisible warp-speed ants
like cartoon swashbucklers of the microsphere,
the footfall of the ants is my music, oh yes,
cacophonous, euphonious, that tumult, that mad march,
louder than circus elephants
and softer than flowers opening, gentler
than apple blossoms descending into creek water,
petals falling—one,
two,
three, four.