Like Rimbaud on the #358

Brain Rapture

Electric ragas,

born in a New York City warehouse

in the year 2000,

play on the stereo

in a cold room of seeping April air

where guitar notes open

like violets on a hill side

in a Thurston Moore reverie.

A pick runs down an E string

like a dive bombing jet

and the accelerating chords

of a Dead Kennedy’s song

rise in a sonic arc.

At its peak a scream

spits out black curses

at greedy corporations

and government hypocrisy.

From the 60’s,

a young woman’s wail of pain and love

levitates above the stain glass

hymn of a multitude

singing “Candles in the Rain”.

I hear music everywhere

this fading afternoon --

sound waves radiating

in my fiery brain --

pulsing signals from a radio tower.

On a bus in North Seattle,

a rap lyric vibrates

from a man’s head phones --

drums knocking against

a wall of thudding bass.

But the steady rhythm

of tires on asphalt comes through

as the tempo slows

and a book of cumulus clouds

unfolds above breathing fir trees

along Highway 99.

In these slowed down moments

of early twilight, I see

I’ve been on this journey for years --

Familiar signs imprinted on my eyes.

Later in a darkened transit window,

under a panel of fluorescent star light,

I’ll hear the engines song

and watch my face

set like a cavernous moon

in the passing night.

2001

Talkin’ ‘bout my Degeneration – variation on a theme by the Who

In a room of twenty something’s,

I was a forty whatever --

a monotone weasel

in aviator glasses --

trying to conduct market research surveys

with the unwitting and anonymous.

Everyday was dialing households

who hung up on me,

while a twenty year old

in the next work station

played air guitar between calls --

mouthing White Zombie and Metallica.

The day dragged into a night

of middle aged migraine,